Tag: Nabisco

I can picture it now. Nabisco marketers frantically running up and down supermarket aisles, whispering to themselves in a panic:

“Gotta find another cookie idea! What haven’t we tried yet? Coffee? Rutabaga? Could we cram some creme between two Doritos-flavored cookies for the Super Bowl?”

A worried mother protects her children from the sweating marketer. She tells him he’s gone “crazy in the coconut.” He cracks an inspired smile and steals away into the night.

And so, Toasted Coconut Oreo Cookies were born. Rejecting my own brilliant idea for “Back to School PB&J Oreo Cookies,” Nabisco avoided the low-hanging fruit and reached higher up the palm tree.

To mimic the taste of a coconut creme pie, these cookies use Oreo’s vanilla-flavored Golden cookies instead of the chocolate. I’m guessing this choice angered all the Mounds bar lovers of the world. All four of them.

Because single stuf Oreo cookies are now the MySpace of the cookie aisle, Toasted Coconut Oreo are stuffed with a double helping of white creme that is specked with darker gold shavings of “real toasted coconut.” This creates a complex filling that looks like a petri dish of e. coconut specimens.

The package lacks the traditional lift-n-peel opening, so like Tom Hanks and his coconut in Castaway, I first tried to open this by throwing it against a wall and smashing it with a rock. After finally struggling it open, my nose was assaulted by vanilla and sugar.

Uh-oh. Any fellow Oreo connoisseur knows this is a bad omen. My fears came true when I bit into a cookie. The powerful Nilla Wafer taste of the cookie stomps out the creme’s subtle coconut flavor like a Vanilla Godzilla.

The faint coconut taste that attempts a futile rebellion against its Orwellian cookie overlord doesn’t give the distinct, tropical, and nutty experience you’d get from a Mounds or coconut scented soap, either. It’s closer to the cloying, heavily sugared richness of sweetened, shredded baking coconut.

The “coconuttiest” part is the creme’s texture, as there is a noticeable gritty chewiness. But any intended “toasted” notes are completely obscured by the pure, unadulterated confectioner’s sugar sweetness of the creme.

But I thought maybe my personal coconut-o-meter was just broken. So I asked a few taste testers — and by “asked,” I mean, “aggressively shoved cookies into the face of” — and got these responses:

“I don’t get it…it’s just a cookie?”

“It’s only like coconut when you lick the creme.”

“It tastes like a really sweet piña colada Dum-Dum sucker.”

So perhaps these divisive Oreo cookies just require a more sophisticated palette to bring out the coconut. If I ever fulfill my dream of hosting a ritzy lecture series called “Oreos & Orators,” I’ll be sure to accompany the heated discourse on the social commentary of Robinson Crusoe with these thematically appropriate coconut confections.

Overall, they taste like a plain vanilla creme pie that a coconut just happened to sneeze on. I found it pleasant, but since it’s easier to sell a used Toyota to a manatee than to recommend coconut to coconut haters, regular Golden Oreos are probably a safer, crowd pleasing option.

Meanwhile, those who like coconut will be left wanting a more pronounced taste. This leaves Toasted Coconut Oreo Cookies suspended in limbo. And not the fun, luau kind of limbo, either. I think Hunter S. Thompson said it best when he called them “too weird to live, too rare to die.”

Wait, what do you mean he’s been dead for 10 years?

Guess I’m gonna need to book a new orator for next month.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 150 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 80 milligrams of sodium, 15 milligrams of potassium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 12 grams of sugar, and less than 1 gram of protein.).)

Item: Limited Edition Toasted Coconut Oreo Cookies
Purchased Price: $2.99
Size: 10.7 oz
Purchased at: Meijer
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: All the goodness of Golden Oreo Cookies. Fun creme texture. Cookie kaiju. The under-appreciated genius of PB&J Oreo Cookies.
Cons: Little reason to buy them over Golden Oreo. Only a ghost of coconut toast. Non-luau limbos. The inevitability of nacho cheese-flavored Oreo.

These Limited Edition Brownie Batter Oreo Cookies are dark.

The creme in these cookies is so dark that the cookie looks like it’s made with three chocolate wafers. These cookies are so dark that I’m afraid to eat these outside at night because if I drop one, I don’t think I can find it before the five second rule goes into effect. The cookies are so dark that I’m surprised they’re not a Sith Lord named Darth Atter.

Unlike many of the new limited edition flavors this year, Nabisco didn’t do anything special with the crunchy wafers. There’s no food coloring (red velvet). There’s no special flavor (s’mores and key lime pie). It’s the standard chocolate Oreo we all know and we all love, except for the folks who made Hydrox, and in between the wafers is a brownie batter-flavored creme.

Before trying these, I wondered how different they would taste compared with Chocolate Oreo Cookies and their Jedi robe brown-colored creme. So I did something I rarely do. I bought a package of regular Chocolate Oreo. (Seriously, including the package I bought for this review, I believe I’ve only purchase Chocolate Oreo twice in my life.) And after trying the two, I have to say Brownie Batter Oreo is much better.

