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Combos - those little pretzel rolls with an assortment of savory fillings - seemingly came out of nowhere to dominate road trip snack discussions forevermore. But despite being one of the undisputed kings of convenience store pit-stops for the past several decades, there’s surprisingly little information about Combos out there. So how did these humble tubes of dough and cheese come out of obscurity to change long car rides forever?
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Combos, those little pretzel rolls with an assortment of savory fillings
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seemingly came out of nowhere to dominate road trip snack discussions forevermore
0:09
But despite being one of the undisputed kings of convenience store pit stops for the past several decades
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there's surprisingly little information about combos out there. So how did these humble tubes of dough and cheese come out of obscurity to change long car rides forever
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Well, today we're going to take a look at the surprisingly secret history of combos
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the mysterious ultimate road trip snack. Okay, hand me a bag of the pepperoni pizza once
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No one gets hurt. We don't know why there's so little information
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about combos floating around on the internet. Maybe it has something to do with the CIA
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or some sort of time travel shenanigans. But whatever the case, combos seem to be shrouded in the kind of mystery
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usually reserved for cryptids. What we do know is that combos were originally developed by a company called Eagle Snacks
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which long, long ago was the snack food arm of the beer brewer and distributor Anheuser-Busch
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The Eagle Snacks line included potato chips, cheese snacks, nuts, and pretzels
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all of which are snacks you typically munch on in a bar and often came in the shape of an eagle
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like the kind that appears in the Anheuser-Busch logo. According to the Combo's website, the snack was invented in Battle Creek, Michigan in the early 1970s
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when someone, quote, used a drill press to make a hole in a pretzel and filled it with nacho cheese
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And given their origin, it's possible that combos were initially intended to be a replacement for
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or supplement to things like pretzels and peanuts as a snack for beer drinkers
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After all, we're pretty sure that's the whole reason peanuts were invented. Budweiser invented peanuts, right
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Well, we may never know the answer to that one, but we do know that combos didn't stay confined to bowls on bar tops
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For whatever reason, in 1978, Eagles sold the still unreleased brand to the monstrous food conglomerate Mars Incorporated
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who makes M&M's candies, Wrigley's chewing gum, pedigree dog food, and about a zillion other things
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Seriously, if you bought candy this week, Mars probably produced it. Despite being based in Virginia and not on the red planet, they moved the combo manufacturing plant to Albany, Georgia
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There, it was decided that an empty combo shell would be called a nutzel and a filled one would be called a shotzel
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Hey, we all just learned that. Once the terminology was all straightened out, combos were finally released to the public in 1980
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In case you were wondering the production of a combo begins with the creation of a soft bread dough The dough is then molded into a long hollow tube shape which is then cut up into smaller combo bits which kind of resemble miniature barrels of the type that a miniature Donkey Kong
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might toss at a hungry Super Mario. Those barrels are then baked, cooled
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and finally stuffed with one of a number of mostly cheese-flavored fillings
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When they were first released, combos came in three flavors, nacho cheese, cheddar, and pizza
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And despite the fact that pretzels are typically viewed as a snack for old folks
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and bar patrons, combos were marketed at younger folks. An early commercial for the product from 1982
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depicts a kid snacking on combos while hanging out with an old-fashioned riverboat captain in his jazz band
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You know, like kids love to do. And even though they went to the trouble of developing
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the whole nut-soul, shot-soul terminology, the commercial never mentions those words at all
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instead choosing to refer to the combo as a crispy nugget. Weird advertising campaigns aside
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combos quickly became so popular that Mars tried to spin the idea off into similar products
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such as Dooley's Cornquistos. Cornquistos were basically combos made of tortilla instead of pretzel
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with a filling based on picante sauce rather than cheese. Those don't have to be mutually exclusive, fellas
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Aside from that one anomalous product, though, most of the other line expansions carried the Combo brand
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For example, in 1985, the company released Combo's Crackers, which were just combos with a cracker shell instead of a pretzel shell
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In 1988, that line was then expanded to include the pepperoni pizza cracker, a cracker combo with pepperoni pizza flavored filling
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And in 1992, the company unleashed Combo's mustard pretzel flavor. Despite the natural affinity that exists between mustard and pretzel, the mustard pretzel combos weren't quite the hit with the public the company hoped it would be
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They were eventually discontinued, and it wasn't the only flavor to meet that fate
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The forgotten combos of times gone by include varieties like cheeseburger cracker
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zesty salsa tortilla, seven-layer dip tortilla, sweet and salty caramel creme pretzel
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sweet and salty vanilla frosting pretzel, peanut butter pretzel, peanut butter cracker
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and the wildly ambitious bacon, egg, and cheese cracker. considering the global popularity of marvel comics and the marvel cinematic universe we'd be
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remiss if we didn't mention the single most iconic marvel superhero in comic book history
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combo man we can sense your skepticism already but combo man is a totally real marvel hero that
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combos paid the comic book publisher to create for a series of advertisements in 1995 he even
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received his own one-shot comic issue in 1996. Combo Man, who genuinely exists in Marvel's
