You know how it is: You're on a long road trip, you're tired and achy, so you pull over at a convenience store and decide to grab a snack to keep you going.
Sometimes it's a bag of honey roasted peanuts, and sometimes it's every ill-conceived Oreo corporate brand extension money grab you could lay your hands on including one your own son had passed on once because "it would be awful."
(Probably happens all the time.)
Given that I was just starting to get over an excruciating bout of sciatica (my first, how exciting!) plus I was driving to a funeral, I was particularly well primed for some personal dietary mayhem and so chose the latter.
And so, 20 minutes, $16.64, and a series of unfortunate choices later, I had myself my own nutritional Chernobyl consisting of the following:
I had been briefly tempted to do the same kind of test with Reese's Peanut Butter Cup products. However, the place I stopped at was a Rutter's, part of a regional chain of convenience stores concentrated in central PA, and apparently it has some kind of arrangement with Reese's making this impractical. I know this after I struck up a conversation with the woman restocking the shelves.
"There sure are a lot of Reese's products here," I observed as I stepped back to allow her to do her work. She then told me about the arrangement, the specifics of which were unclear, and then went on about how often she has to restock these items, and finally let loose that she was "so sick and tired of chocolate and peanut butter."
"Bet you never thought you'd say that before," I suggested.
"No," she replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.
Here is what she was restocking.
And this was just one section. They were all over the place, everywhere you looked. They jammed the rack below next to the tea bags like they were running out of ideas on where to put them.
(Sure, why not? Who doesn't want Reese's Sticks with their chamomile tea?)
Were I to attempt to try "every misguided Reese's offshoot product I could find at a roadside convenience store," I would be both broke and dead.
Besides, I like Oreos and have done a fair amount of "research" on them and so it just felt right, and by "right" I mean, "less deadly."
Full disclosure: There were a few things I passed on, but not because they were too awful to get, oh no, I had already crossed that Rubicon. It was because they either didn't make practical sense, or didn't fit my criteria.
For example, Oreo ice cream. They had some pints, but I had four hours ahead of me, and wasn't planning to eat the full contents of everything I bought because, again, I'd be dead.
I also skipped the regular Oreos, including the Golden variety.
We all know what those taste like. I wanted to go for the more novel stuff, the stuff they use to prey on weary befuddled travelers looking to make bad decisions. I bent the rules a bit for the Oreo Minis in part because I'd never had them and was curious if their Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Brand treatment altered them in some fundamental manner.
That left me with six selections, a manageable amount. There are certainly plenty of Oreo products they did not have at this particular convenience store, but these struck me as broadly representative of Oreo parent Mondelez's single-minded commitment to squeeze every single penny they could from a 112-year-old sandwich cookie. Also, the utter randomness of my selection, limited by what they had in stock, appealed to me. This was a real-world test.
As some of you know from my previous pieces, I'm not crazy about brand extensions, finding most to be entirely unnecessary, some downright awful, and only a handful actually worth buying again, and Oreos are no exception.
But here's the thing: You don't know which is which beforehand.
Of this pile of misbegotten Oreo-like products, expectations were blown, in both directions.
Also, my son, who I had try some of these after I had returned, had a polar opposite opinion on at least one. (I will insert his observations as appropriate.)
What follows is my gastronomic adventure, in the order I consumed them, as I drove wearily down the road along with some follow-ups when I got home:
Oreo Iced Coffee
I started with the Oreo Iced Coffee, or more precisely, the International Delight Oreo iced coffee. Now, International Delight makes primarily coffee creamers, but not an Oreo one that I could find, so this was a coffee creamer company making an iced coffee out of an Oreo which made this a brand extension extension.
(Or a brand-brand extension.)
Maybe both.
As I had intimated earlier, I first learned of this Oreo iced coffee from my son, who had come across it on a trip with his mother. He called me to tell me about it after they had left the store.
Son: The store we were at had Oreo iced coffee.
Me: Did you get me one?
Son: No.
Me: Why not?!
Son: Because I thought it would be awful.
Me: Of course it would be awful. THAT'S WHY I WANT IT!
(It's like he just met me sometimes.)
In any case, this was my big chance.