The extremely busy labcoat-wearing folks in the Nabisco test kitchens did a wonderful job with these cookies. The aroma that comes out of the package after opening it smells like brownie batter, and it also reminds me of the hot fudge on a McDonald’s sundae. The creme itself tastes like I’m risking the chance of getting salmonella by licking clean a wooden spoon covered with prepared brownie mix. It has a richer and fudgier flavor than the Chocolate Oreo creme. It’s delightful and I’d recommend licking it, if you’re into that.

But the chocolate wafers do get in the way of the brownie batter creme. When eaten whole, I taste more of the wafers than the creme. But it does get a bit more noticeable in the aftertaste. Of course, if you were to eat these in an unconventional way, with one of the wafers removed, the brownie batter flavor definitely stands out.

If you love licking brownie batter off a spoon or, if you’re civilized, run your finger along the spoon’s head to get some of that brownie batter goodness, I think you’ll love the flavor of these Limited Edition Brownie Batter Oreo Cookies.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 140 calories, 60 calories from fat, 6 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 100 milligrams of sodium, 70 milligrams of potassium, 20 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 13 grams of sugar, 1 gram of protein.)

Item: Limited Edition Brownie Batter Oreo Cookies
Purchased Price: N/A
Size: 10.7 oz.
Purchased at: N/A
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: That brownie batter creme is wonderful. Brownie batter flavor without the brownie batter hazards. Better than Chocolate Oreo. Better than Cookie Dough Oreo. Cream licking.
Cons: Wafers can get in the way of the creme’s flavor. Might be on the dark side of the Force. Forcing a weak Jedi reference into this review.

With all the s’mores-flavored products this time of year, I consider s’mores to be summer’s pumpkin spice. But because there are also a number of Key Lime Pie-flavored stuff, but not as much as s’mores, I like to think of Key Lime Pie as summer’s candy corn. So I guess it’s fitting that Nabisco released Limited Edition S’mores and Key Lime Pie Oreo Cookies during these warm months.

I’m no food scientist, but I assume it took oodles of money and bodies to create the graham flavored cookie that came with the S’mores Oreo. So I’m glad they were able to reuse that cookie for these Key Lime Pie Oreo and not let it sit unused like arenas and stadiums in many cities that have hosted the Summer Olympics, which also took oodles of money and bodies to create.

Along with the wafers, these Oreo come with an artificially flavored and Hulk-colored Key Lime creme. If you’re wondering if it’s the exact same Hulk-colored creme from last summer’s Limeade Oreo, I don’t know. Even though I’ve had them, to continue my streak of Oreo varieties consumed (I’m coming for you Guinness Book of World Records), I can’t exactly remember what they taste like. But I do remember I liked them a lot.

And I enjoyed these Oreo cookies as well.

But…I’m not 100 percent sold on the graham cracker and whether it complements the creme. With the Limeade Oreo Cookies, the Golden wafers were able to cut through the tartness of the lime. But the graham cookies don’t do that with these.

The Key Lime creme does artificial lime really well, but the strong tart flavor makes it difficult to recognize the graham flavored cookies when eating them whole. But it shouldn’t be surprising to me since I thought it was hard to get a hint of graham with the S’mores Oreo. Oh, and while I’m lightly bashing the graham cookie, I’d like to add that they aren’t as crunchy as a Golden Oreo and they look like Golden Oreo wafers with bad spray tans.

My disappointment with the graham cookie was so strong that I felt compelled to buy graham crackers and transplant the Key Lime creme on to them.

Much better.

Graham crackers have a mild flavor, but they do a better job at tempering the creme than the graham flavored cookies and I can taste the honey and graham-ness. My creme surgery job is what these Key Lime Pie Oreo Cookies should’ve tasted like. Maybe it’s just me but shouldn’t they be good enough that one would want to use them as a pie crust like regular Oreo cookies.

Look, so far I believe there hasn’t been a bad Oreo, and these Key Lime Pie Oreo Cookies are far from being bad, but I really wish those graham flavored cookies stood out more. Maybe Nabisco should use oodles of money and bodies to improve them.

(Nutrition Facts – 2 cookies – 150 calories, 60 calories from fat, 7 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 70 milligrams of sodium, 20 milligrams of potassium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of fiber, 12 grams of sugar, less than 1 gram of protein.)

Item: Nabisco Limited Edition Key Lime Pie Oreo Cookies
Purchased Price: $5.99
Size: 10.7 oz.
Purchased at: eBay
Rating: 6 out of 10
Pros: Far from being bad. Key Lime creme is pleasant. eBay sellers who don’t sell their limited edition Oreo cookies for $10 or more.
Cons: Hard to find. Graham flavored cookie need to be more graham-y because it’s hard to detect with the strong tart creme. Graham flavored cookie doesn’t seem to be as crunchy as original and Golden Oreo wafers.