The Fig Newton (in Europe, a Fig Roll) is a soft, cake-like cookie (biscuit) filled with fig jam--despite a popular 1980s advertising slogan proclaiming, "it's not a cookie, it's a fig newton."

The Fig Newton was created in 1891 by the Kennedy Biscuit Company, a Massachusetts-based bakery. The company named many of their products after surrounding communities. The Fig Newton was named after nearby Newton, Massachusetts. It was first simply called the Newton, but the name was changed to Fig Newton in 1898.

The Kennedy Biscuit Company merged with other regional bakeries in 1898 to form the National Biscuit Company, which later became Nabisco. The cookie is now produced by Nabisco.

The machine that makes the cookie consists of a funnel within a funnel. The inner funnel contains the filling, and the outer funnel contains the dough. The machine expresses a long length of filled cookie, which is then baked, cut into smaller pieces, and packaged.

Nabisco makes several varieties of the Newton, including Strawberry, Cherries'n'Cheesecake, Caramel Apple, Raspberry, and Apple Newtons. The cookie is the company's number-three seller at more than a billion a year.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland and elsewhere, the fig variety are known as Fig Rolls, and would be considered a very traditional biscuit of the region (its origins in the US are not widely known). Jacobs Biscuits are the main purveyors, advertising with the slogan "How do they get the figs into the fig rolls?".

See also

• Nabisco