You are no doubt familiar with the concept of brand extensions, being assaulted with these corporate exercises in desperation with every trip to the grocery store.
Oreo-maker Nabisco is a serial abuser of this approach to non-innovation, gobbling up massive amounts of precious supermarket real estate for the sake of eking out a few more drops from a century-old cash cow.
There are perfectly sound economic reasons for this, and I readily concede that many of the new varieties, particularly the early ones, made sense. For people who prefer more creme filling, Nabisco began offering Double Stuf. For those who remained dissatisfied with the creme-to-wafer ratio, Nabisco introduced Mega Stuf.
And for those who have totally abandoned any sense of personal dignity and proportion and secretly just want to grab a canister of frosting and a spoon and be done with it but still prefer to retain a patina of respectability, there's Most Stuf.
"Hey, look at me, I'm not a pig, I'm just a regular guy eating Oreos!"
No, you are not. You are eating frosting served on edible saucers.
Incidentally, I could not find these locally. I took that picture above about three years ago at a rest stop in the middle of Pennsylvania. Rest stops are the most common place you will find them, which makes sense given that road-weary sleep-deprived travelers typically have poor decision-making abilities.
(I managed to resist the temptation probably because I had already made several bad decisions at that point one of which almost certainly involved a whoopie pie.)
Regardless, at least these various iterations were still unmistakably Oreos, along with entries like Minis and the more recent Thins. Even some of their holiday editions, such as these "Joy" Oreos admit right up front that they just added food coloring and some holiday-themed designs, promising, "red-colored creme - same taste." I had these last December. They were fine, because they were Oreos.
But, like a junkie always looking for his next fix, Nabisco has become a veritable variant machine, punching out limited-edition Oreos at a dizzying rate.
In the rush to get new variants out to supermarkets lest consumers grow bored and try something genuinely innovative, things have gotten at times ridiculous, regrettable, bizarre and, every now and then, pretty good.
The varieties I have gathered here are not the most absurd Oreos that have ever been produced (I really wish I could have had the Swedish Fish ones) but they are the ones I could find locally and I think are representative of the current state of the Oreo world.
Before we get started, let me begin with an extensive FAQ:
Q: Did you taste test the Oreos eating them whole, or do you prefer splitting them apart?
A: Yes.
Q: What do you mean, yes?
A: I routinely do both, usually in the same sitting.
Q: You're a psychopath.
A: Yes, I am.
Q: Do you dunk?
A: No, I do not dunk. I don't dunk anything for that matter. That includes Oreos, doughnuts, and basketballs, the latter being less preference and more coordination. And height. And anything remotely related to agility.
The only thing I dunk are grilled cheese sandwiches in tomato soup because that is what the good Lord intended us to do.
Q: That's not in the Bible.
A: You have to read it in Aramaic. (I understand it was a translation issue.)
Q: I'm fluent in Aramaic and still don't see it.
A: How's your Hebrew?
Q: I don't know Hebrew.
A: In that case, it's in Hebrew.
Q: Is it cream, or crème?
A: Neither. Nabisco uses "creme," which has the advantage of not being a word so it can be anything they want it to be. This works out as the FDA would not allow them to use the word "cream" (or presumably the French "crème") as cows have about as much to do in the production of Oreos as they do at a PETA pot luck dinner.
Q: Was this a double-blind randomized study to ensure confirmation bias did not creep into your analysis thus ensuring the validity of the results?
A: No, I followed the more modern zero-blind preference-expressing predetermined approach used to study the safety and efficacy of the COVID vaccines and trans-affirming surgery on children.
Q: Did you test these all in one sitting?
A: No, I thought it was important to test them over time as perceptions can change with day, time, sequencing, and familiarity. Also, I did not want to die.
Q: Are you going to continue to insist on saying "Nabisco" without recognizing that the brand was purchased by Mondelēz International, Inc. years ago?
A: Yes, I am taking a principled stand on the increasing concentration of corporate power.
Q: You keep forgetting how to spell "Mondelēz," don't you?
A: ...Yes.
Q: How did you miss taste testing [INSERT OREO FLAVOR], it's my favorite one!
A: Because I hate you.
