String eliminated do to some bullshit about it being a choking hazard, or so they claim. I suspect it had more to do with maintaining the machine(s) that has to slit the cardboard and insert the string. Big savings in just pitching those and changing the die for the box cut to include a handle.
I noticed a couple weeks ago (when we bought a few boxes for old times sake) that they seem to have replaced their moulds/stamps for the cookies at some point. What passes for cookie animals now is fairly amorphous and only yields a distinctly recognizable animal about half of the time. When it does, the animals all have this vague Sloth (Goonies Sloth, not animal Sloth) air to them… as if Dali had been involved in commissioning the production machines. I think they changed the ingredients (or ingredient quality) or the recipe or something, as now the cookie rise is very uneven (accounting for at least some of the distortion).
In short, another fond memory from our collective childhood is best left to memory… what they’re cranking out now is not the same. 
