It seems like every Serb is at least 50% made up of Plazma cookies, and they eat them in pretty much any confusing situation. They're literally everywhere here.

This story started back in the 1960s in Italy, where they were making (and still are) the original — Plasmon. Then Heinz bought the manufacturer and immediately laid off a bunch of employees. One of the people who lost his job was Petar Tutovac. He went back to Yugoslavia and, with government support, started a confectionery factory. No point in letting all that experience go to waste, right?

It turned out the Italian recipe was too expensive to produce, so they swapped out a ton of ingredients for cheaper alternatives and named the product Plazma (so nobody would catch on). But the Yugoslavs loved the result so much that generations have been happily buying it ever since.

Pretty soon the Italians got wind of it, and the lawsuits started. It all ended with a ban on exporting Plasma from the country. But then in the 90s, they figured out that if you export it under a different name, the ban doesn't apply. So that's exactly what they did. Look for Lane in your stores.

Or just come visit the Balkans — we've got cookies here :)