Q: How did you miss taste testing [INSERT OREO FLAVOR], it's my daughter's favorite one!
A: Because I hate your daughter, too.
Q: How could you possibly like/dislike [INSERT OREO FLAVOR]. Those are the worst/best Oreos ever!
A: I'm clearly deranged.
Q: I've never had Oreos, and never will. Is it okay if I still express an opinion about them with oddly maniacal passion?
A: Absolutely.
Q: Is it okay that I didn't read it because it was too long but decided instead to spend the time posting "TLDR" in the comments?
A: I'd be disappointed if you didn't.
Q: Why didn't you write about chocolate chip cookies instead? That would have been better.
A: You're right, that was a grave error on my part for which I apologize.
Q: I can't believe I wasted my time reading this.
A: Neither can I.
Q: You should make your own homemade Oreos, they are a thousand times better and you don't have to give your money to a corporation that probably supports things to which I object. Here is an easy 42-step Keto recipe.
A: Thank you, I will be sure to make my own Oreos from now on.
I also drafted my teenage son to help with the study which turned out to be not remotely difficult unlike every other thing I ask him to do, like take out the garbage, put his clothes in the hamper, and bathe regularly.
Me: I need you to help me with a piece I'm writing on Oreos.
Son: What do I have to do?
Me: Eat Oreos.
Son: You're asking me to eat Oreos?
Me: Yes.
He volunteered.
I'm going to start with the Space Dunk Oreos, as they have been the most heavily promoted variant I've seen in a while and one of the oddest. From there, I will proceed in an order best described as "pure whimsy." At the end, we'll choose our most and least favorites, and everything in-between.
Space Dunk
These are a bizarre entry in that I could not, and still cannot, fathom what the point of the marketing is. They were definitely clearing shelf space for these guys, and hyping up the promotion, but what's the tie-in? A new Looney Tunes Space Jam movie? Some viral video game with which I am unfamiliar?
Nope, the marketing spiel is a mess of largely random space-themed things, like they couldn't settle on any single idea so just adopted them all. The website they created for the Oreo is a mess as well, with QR codes you can scan with your smart phone to play Space Dunk games, a VR experience, and a sweepstakes you can enter (more on that in a moment) all presented as a hyperbolic cookie spacetacular!
These space inspired OREO cookies will make a great addition to your Space themed parties, Space birthday celebrations, as stellar sweet treats during movie night or for simply enjoying as home or office snacks.
Okay, I guess. I mean, I remember when the space race captured the imagination of a generation in the ‘60s, but it's not like Elon Musk struggling to duplicate Sputnik 67 years too late and NASA crashing lunar landers like an Uber Eats driver late for a delivery is exactly setting the world on fire.
That would be the Japanese.
As for the games, the VR experience required access to my phone camera, so, no. The smart phone game was like every other smart phone game, you try to avoid hazards and aim for rewards, in this case, Oreo Space Dunk cookies
As it turns out, the sweepstakes appears to be the big tie-in, even though you kind of have to dig a bit to find it. This is how the New York Post reported it.
Yes, the Space Dunk Oreos offers you a chance to win a trip to space!!
In a balloon.
Spaceship Neptune is lifted to space by our SpaceBalloon,...
I'm sorry, but "SpaceBalloon" sounds like the premise of a madcap comedy adventure starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.
...propelled by renewable hydrogen, with no rockets and none of the associated carbon footprint.
"Renewable" hydrogen. Yes, to assuage the guilt of the wealthy who can blow $125,000 on a six-hour trip, the SpaceBalloon is "the world's only carbon-neutral ship."
Because as we all know, manufacturing things doesn't create any carbon, nor does running the ocean-going vessel that launches and retrieves the craft.
Rather than blasting off, we rise slowly at 12mph, making the experience accessible to anyone medically fit to fly with a commercial airline.
The rising slowly part would not be my principle concern. That would be the falling quickly part.
But, we are assured it is perfectly safe!
The chutes can take over for our primary systems seamlessly and instantaneously in the event of a contingency, ensuring a safe landing. This kind of parachute has been used by space-faring agencies on more than a thousand flights over decades with a 100 percent success rate.
Our balloon is proven technology, used for decades already by our team on missions with NASA and other government agencies to lift research telescopes and other heavy, sensitive instruments.
