Is there any greater event in the snacking world than the introduction of a new limited edition flavor of Oreo cookie? How about two new flavors? I have tasted Marshmallow Crispy and Cookie Dough Oreos, and my findings may surprise you.
Nabisco sent along these two new flavors in advance of Sunday's Grammy Awards broadcast, during which a special Oreo commercial will air. That commercial will contain a special hashtag that fans can tweet to expedite the first batch of these new flavors. I did not need to tweet anything in order to receive these, so my experience may be different from that of someone who spammed Twitter for hours on Sunday night. Being a cog in a massive marketing machine adds flavor.
I don't see why they need all the hype. These are two new limited edition Oreo flavors. That's all the marketing anyone really needs. Once they hit the shelves, snack aficionados will be drawn to store shelves like creme-starved cookie zombies. They will buy at least one bag of each. They will not look on the back to realize that a single serving is only two cookies. They don't need that crap.
What they need is these.
Cookie Dough Oreos
We heard you liked cookies, so we put cookies inside your cookies. That almost works, until you stop and think about it. Cookie dough is not cookies. Cookie dough is cookie potential. It is fetal cookie. What Nabisco has done here is stuffed a cookie with unborn cookie, effectively impregnating these Oreos.
Maybe don't stop and think about that.
It's not real cookie dough, of course — that would be cruel. Instead we have a molasses-heavy faux-dough (Baggins), packed with "chocolatey" chips.
Those "chocolatey" chips are immediately canceled out by the chocolate Oreo cookie, leaving only the faux-dough creme behind. That creme has a very strong flavor to it, which it needs to break through the chocolate barrier.
As Oreo cookies go, the Cookie Dough Oreo is a well-engineered product, but that engineering may have sapped some of its soul. Perhaps a vanilla cookie would have been the better choice.
I've not traditionally been a fan of the vanilla Oreo variants, but Nabisco makes great strides towards changing my mind with the second limited edition flavor.
Marshmallow Crispy Oreos
First off, these are not Rice Krispies Treats Oreos. Such a cookie would require unprecedented cooperation between Nabisco and Kellogg's, makers of both Rice Krispies cereal and keepers of the sacred Elven cookie tree of Keebler.
No, these are just Marshmallow Crispy Oreos, no relation. They probably went to Sam's Club and picked up one of those massive bags of generic cereal, the ones your dad always picks up because it tastes just the same, not taking into account the significant trauma cereal undergoes when not confined to colorful cardboard. Oh that dad.
So what we have here are vanilla cookies with marshmallow creme filled with generic rice cereal.
What a gorgeous cookie.
My favorite aspect of the Marshmallow Crispy Oreo, aside from the magnificent texture and mildly-overwhelming taste, is that Nabisco has taken a relatively harmless school lunch treat and made it completely horrible for you. Two of these cookies is 140 calories. That's a small brick of generic rice cereal, marshmallows and butter compressed into superdense form. Inside each one is a tiny star, waiting to be born. If they weren't so taste and texture-perfect, I'd call the space police.
It's lovely to be surprised by a cookie. It's even more lovely to be surprised by an Oreo cookie. One would have thought that after a century in production Nabisco would have run out of ideas, but here we are, on the verge of a new era in limited edition cookies.
I expected the same old story — chocolate Oreo wins, vanilla Oreo makes me very sad. That is not what happened this day. Today nostalgia won out over cookie pregnancy. The world may never be the same.
Well, until the limited time is up. Then it'll be about the same. Adjust your bombast accordingly.
Snacktaku is Kotaku's take on the wild and wonderful world of eating things, but not eating meals. Eating meals is for those with too much time on their hands. Past critiques can be found at the Snacktaku review archive.