I sent him a picture.
This was his response. 👇
I should note he's become quite the coffee connoisseur and can pull a mean espresso shot not to mention create an array of excellent coffee drinks. I believe this concoction actually offended his sensibilities.
No matter, it fit my criteria perfectly.
Given this was essentially a super meta witches' brew of marketing dreams and financial fantasies consisting of a cookie turned into a creamer, upscaled to a canned iced coffee, it was undeniably a recipe for disaster.
This one fully lived up, or down as the case may be, to my expectations and then some.
It's just like we dunked Oreo cookies in your iced coffee.
Yes it is just like that, only instead of iced coffee, it's Yoo-Hoo with a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar in it, and instead of having Oreo cookies, you don't have Oreo cookies.
This was seriously bad. I was jonesing for a caffeine fix, even if a small one, but I literally refused to drink more than half the can, if that .
When I got home the next day, I had my son try a sip. I asked him what he thought.
"It tastes just like an Oreo," he said. "Oh?" I responded. "If Oreos were bad," he followed up.
Fair enough.
I did notice, oddly, that it smelled like an Oreo. My son didn't think so, but it was unmistakable to me. Taste? No, not so much as a hint, just bland sugared watered down chocolate milk.
We poured out a small glass.
I had no idea when I was drinking it out of the can in my car, but why is the color so far off from what's on the can?
My son, being 14 and liking to do 14-year-old things, decided to pull a shot of espresso into it to see if he could make it drinkable. This was a shot drawn from high-quality fresh-roasted espresso-style beans, ground on the spot.
And yet, after he poured a half shot in what was a tiny little glass, the Oreo Delight swallowed it with ease, like a black hole of all that is good and right in the world and where, once flavor passes the event horizon, it disappears into oblivion forever.
As I write this, over a week later, there is still a quarter can left in the refrigerator.
Most Stuf
I touched on these, if only theoretically, in my last Oreo mega-review. I'm generally not a fan of excessive amounts of cream, sorry, "creme" a made-up word defined as "definitely not cream, please don't sue us."
Most Stuf is intended, as far as I know, to be the top of the creme-lover's food pyramid, the ultimate in Oreo excessiveness, assuming of course, that they aren't cooking up a "Mostest Stuf" Oreo to follow, presumably accompanied by a souvenir insulin pump.
First, let's address the amount of creme. I had linked an article in my last piece in which the author weighed the amount of creme in Oreos, finding regular Oreos with 3 grams, Double Stuf with 6 grams (so far so good), Mega Stuf with 11 grams (fine, "mega" is not precisely defined), and finally Most Stuf with 13 grams.
That last one was a bit of a puzzler. It looks like a lot more. Well, not as much as they want you to think. Compare the picture on the package with the actual cookie.
I had weighed a Double Stuf in my last piece, clocking it in at a little above 6 grams, so I weighed the Most Stuf once I got home.
At 13.8 grams, it's certainly a comparatively hefty helping, over four times the amount of a regular Oreo.
Regardless, the creme in these Oreo variants tend to be softer, so couple that with the amount, and you have a sandwich creme cookie that is wholly unsuitable for the task in that as soon as you take a bite, the things self destructs faster than Michael Cohen under cross examination.
The only useful purpose those wafers serve is to keep your hands from getting sticky, and barely that. This is definitely a cookie suitable only for splitting, and so not a great snack if you're driving.
As for overall taste, it's unmistakably an Oreo of course, and I like a sugar rush as much as the next guy, but it's just too much, and so overwhelms the chocolate wafers that they become a bit player in a movie they rightfully should be co-starring in. Think Heath Ledger and Christian Bale in The Dark Knight. Like that, only with more serious health consequences.
Peanut Butter Cakesters
I wrote a piece about the Oreo Cakester, original flavor, nearly two years ago.
The problem with the Oreo Cakester is that everything they did to make it more Oreo-like made it a mediocre whoopie pie, and everything they did to make it more whoopie pie-like made it a mediocre Oreo.
I figured I'd pick up the peanut butter this time to mix it up, and approached it with low expectations, fully anticipating disappointment.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to my snarkfest.
I liked it.
