Is Coke on coke?

I saw a picture of this online, and assumed it was just some more AI nonsense. Surely no one would think to make a soft drink using a cookie flavor, right? That's just...

And here we are. (Please ignore the yellow dog toy in the photo -- all our dogs have ignored it already.)

Yep, Oreo Coca-Cola is a real thing, and man does it sound like a bad idea. But it gets worse! As part of their Besties promotion, for a limited time we have Oreo flavored Coke AND Coke flavored Oreos. What brave new world blah blah blah. 

So the gang at Mondelēz is all in on this with Coke. There's a sweepstakes involved, a trip for your best friend and you to go to London, because -- well, I don't know why London. Because they like Coke and Oreos there, too? (Since when did Oreos become best friends with Coke? What happened to Oreos and Milk? Did they have a fight? How much sugar can you consume in one snack, anyway? Why not throw in a Milky Way too? I have questions.)

I mentioned all this to my wife, and while she thought the Coke Oreos might be okay, the Oreo Coke would probably be poor. So we did a taste test on the soda to find out. 

Our verdict: You can just barely make out a hints of chocolate and Oreo creme in the soda. I was impressed the flavor was there at all. Aside from that, it just makes a sweet drink a little sweeter. There seems to be an odd aftertaste in the Zero version that I've not noticed before in Coke Zero. So, a novelty act, and not one that improves the product. 

Will we try the Coke Oreos? I don't know. There's just the two of us here right now, not counting the dog, and a box of dicey cookies is a big investment for two adults, calorically speaking. You can bet you'll hear about it in this space if we do. Have you tried either of these products? 

And what mashups would YOU like to see? Coke and Entenmann's Coffee Cake? RC and Cap'n Crunch? Pepsi and King Oscar Sardines? Let your taste bud imagination roam free. Although maybe Pepsi and King Oscar is only found in A Fridge Too Far. 

Pi r square, Oreo are round.

As I promised yesterday, we're reviewing another strange, mutant strain of Oreo cookie today. Last week's Rocky Road Trip came out all right, at least by my reckoning, but what the galloping gourmet is this?

In time for America's favorite pie season -- roughly June to Thanksgiving -- we have Apple Pie Oreos, courtesy of Nabisco and its parent company, Mondelēz. The Apple Pie Oreo has artificially flavored apple pie filling with a graham flavored cookie. The cookie is also presumably artificially flavored; it does not actually taste like health-promoting minister Sylvester Graham, who was too busy spinning in his grave to comment.

Has Oreo finally gone a bridge too far with this one? The defining characteristics of the Oreo are the chocolate cookie and the vanilla-ish cream filling. Other Oreos of various incarnations generally have chocolate or vanilla in there somewhere -- chocolate cookie, chocolate filling, vanilla cookie, or vanilla filling -- but I think this may be the first I've tried that completely eschews both vanilla and chocolate. The question then is, is this really an Oreo?

Think about it: If it was a peanut-butter flavored cookie with peanut butter filling, and round, it could call itself an Oreo but we would know it was really just a round Nutter Butter. If it were an open-faced Oreo with a blob of marshmallow covered in fudge it would not be an Oreo, it would be a Mallomar. And yet this, and the Blueberry Pie Oreo, and the Strawberry Shortcake Oreo, and the possible-grounds-for-investigation-by-child-services-breakfast-police Waffles & Syrup Oreo, all pass for Oreos. Shouldn't Nabisco just have introduced these insane products as new cookies?

I'm sure there are sound marketing reasons for it -- shelf space, brand recognition, whatever. Slap "Oreo" on it and you don't even have to advertise; people will be looking in the Oreo section of the cookie aisle and wham! Red Velvet Oreos! But how far away from the original Oreo can you get and still be an Oreo?

Who knows? It's like one of those how-many-licks on the Tootsie Pop conundrums. The world may never know.

I brought this package to an informal meeting that was attended by a dozen people. I had one cookie before the meeting started. It tasted like apple pie. The graham cookie was less convincing, but definitely had hints of graham cracker, enough to make me think: Who uses a graham cracker crust for apple pie? No one.

At the end of the meeting I went to see if I could snag another and they were gone. This was not the only snack on the table, but it was the only one that had been consumed. These Oreos had been scoffed down with alacrity. The package was in the trash.

If we're going to keep behaving like that, Nabisco has every motivation to keep cranking the wacky Oreo flavors out. Look for New York Cheesecake Oreos, Saltwater Taffy Oreos, Alabama Slammer Oreos, Circus Peanut Oreos, Pizza Oreos, Hot Pockets Oreos (and Oreo Hot Pockets), Pop-Tart Oreos (and Oreo Pop-Tarts -- oops, too late), Green Bean Casserole Oreos, BBQ Oreos, and White Castle Oreos. There's no stopping them now.

The summer of Oreos.

As we proceed through summer, it appears that Nabisco, or its parent company with the meaningless and lousy name Mondelēz, has lost its mind. Specifically as regards Oreos, which some call the world's greatest store-bought cookie. 

Blueberry Pie Oreos, which actually came out last year, have returned. If it has a pie crust cookie and blueberry flavored filling, is it really still an Oreo? And then there are the "Firework" Oreos, a standard Oreo that has something like Pop Rocks in the filling to pop off in your mouth. 

However, I was at a gathering last week and found that the Nabisco people have partnered with family fave Dunkin' Donuts to create the Dunkin' Donuts Mocha Oreo. 

Nabisco, you have redeemed yourself.

As we know, Dunkin' Donuts frequently goes over the top with its bizarre and too-sweet doughnuts, but I want to tell you this cookie is just right. The chocolate Oreo cookies are unchanged, but the filling nails it. It is quite sweet -- sweeter than regular Oreo perhaps, but I didn't have a control cookie for the experiment -- with a good coffee flavor that is not phony and not burned-up Starbucksy. Blended together this is a great combination of chocolate, cream, and coffee, just what you'd want in a mocha beverage.