It has a 100% success rate!
With research telescopes, sensitive instruments, and other non-alive things that won't scream in terror as they plummet 18 miles to certain death.
I showed all this to my son, including the capsule.
He said it reminded him of something, told me to hold on a second, grabbed a laptop, and pulled up an image on the screen.
Oh. My.
"Strap on a balloon, and you have the same thing," he said.
Go 18 miles above the earth in a capsule giving off major OceanGate vibes tethered to an 18,000,000 cubic-foot balloon filled with combustible gas?
We did not enter the raffle.
Enough of this, let's eat some Oreos.
The Space Dunk Oreos consist of the iconic Oreo wafers with various space-like designs, a hole in the middle (allegedly a first for an Oreo) and "cosmic creme."
The creme is cosmic because it's… I don't know. The package excitedly asks, "What does Cosmic Creme taste like?
Marshmallows.
Kind of a let down and in any case it looks like something you special ordered for a gender reveal party.
The creme is very soft, softest I've found in an Oreo and squirts through the hole when you bit into it.
It's just not a great look.
It also separates cleanly and easily from the cookie, unlike the creme in a regular Oreo. I can literally peel just the creme off the wafers leaving little to no residue behind, giving the filling a plastic-like artificial quality. This is pretty common among the variants.
As for the marshmallow flavor, sure, I guess. Like so many laboratory-bred flavors, they do, kind of. Sort of.
The real star of the show, and I guess what makes it cosmic, are the Pop Rocks-like "popping candy" granules they added. My son thought they were "fun," but for me the texture was gritty like what happens when you try to eat lunch on the beach. I have many fond beach memories, from swaying palm trees to epic pick-up volleyball games, but having wind blow sand all over my meal is not among them.
As for nutrition, well, they're cookies.
I won't post this for every cookie that follows unless there is a material departure, like the Tiramisu Thins we'll be covering (yes, that is something that exists), as it's pretty uniform among these variants (about which I'll have something to say later).
Same goes for the ingredients. Just assume the normal horror show of highly processed mega-bakery products with a lot of extra artificial colors and flavors added, the colors being the major difference with regular Oreos.
The one departure here from all the other variants is that carbon dioxide is one of the ingredients, presumably for the popping candy.
Forget the carbon-neutral SpaceBalloon, these Oreos are veritable cookie carbon sinks!
You're welcome, planet earth.
Overall, I was not a fan mainly because of the gritty popping candy. Oreos rolls these out periodically, in fact, I had something very similar a couple years ago for the fourth of July.
Almost the same thing, save for white creme that you can't see in this picture. I didn't like the popping rocks then, and I still don't.
But, my son liked them.
It's not clear how many other people do.
Caramel Coconut
Caramel coconut? I did not realize that was a thing.
When my son first tried these, he asked, "What am I eating? What is this? What is it supposed to be?!
"It's like a 6th grader," he said. "It doesn't know what it wants to be, so it tries to be everything and fails at being anything."
I was similarly thrown off and was not a fan. I went back to them a few days later and they started to grow on me. My son had the same experience, and put it well. "It's caramel," he said, "I like caramel."
Fair enough.
As for the coconut, it is in the form of crunchy coconut flakes. I was not getting a lot of flavor from them, and unlike the popping candy in the Space Dunk Oreos, these did not annoy me nearly so much.
Still, part of the beauty of the Oreo is the contrast between the crunch of the wafer and the smoothness of the creme. This interrupts that.
Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy finishing these off over time, but it's not like I'd seek them out again.
Hot Cocoa
Picture sitting down on a cold, dark, winter evening, your hands wrapped around a cup of hot chocolate as they slowly warm. You pause a moment, then take a sip allowing the hot creamy liquid to begin the job of gently warming your insides as well.
Now picture that, only it's really crunchy and room temperature.
Some things were simply never designed to take cookie form.
My son insisted these really did taste like hot chocolate. In fact, he said something along the lines of, "you have to be crazy not to think these taste like hot chocolate."
I was getting more artificial marshmallow than anything else, like chocolate Lucky Charms.