I think a lot of it had to do with not low expectations, but rather different expectations. I know there are peanut butter Oreos, but those aren't really Oreos as far as I'm concerned, so I wasn't expecting an Oreo.
With that in mind, I found these to be a perfectly competent take on what is in reality a mini whoopie pie, executed as a mass-produced shelf-stable commercial product. The cake part was fine, if still a little dry (like the last time) and the peanut butter filling was sufficiently peanut buttery with a nicely balanced sweetness.
Was it as good as a fresh whoopie pie, the kind you find at roadside farmer's stand or hole-in-the-wall bakery in some small town, the kind that that grow stale in about 36 hours?
No, of course not.
In fact, at my very next stop I purchased this to compare.
Now, this is decidedly not a fresh farmer's market whoopie pie. First of all, I purchased it in a part of part of Pennsylvania where the residents have a long-standing tradition of misspelling "whoopie pie" as "G-O-B."
Hence, that ridiculous "Gobbz" name, chosen only for it's ability to be successfully trademarked.
Second, while less mass-produced, it was still made at a large commercial bakery (contracted with Sheetz, another convenience store chain) and could stay fresh for a couple of weeks or so, so not an unreasonable comparison.
Was this better?
Yes, easily.
However, it also doesn't have the same shelf-life of the Cakester, which still had a month-and-a-half left on it when I purchased it.
If I didn't already have fairly dependable access to fresh whoopie pies (a guy at the local farmer's market brings them down from Amish country), these would be welcome in my cupboard for the occasional craving.
Brownie
Mostly edible mass-produced pre-packaged shelf-stable brownies have been more or less successfully produced for decades. Little Debbies, Entenmann's, and others have all managed that totally achievable feat.
In other words, it's not hard.
That was why I had the reasonable expectation that these would be perfectly fine. In fact, I was hungry, I did want some junk to eat, and this was my backup in case the other items were terrible.
I've even come across this maker before, an off-brand that began life supplying cut-rate snacks for vending machines, the classic captive audience. (It's not like you typically go out of your way to shop at a vending machine, you're usually at a vending machine because that is not just your last choice, but your only choice.) That said, they made competent versions of the basics, like mini doughnuts, fruit pies, and similar junk fare.
So, I unwrapped the Oreo Brownie expecting a serviceable if uninspiring execution of a brownie with a little Oreo twist.
That's not what I got.
What I got was a horror show of aroma, taste, and appearance. How do you get all three of those wrong? I mean, without doing it on purpose.
First the aroma. I typically like to get a whiff of food before I eat it, an old habit from New York where in my rather downtrodden neighborhood it wasn't so much a matter of if the chicken had salmonella, it was a matter of how much. Plus, I tend to consume leftovers right to the edge of food poisoning.
In any case, the Oreo Brownie definitely smelled like a brownie. Post-vomiting.
Seriously, I can't describe how awful this was and how anyone at Mrs. Freshley's is okay with this. Possibly the most off-putting aroma I've come across since walking into my son's bedroom.
Which reminds me, we need to have a talk.
I took a bite.
You know how some things taste a lot better than they smell?
This was not one of those things. It did taste a little better, but not enough to make me want to take more than one bite.
Okay, so they may smell and taste terrible, but what about appearance, what do the "crumbled Oreos" add? Some festivity to the fast-sinking brownie party I had hoped.
What were they going for here? This looks less like crumbled Oreo pieces and more like a layer of mold. You expect a rind on a fine aged cheese. You don't expect one on a brownie.
I later picked one of the Oreo pieces off to see if it really was an Oreo.
I think it was, but it was a soft, soggy, sad little thing.
When I got home, I asked my son to give them a try, imploring him to not to smell it first.
He smelled it first.
After that I had to ask him five times to try it, ending with something along the lines of, "man up, you wuss, and eat the brownie." He did, and then ran to rinse his mouth out.
Later in the day he sent me a text with this observation.
Yes, it is.
The Mrs. Frehley's web site makes big promises for these, but it's like reading a political manifesto of a madman in that a kind of wonder comes over you that anyone could be so very certain and enthusiastic, and yet so very, so obviously, wrong.