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main 616 universe is secretly a student named Rick Wilder He bullied into robbing his school science lab only to discover the evil agents of AIM are already robbing it at the same time A fight breaks out which causes an explosion fusing the ratitude of Rick bag of combos with the
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ratitude of the mighty Marvel bullpen, transforming him into Combo Man. Combo Man appears as a visual
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mashup of a number of Marvel heroes and villains, and there was actually a contest for any fan who
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was able to identify every character mixed into Combo Man's design. Who were the characters? Here
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let me save you a Google. The Hulk, Cyclops, Iron Man, Magneto, Punisher, Captain America
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Sabertooth, Carnage, Daredevil, Spider-Man, Sentry, Human Torque, Silver Surfer, and Gambit. All Rick had to do was slam a sack of combos and he'd change into a powerful superhero
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Combo Man pretty much disappeared after his 1996 one-shot, but in 2021, he shocked the comic book
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reading world by showing up for a surprise cameo in Image Comics. There's no word yet on whether we
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should expect a cinematic version of the character anytime soon, but hey, our fingers are crossed
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But Combo Man wasn't the last character the pretzel snack giant would create. In 2006
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for example, the company unveiled Man Mom. Man Mom was a male actor dressed in drag who appeared
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in a series of commercials serving his family combos for dinner or prescribing combos to his
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son as a cure for a fever. The commercials would then close out with the slogan, what your mom would
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feed you if your mom were a man. It was weird. After that, Combo's moved on to a new campaign
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that asked fans to pledge themselves to be part of the Combo Nation and later sponsored NASCAR
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driver Kyle Busch, who won the 2008 Best Buy 400 while representing Combo's as his main sponsor
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The brand was also once considered the official cheese-filled snack of NASCAR
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although the competition isn't exactly stiff. Independent of their own advertising efforts
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combos have had more than a few pop culture moments. The indie rock band Morphine, for example
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name-checked the snack in their 2000 hit Top Floor Bottom Buzzer, and the popular AMC series Breaking Bad
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featured actor Rodney Rush as Christian Combo Ortega, named for the character's love of the snack
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Despite being the primary jewel in any road trip's crown, combos have run into a few bumps in the road
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In 2016, for example, Mars announced a voluntary recall of various combos flavors
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including cheddar cheese pretzel, pizzeria pretzel, and cheddar cheese cracker, among a bunch of others
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Why? Well, according to the company, the wheat flour they had purchased had become contaminated with peanut residue
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As you likely know, peanut residue can be dangerous for folks with peanut allergies
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a condition that affects roughly 2 of the U population Such food allergies result in somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 hospitalizations and 200 deaths a year So it a serious problem The contamination occurred on the flour distributor side of things
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Mars wasn't the only food manufacturer to be affected. Kellogg's, Frito-Lay, and Hostess all had to make recalls of their own for the same reason
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That eventually worked itself out, but in 2024, a class-action lawsuit filed against Mars argued that the company's marketing falsely claimed combo fillings were made from real cheese
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According to the plaintiffs, that filling is actually just 2% real cheese and is otherwise made from mostly processed ingredients like palm oil, dairy product solids, and other things that are not real cheese by any meaningful standard
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The litigants claim that Mars uses cheap filler ingredients to save money and then lies to its customers by saying they use real cheese
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And they're not the only people to think so. The class action, which was filed in Florida, was incredibly similar to one filed against Mars in federal court the previous year
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Additionally, while nobody would ever mistake combos for health food, more than a few health watchdogs have deemed combos to be exceptionally bad for you
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Combos are absolutely swimming in saturated fats, added sugars, and sodium, all of which have been linked to medical conditions like hypertension and heart disease
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That's not even factoring in all the artificial colors and flavors in the recipe
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which can be outright dangerous to people with certain allergies. And every single person watching this video knows the serving size of a bag of combos
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is a bag of combos. So you're consuming a mountain of all that badness
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every time you indulge. Look, there's a reason combos aren't stuffed with vegetables
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And we get it. The point is, they should really be limited to road trips
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and other snacking emergencies. Not a regular part of anyone's diet. As of 2025, combos are still on the market
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and they come in six standard flavors. and all six are still associated with beer drinking
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Those are cheddar cheese pretzel, pizzeria pretzel, pepperoni pizza and cheddar cheese crackers
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buffalo blue cheese, nacho cheese, and ranch dip. There's also cheddar cheese bacon pretzel and sweet barbecue baked cracker
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both of which are exclusive to Walgreens, so you don't have to travel far for your heartburn medication
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And the company has been known to release the occasional limited edition flavors, like jalapeno cheddar, honey sriracha pretzel, spicy honey mustard pretzel
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and garlic parmesan baked cracker for your fancier road trips. In spite of its mysterious background, or perhaps because of it
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combos have come to be regarded as one of the best road trip snacks in the history of, well, road trips
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Resting comfortably in the pantheon next to mainstays like beef jerky and smart food popcorn
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And while we may never get a behind-the-music episode about our favorite pretzel rolls
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maybe some things are better left to the imagination. And who knows? Maybe you'll turn into Combo Man