They weren't unpleasant, and I really wanted to like them as the concept appealed to me, but trying to make a crunchy cookie version a hot liquid was probably doomed from the start.
Once again, if you are a splitter, the creme peels off easily. No matter how many times I do it, it still disturbs me. Food should not behave like this.
This is how a normal Oreo splits.
And yes, this has been studied, by MIT scientists no less.
A few weeks later when I noticed my son had eaten quite a few of them I asked him what he still thought of them. He said he liked them but conceded that, "If I felt like a hot cup of cocoa, that's probably what I'm going to have."
On the plus side, like original Oreos, these have no artificial colors, so they have that going for them. Then again, you might as well just have the original at that point.
Add this one to the novelty category.
Lemon
Here's the biggest problem with these:
They aren't Oreos.
I don't care what the package says, and would say the same thing about Golden Oreos.
They aren't the same thing.
An Oreo has to be more than just a sandwich cream cookie, otherwise everything is an Oreo, from Moon Pies to Nutter Butters to Hydrox. (And yes, I know Hydrox were first, but so was Duryea and you don't exactly see those every day either.)
I should note here that I will bend this rule to the breaking point, but hopefully not beyond. This is a hill I will die on. A hill made up of Oreos!
Great, now I'm hungry.
In any case, why did I include these in my taste test?
Partly because I wanted an excuse to go on a rant and my wife is tired of listening to me.
And partly because I really like lemon cookies. Lemon anything, really. Lemon poppy seed muffins, lemon meringue pie, lemon squares, lemon scented Pledge which I am informed is not technically edible.
Technically.
In any case, these are a very good execution of the lemon creme sandwich cookie genre and had Nabisco come out with them absent the Oreo name, I'd be more interested. Would that have been a smart business decision? No, of course not. I'm sure they make a mint on these leveraging the Oreo brand at very little marginal cost. But it would have been a moral decision. A big, dumb, money-losing moral decision.
As for my son, he hated them, refused even to try them, but this was less a stand on principle than a stand on taste. He doesn't like lemon-flavored things.
I need to get a paternity test.
Birthday Cake
My old nemesis, birthday cake flavor.
These were, on first taste, borderline inedible. My son literally refused to finish his. "I might have to turn in my two-weeks notice as your lab partner," he said, as he handed it back to me one bite later:
While I could finish mine, and his leftover, I did not particularly enjoy them. Kind of fun to look at with their "rainbow sprinkles" but that's about it.
I have chronicled the hazards of "birthday cake flavor" in things that are not birthday cake before. It always ends up tasting like the chemical concoction that it is. These were no better.
I've gone back and tried them several times, in part because one of my son's friends who was visiting liked them. I don't, and this is one package that is lingering in our cupboard, largely uneaten.
On the plus side, these could be a handy substitute for busy parents who don't have time to bake an actual birthday cake, provided those parents hate their children and enjoy watching them cry.
Dark Chocolate
These were really good, but are they truly an Oreo?
Well...
The magic of Oreos, the real genius, was the double contrast between the crunchy bitterness of the dark-chocolate wafers and the sweet creaminess of the filling.
Crunchy-creamy and bitter-sweet. (See what I did there?)
These do away with an important element of the contrast leaving a certain mundane uniformity to the cookie.
Of course, the creme is still plenty sweet. It's also plenty plentiful (original Oreo on the bottom.)
In fact, you realize pretty quickly that these variants, most anyway, are actually Double Stuf (on the bottom).
Did I weigh the creme?
You know that I did, largely inspired by this lunatic/hero who weighed all the Stuf-variants (with slightly different results from mine).
And that is why these variants clock in at 140 to 150 calories for two cookies vs. 160 calories for three original Oreos. Double Stuff is 140 calories for two as well.
All that aside, both my son and I really liked these. Are they true Oreos? At least they have the iconic chocolate wafers, so they get a pass from me.
Incidentally, I had to buy another package to complete my taste test as my wife ended up putting all the ones in the first package in my son's lunch.
Well, not all at once.
I don't think...
Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie
A lot of times, flavors like these, specifically the addition of "Pie" to the name is merely to add some novelty to what is basically a very common flavor combination, in this case, chocolate and peanut butter. Think "French vanilla" and "country apple."