Make your snack time a celebration of chocolate with a Mrs. Freshley's® OREO® brownie. Rich, sweet and downright heavenly, our brownies are topped with a generous amount of OREO® cookie pieces. Grab a tall glass of cold milk and take your snack time to the next level!
Well, I have to admit it does "take your snack time to the next level," but I wouldn't be looking in a heavenly direction to find it.
Minis
There are two things you need to know about Oreo Minis.
- They're Oreos.
- They're mini.
That's pretty much it.
Definitely Oreos, no question, but really small. In fact when I got home I measured one against a nickel. (For you kids out there, back in my day, that was enough money to get you... okay, actually they were pretty worthless then, too.)
These are great for a road snack in that you can just pop them in your mouth, but if you are a splitter, you might find it like eating pistachios in the shell.
However, as a road snack, they're nearly perfect. Just toss a few in your mouth.
Sour Patch Kids
These were the ones I was most excited about in that I was certain they would provide me endless opportunities to make fun of them.
I hadn't even noticed them at first. When I want to check out, the cashier said, "Oh, all Oreos!" I said, "Yeah, I've got a theme going." The guy manning the other register glanced over and after looking over my pile noted, "You missed the Sour Patch Kids Oreos."
"There are Sour Patch Kids Oreos?" I asked excitedly.
He pointed to the display behind me. That made sense, catch the people checking out, possibly struggling with fatigue, cranky kids, and so suffering from a diminished capacity to differentiate between good and bad decisions. "Sure, go ahead, get the Sour Patch Kids Oreos," the weary dad hears someone saying in a voice much like his own before realizing in horror it was him..."
Me? I was on a mission. I walked over to the display and the Reese's woman was there straightening it up. "Well, at least it's not Reese's," I said. She mumbled something in agreement.
These were the last thing to try, and I tried to imagine how bad they'd be. Heck, the packaging was nauseating.
The aroma was unmistakably Sour Patch Kids, so in terms of a horror show, a pretty good start.
Then I took a bite. Leaving aside the fact that most all of these Double-Stuf-sized Oreo variants are too fat and soft to be eaten without the cookie falling apart in your hand, the taste was ... good?
Yes, good. I only ate one, but enjoyed it thoroughly finding the balance between the tartness of the Sour Patch Kids flavoring and the heavy sweetness of the Oreo creme to be largely spot-on. I like lemon Oreos for that same reason, but I might just like these more.
My son, in contrast, does not like lemon Oreos or lemon in general. I eventually got him to try a bite, but of course he hated it.
Overall, I consumed about 600 calories in junk sampling these over the course of maybe two hours. (Had I finished the contents of each package, that would have been 2,110 calories.) I tried everything again when I got home to ensure test validity and my opinions have not changed.
Aside from the observations above a few additional things to note (because this article isn't long enough):
- Each Mega Stuf Oreo is 110 calories, more than twice the 53.3 calories found in an original Oreo and almost as much as a single Cakester which clocks in at 130.
- Eating a lot of junk in a short period of time in lieu of a proper lunch makes you feel like crap.
- Imagine being Mr. Freshley and having to come home every night after a long day at work to a pan of fresh baked brownies.
- Speaking of which, the two worst entries out of the six were both licensed deals in which some other company was responsible for the product, in this case, International Delight and Mrs. Freshley's. While I'm surprised Oreo would sign off on these two reputation-damaging products, it does suggest that the folks at Oreo's parent Mondelez take at least some care in the products for which they are solely responsible.
- I still, finishing this piece nearly two weeks on, have a quarter can of that Oreo Iced Coffee. I will drink the rest today, but I'm going to make an unpleasant face doing it which my dog will interpret as "it's time to eat," although that is his default position on every face I make. Also every gesture, every sound and also when I'm perfectly still. And sometimes sleeping.
- I don't know if I'd ever buy an entire package of Sour Patch Kids Oreos, that would be ... a lot. But every now and then when I'm on the road and in the mood, definitely.
Let me know the worst Oreo you ever had in the comments. For me, the Mrs. Freshley's Brownies took that dubious crown from the birthday cake Oreos, which I did not think possible.
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