Oreos!

The Oreo cookie has been around since 1912. With increasingly few exceptions no one alive today knows what it’s like to live in a world without its delicious goodness. But any product that hangs around one-hundred-plus years tends to get taken for granted (I can’t remember the last time I had a Lifesavers, for example) so it’s no surprise that the fine people at Nabisco want to remind us that these little masterpieces are still sitting on our grocer’s shelves just waiting for us to enjoy them in all their chocolate-crème-chocolate wonder. How does NabiscoCorp do this? For the last couple-three years it’s been with a bit of theatrical grandstanding in the form of “limited edition” crazy flavored Oreos. It works, too. When they put out, say, Watermelon or Birthday Cake or Root Beer Float, news sources both reputable and otherwise can’t help but tell you all about it. It’s too weirdly fun not to. And all this free advertising results in sales. You read about it and you just have to try Caramel Apple or Candy Cane or even Candy Corn before they’re gone forever. And then you do and you realize that the original Oreo is perfect and every bite of that Frankenstein’s monster of a cookie you’re chewing just makes you want a “real” Oreo in the worst possible way right-freaking-now. It’s some damned genius marketing is what it is.

This year alone has seen the release of the Red Velvet Cake Oreo and the S’mores Oreo but the newest flavor might be the most genius idea Oreo has had yet (if it doesn’t end up destroying the entire universe by its very existence, that is.) I’m talking about the Cookies and Crème Oreo. Think about this for a minute: “Cookies and Crème” is an ice cream flavor created to mimic the taste of the original Oreo cookie. So, basically, what they’re trying to sell us is an Oreo-flavored Oreo. Is this jumping the shark, a new level of viral advertising brilliance, or will this abomination collapse in on itself creating a reality-sucking black hole that’ll pull all of existence through a cookie-sized rip in the space-time continuum? I don’t know. I haven’t been able to get my hands on a bag to give them a try yet. All I’m sure of at this point is that they’re so strange that I haven’t even had a taste of what I’m absolutely positive won’t be as good as the original flavor and I still can’t help but tell you about them. Well played, Nabisco.

Until I can find this freak show and report on it, here’s a video I made for my friends on Facebook pre-JFJ launch about the S’mores Oreo when it came out a few weeks back. It isn’t exactly a review but I think you’ll get my point loud and clear.