However, these Oreos boast "graham-flavored cookies" thus lending a veneer of credibility to the pie claim, plus a pie with a creamy filling and crunchy crust should translate well into a sandwich creme cookie.
It all looks good on paper, like a Ron DeSantis presidential campaign, but in the end these things always come down to execution, and this is an unfortunate miss.
Snack makers have been making graham-flavored cookies for decades, including graham crackers. It's not hard. It's a great and well-understood flavor.
And yet these Oreo wafers have but the slightest hint of graham, as if they were not fully committed to the idea and so you ultimately end up with a Golden Oreo with chocolate and peanut butter.
If anything should work, it's combining chocolate and peanut butter. The iconic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup built its own extended-universe empire on it.
And yet, it's just a big miss. This particular peanut butter creme, together with this particular chocolate creme, don't play well together. It's almost jarring, because you so much want them to get along. My son thought they were odd as well, just not a very good cookie, at least taken as a whole.
On the other hand, deconstructing the cookie yields both a decent chocolate creme cookie and a decent peanut butter cookie. Of course, I shouldn't have to re-engineer an Oreo to make it taste half decent, but I've pretty much been doing that since I first tasted them. Plus, like so many of these variants, the creme easily (if disturbingly) separates from the cookie wafers with the added plus that they are side-by-side and not layered on top of each other making the flavors easy to divide.
So, if you are an Oreo splitter, that is, you always eat them this way, you might still enjoy them . The last one I had, shortly before completing this write-up, I enjoyed precisely because I split it apart and played with proportions and flavors. There are better cookies, and better Oreos, but these will not be unpleasant to finish.
Java Chip
This was a wholly pleasant surprise.
While not a go-to of mine, I've had java chip-types of ice cream before and this nails it.
I had mentioned earlier that certain flavors and experiences don't always translate well into cookie form. This does because ice cream and cookie creme, temperatures notwithstanding, are similar enough, and adding a cookie to it just makes it a kind of Sundae.
Plus, the flavors work. I really didn't want to like this one, I bought them because I found the thought of java chip Oreos to be comical. It may still be, but deliciously so. I didn't even mind the crunchy "chocolatety" chips in the creme as they just enhanced the whole experience rather than detracting from it. They ended up being one of my son's favorites as well.
Tiramisu Thins
I did not realize there were variants of Thins, so when I saw these, I had to add them to the taste test.
Tiramisu is an Italian dessert consisting of ladyfingers dipped in espresso, layered with a whipped mixture of eggs, sugar, and mascarpone cheese and layered with cocoa powder.
Other than sugar and cocoa, Tiramisu Oreos are NONE OF THESE THINGS. Certainly none that set "tiramisu" apart as a flavor profile.
And it tastes like it. Odd, off, just not right. My son and I both loved the Java Chip, which also has coffee flavor but this does not do it for me. My son actually liked them, while simultaneously conceding that they were weird. "Good weird," he said.
I just can't get over how very wrong they taste, no doubt the result of the chemistry acrobatics necessary to create something that vaguely resembled tiramisu.
On the plus side, they are thin!
So thin, they barely have enough depth to handle the typical Oreo embossed wafers.
Then again, four of these have only 140 calories.
By the way, and I did not know this, but should have, they now offer "Extra Stuf" Thins.
Of course they do.
Toffee Crunch
I had high hopes for these. I like toffee, and thought they could pull off the crunch just fine.
However, these were utterly forgettable. I am sitting here writing this having had some a few days ago and could not tell you what they tasted like.
In fact, hold on a second, I'm going to have another one right now.
There, I literally just took a bite, two in fact, and between the time it took me to put it down and return to the keyboard, I completely forgot what they tasted like.
My son had a similar impression. There is just nothing to these, neither good nor bad, just there. Like your mother-in-law, only with less judgment.
Black & White
I held off getting these for some time. I mean, I get it. Black and white. Best of both worlds, yadda yadda.
Oreos describe them like this.
These limited edition OREO cookies feature two Golden OREO vanilla wafers filled with side-by-side dark chocolate cake flavored creme and white cake flavored creme. They're an OREO twist on traditional Black and White Cookies which are mini cakes and have two kinds of frosting.
