They Are What We Thought They Were
When we brought the new Cookies & Creme Oreos into Food Kingdom studios, everybody who saw them had the same reaction: "Oreo-flavored Oreos? What's the point of that?" After all, wouldn't an Oreo-flavored Oreo, just taste like...a regular Oreo? Ah, but we here at the Food Kingdom held out hope that maybe there was something more to it. Maybe there's something about the way the cookies and creme mesh together in Cookies & Creme-themed desserts, some mystical transformation that happens therein, that can't be captured in the original cookie itself, and maybe that mystical essence has been imported back into the original, like an injection of magical Cookies & Creme stem cells that would rejuvenate the tired original and make it taste more truly like itself than itself. But no. Cookies & Creme Oreos are not even the Turduckens of cookies. They just taste like Oreos with Oreos lurking inside them.
Are They Different in Any Way?
This isn't to say that these cookies are absolutely identical to regular Oreos. There is more "stuff" inside and they have introduced little flecks of chocolate wafer into the creme. Indeed, if you smear some off your finger and smooth it between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, you can even feel the texture of these little cookie bits, still crispy inside their carrier current of sweetened fat. Unless you're a little eccentric, though, you're not eating just the inside of these cookies; you're eating the whole thing, at which point the exercise of pre-blending cookie and creme inside the filling becomes pointless. What Nabisco has done for the customer here is something they could easily have done for themselves -- remove the creme, take a little bite of wafer, chew it a bit, and then stuff it back inside. If you're hungry for this sensation and are willing to pay 30% more for the privilege of having it done for you, you now have yourself a product.
So Why Are They Messing With Our Heads?
There are lots of good reasons that Nabisco keeps releasing novelty Oreo flavors: new and allegedly different flavors keep the brand in the spotlight, generating plenty of buzz and word-of-mouth advertising. Also the company can charge a premium for the limited-edition flavors. The artificial scarcity created by their limited-time availability makes people willing to pay the same price for fewer cookies in a smaller package, even though these temporary flavors can't plausibly cost any more to manufacture.
Conclusions
I will confess that if you try really really hard, close your eyes, tell yourself that these don't taste like Oreos but like Oreo Ice Cream, and if you make an effort to chew slowly and let the creme filling melt in your mouth, you can kind of sort of convince yourself that you're tasting the echo of that frozen treat. But that's playing the marketers' game, allying your imagination to their powers of suggestion for the sake of producer profit, but not consumer surplus. Remember, "Key Lime Pie" yogurt is just lime yogurt, "Strawberry Shortcake" chewing gum is just strawberry gum. And "Cookies and Creme" Oreos? It's just plain old Oreos, all the way down.
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When we brought the new Cookies & Creme Oreos into Food Kingdom studios, everybody who saw them had the same reaction: "Oreo-flavored Oreos? What's the point of that?" After all, wouldn't an Oreo-flavored Oreo, just taste like...a regular Oreo? Ah, but we here at the Food Kingdom held out hope that maybe there was something more to it. Maybe there's something about the way the cookies and creme mesh together in Cookies & Creme-themed desserts, some mystical transformation that happens therein, that can't be captured in the original cookie itself, and maybe that mystical essence has been imported back into the original, like an injection of magical Cookies & Creme stem cells that would rejuvenate the tired original and make it taste more truly like itself than itself. But no. Cookies & Creme Oreos are not even the Turduckens of cookies. They just taste like Oreos with Oreos lurking inside them.
 |
| Clever packaging attempts to disguise the banality of its contents by suggesting they'll taste like Cookies & Creme ice cream. But it's far easier to put cookies into ice cream than to bring the taste of ice cream into a cookie. |
This isn't to say that these cookies are absolutely identical to regular Oreos. There is more "stuff" inside and they have introduced little flecks of chocolate wafer into the creme. Indeed, if you smear some off your finger and smooth it between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, you can even feel the texture of these little cookie bits, still crispy inside their carrier current of sweetened fat. Unless you're a little eccentric, though, you're not eating just the inside of these cookies; you're eating the whole thing, at which point the exercise of pre-blending cookie and creme inside the filling becomes pointless. What Nabisco has done for the customer here is something they could easily have done for themselves -- remove the creme, take a little bite of wafer, chew it a bit, and then stuff it back inside. If you're hungry for this sensation and are willing to pay 30% more for the privilege of having it done for you, you now have yourself a product.
 |
| A close view shows that there is more creme inside than in a regular Oreo, perhaps to suggest an affinity with Cookies & Creme ice cream. In reality, though, these are just Double Stuff (or perhaps 1.5 Stuff) Oreos with a small cosmetic difference. |
There are lots of good reasons that Nabisco keeps releasing novelty Oreo flavors: new and allegedly different flavors keep the brand in the spotlight, generating plenty of buzz and word-of-mouth advertising. Also the company can charge a premium for the limited-edition flavors. The artificial scarcity created by their limited-time availability makes people willing to pay the same price for fewer cookies in a smaller package, even though these temporary flavors can't plausibly cost any more to manufacture.
Conclusions
I will confess that if you try really really hard, close your eyes, tell yourself that these don't taste like Oreos but like Oreo Ice Cream, and if you make an effort to chew slowly and let the creme filling melt in your mouth, you can kind of sort of convince yourself that you're tasting the echo of that frozen treat. But that's playing the marketers' game, allying your imagination to their powers of suggestion for the sake of producer profit, but not consumer surplus. Remember, "Key Lime Pie" yogurt is just lime yogurt, "Strawberry Shortcake" chewing gum is just strawberry gum. And "Cookies and Creme" Oreos? It's just plain old Oreos, all the way down.
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