Kraft Bagel-Ful Not So Unique?

On Thursday, I wrote about a new Kraft product called the Bagel-Ful. It’s one of those “products of convenience” that no one realizes they need until someone starts advertising it to them. However, the uniqueness of the idea has definitely attracted some attention in the blogosphere, with both Serious Eats and Gothamist picking up the story.But perhaps this idea isn’t as unique as we originally thought? In the comments over at Gothamist, one individual points out a product called Bagel-ers, which upon closer examination, seems to be remarkably similar to the proposed Bagel-Ful.

Granted these Bagel-ers are not round, but rather in bar form. However, the concept and name are virtually identical to the proposed Bagel-Ful’s from Kraft (note: while there is no specific evidence of what shape the Kraft Bagel-Ful will take, there is also no indication so far that it will be anything but a normal bagel shape). Update: it appears that the product will be a bagel stick, not a full bagel, and is intended to be microwaved.

So are Bagel-ers popular? Is this an instance of Kraft trying to piggyback off of, or improve upon, the success of an existing product? Or did they have no idea this competing product existed? One would imagine the product development folks at Kraft had to have been aware of the existence of this competing product, so maybe they just think there is even more frozen bagels filled with cream cheese market share to go around?