Okay, yeah.
They taste like... Golden Oreos with some chocolate. My son hated the aroma, but I thought they smelled exactly like Golden Oreos.
Like so many of these, they come apart easily.
The two sides overlap in a layering.
This yields a kind of yin-yang vibe.
Eastern mysticism aside, these do not have a reason to exist. I'll finish them, they aren't bad, but they aren't that good, either.
Dirt Cake
I remember Dirt Cake being a thing. My son said he had one at a birthday party when he was eight.
Someone at Nabisco should have killed this one in its crib.
The star of this show should be the gummy worms, crawling through dirt. It's not the dirt, it's the worms that makes it interesting. No one goes to SeaWorld to stare at an empty pool. Eliminate the worms, and you get this, a mediocre chocolate cookie with "gummy worm inspired sprinkles."
Inspired? You are not designing home decor here, you are baking a cookie.
My son and I were able to isolate the sprinkles to see if they had any flavor or any redeeming qualities at all.
They tasted like what I imagine glass would taste like if edible. Crunchy nothingness.
Double Stuf
I promised thirteen reviews in all. This is the thirteenth.
I've already touched on these a few times in this piece, but my bottom-line assessment is this:
They are Oreos with more creme.
You're welcome.
Cookies and Cream
What Oreos review would be complete without Pop-Tarts?
I feel like the question answers itself.
Okay, fine, these should be appearing later in a comprehensive-ish upcoming Pop-Tart review, but before I get off my soap box, I wanted to drive home a point once more:
These taste more like Oreos than most of the Oreos above.
Enough of that rant, let's evaluate these as simply cookies, regardless of whether they are called Oreos or not.
While my son and I had some stark disagreements, we both agree on the number one variant, and the dead last variant.
Best: Dark Chocolate
For the record, none of these are as good as the original, including the Double Stuf, so you can assume that is number one at all times, but my son said these came close, and I grudgingly agree. I will get these again. This is just a straight-up good cookie.
Worst: Birthday Cake
These are just bad. Yes, a friend of my son's liked them and I'm sure plenty of people do, but despite having been purchased early in our two-month taste-testing process, this is still the fullest package remaining.
Otherwise, we categorized them: Like, Meh, Don't Like. (The position in the categories is not a ranking but rather random.)
Like
Me:
- Dark Chocolate
- Java Chip
- Lemon
Son:
- Dark Chocolate
- Hot Cocoa
- Caramel Coconut
- Tiramisu
- Space Dunk
- Java Chip
Meh
Me:
- Caramel Coconut
- Hot Cocoa
- Black & White
Son:
- Black & White
- Toffee Crunch
- Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie
- Dirt Cake
Don't Like
Me:
- Birthday Cake
- Tiramisu
- Space Dunk
- Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie
- Toffee Crunch
- Dirt Cake
Son:
- Lemon
- Birthday Cake
Incidentally, when I asked my son to categorize the Oreos, for Birthday Cake he texted:
ABSOLUTELY NOT NEVER AGAIN.
He felt strongly about those.
Some takeaways:
These variants are intended to draw attention to the brand and sell more Oreos, including the originals.
In that sense, it's mission accomplished.
Overall, my son liked these more than I did. Given he is presumably more the target market, Nabisco is doing it right.
Variety is fun, and I enjoyed trying these, but far too many are mediocre. Some, though, are real keepers, and that will vary from person to person, so one way or another, someone is enjoying these.
Sugar can solve a lot of problems. These are mostly Double Stuf sized. Mediocre? Hey, at least it's sweet!
Finally, before I leave you, should you ever find yourself with a dozen packages of Oreos in your house, first, question the life decisions that brought you to that point, and second, have some fun mixing and matching.
Here, I scraped the icing off three Tiramisu Oreos and placed it on the Dark Chocolate wafers.
Remember what I said above about sugar solving a lot of problems. They still have an odd flavor, but oh, all that sugar!
How about Space Dunk on Graham-flavored cookies?
That was pretty bad.
Or, throw a layer of Java Chip cream on a Dark Chocolate Oreo.
Not bad at all!
I also put the Chocolate Peanut Butter creme on a regular wafer which improved it.
