Oreos! Oreos! Oreos!

Today, in the spirit of ‘you can observe a lot just by watching,’ we observe the humble Oreo.

You may recall that back in the dinosaur age, there were Oreos. A simple cookie, icing filled, suitable for munching, twisting (so that you could scrape the icing off the cookie with your teeth), and dunking in a glass of ice-cold milk (though I was never a fan of dunking – who wants a soggy Oreo?).

Somewhere between the P-Kg extinction and today, something terrible happened to Oreo’s.

This picture was taken a couple of days ago at my local grocery store.

There are 27 different varieties of “Oreos” on these shelves. TWENTY-SEVEN. I put the term “Oreo” in quotation marks because many of these cookies have not even a passing resemblance to an actual Oreo. Here’s just a few:

– Double stuff.
– Zero Sugar Double Stuff.
– Minis.
– Thins.
– Lemon Thins.
– Mint Thins.
– Birthday Cake.
– Peanut Butter.
– Cookie Dough.
– Toffee Crunch.
– Reese’s (which is heresy, in my book)
– Sugar Free.
– Gluten Free.
– Golden Gluten Free.
– Double Stuff Gluten Free.
– Regular Size.
– Family Size.
– Party Size.
– Fresh Stacks.
– Cakesters.
– Confetti Cakesters

First of all, there is no such thing as a “Golden Oreo.” If it’s ‘golden’, it’s not an Oreo. It might be Oreo shaped and Oreo sized, but it is NOT an Oreo.

If it is not Oreo flavored, it is not an Oreo. Lemon, mint, peanut butter, and other non-Oreo flavored perversions are, by definition, not Oreos. Call them “Oreo-inspired,” or “from the same company that brought you Oreos,” but don’t call it an Oreo. Because it’s not.

Don’t even contemplate a pumpkin spice obscenity, though I’m sure that’s been tried.

And what the hell is a ‘Cakester’?

Perhaps there’s some Marketing logic to this that is beyond my ken. But when did we get to a state where if one variety is good, 27 must be better? Why do I have to sort through literally 26 ‘not a regular bag of Oreo’s’ to find a regular bag of Oreo’s? Can some Marketing genius explain this to me?

… and get off my lawn.