I've not been overwhelmed with other Dunkin' spinoffs like the Pop-Tarts. In fact, with Girl Scout cookie cereals and such there's entirely too much synergy in the supermarket for my taste. However, when they get one right I must applaud, and this Oreo variant has gotten it right. Bravo, Nabisco and Dunkin' Donuts.

I still think that Mondelēz sounds like a Spanish name for dry rot, though.

What's for breakfast?

Father's Day! They're going to whip up a nice breakfast for the old man, right? Let's see what tasty confections await us down at the breakfast table! Boy, I can't -- 

What the hell is this?

Sure enough, it's what you think it is -- General Mills has released two breakfast cereals based on the most popular varieties of Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints and Samoas (alias Caramel deLites). I spotted these in Walmart a few days ago. What kind of sad, sorry, cookie-inhaling fat bastard would be desperate enough to buy these?

So I bought the "Caramel Crunch" and tried it. Sure enough, the Internet's #1 cereal mentor, Mr. Breakfast, was already on the job, and I completely endorse his review:

The thing that makes Somoas cookies so good is coconut and gooey caramel lined with chocolate. By contrast, this cereal just looks like little cinnamon donuts. The flavor of caramel is there, but the coconut is so subtle that I'm still not sure if I just imagined it. There is no chocolate element to the cereal.... it still feels like General Mills is on their way to making a truly great caramel cereal one day, but this cereal is a stepping stone to get to that eventual product.

That was my feeling exactly. You really wouldn't know it was supposed to taste like a Samoa unless you saw the box. It doesn't mean that the cereal is bad, as it isn't -- crunchy, not preposterously sweet, caramelish -- but as a cereal version of the cookie it fails. (Mr. B says the Thin Mints cereal does a better job of approximating its cookie.)

Having had our cereal, what else is part of this complete breakfast, hmm? Waffles?

Almost two years ago to the day I investigated the Belgian Boys and found that they are a small outfit making these tasty Belgish treats. Tasty they are, especially the chocolate-covered liege wafel. The non-chocolate wafel has pearl sugar, which are delightful little droplets of hard sugar -- the chocolate ones have pearl sugar too, but it's kind of lost in the chocolate. These treats are like, if a standard waffle had a baby with a cookie. Like a pizzelle with a weight problem. As with the other Belgian Boys products, these are not quite really breakfast foods, though. Then again, neither are cookie-based cereals.

So all this sugar is getting to me; how about some nice healthy yogurt?

We've been following a lot of yogurt fads since Dannon stopped putting out its yogurt with those little cardboard lid discs. Mix-ins, Greek, Aussie, quark, lactose-free, whole milk... the yogurt aisle has grown to vast dimensions. But one thing Yoplait will keep doing is coming up with wacky flavors. Like root beer float.

This flavor is part of their Whips! line, which is yogurt whipped up to a creamy, almost whipped cream consistency. It looks like this:

You may note that that looks exactly like a scoop of ice cream does when it's been sitting in a glass of root beer for a while. Well played, Yoplait.

Here's the thing I find interesting: Hires, Barq's, Mug, and A&W root beer all use natural and artificial flavors, while Yoplait's root beer yogurt uses only natural flavors. Why is that? Why can't the guys who make actual root beer use all non-phony flavors? Are they scared of something? Is there some magic root beer ingredient that will degenerate after the shelf life of a cup of yogurt but shorten the shelf life of bottled soda? We want the truth, soda people. I suggest appointing a special prosecutor.

Well, after that meal you really ought to brush your teeth -- but if you can't for some reason, like you're at a funeral, maybe you could pop one of these:

I was surprised to see the labeling change in Breath Savers, a line of mints by Hershey that has always tried to get its packaging to make you think of whooshing through a frosty landscape, like you're on skis.

Whoosh!

The new font is attractive and completely counter to what has gone before. Looks like Century Schoolbook, or a reasonable facsimile. It caught my eye, which the old packaging never did. I suppose that's the point -- that, and as a means of focusing on the "breath" part, the way Certs (by Mondelēz) always has.

The problem for me is that Certs always tasted good and Breath Savers always tasted lame. Why? Sugar. Nowhere does fake sugar taste more fake than in candy. Breath Savers and other sugarless candies have always tasted like plastic to me. Some are better than others; the sugarless Werther's are not quite as obviously artificial. But they don't freshen your breath. And if you're going to freshen your breath after eating, why use a sugary candy and rot your teeth?

Well, that's enough Father's Day breakfast for me; back to bed! See you Monday!

Snacks are weird.

It's true---people will try to explain away differences in cultures for many things, including such minor considerations as politics, religion, and class distinctions, but when it comes to snack food, we're appalled at what the other guy eats. I think we're even willing to cut entrees some slack, since you have to eat something and maybe locusts were all there was (for example). But you eat snacks when you're not starving. You eat that stuff on purpose. Therein lies the horror.

When Americans go someplace truly foreign, they will either reel with horror from what the people snack on or will pretend that they've not only come to like it, they're something of an expert. Yeah, even the locals defer to my taste in fried tortoise testicles. I've got a rep, I guess.

Even within our own nation, other foods surprise me. I've never warmed to grits, or even a single grit. And I'd only heard whispers of things like this: 

Although the product has been around for fifty years, and is known internationally, you could not find these up north until recently, or at least I couldn't. Never ate a thing "in a biskit." Chicken-flavored snacks are like something you'd use to train the dachshund. But no, these are crackers for human consumption, flavored with dehydrated chicken, and things like this are popular in various places. I bought them and ate them... and I liked them myself. They tasted like chicken broth. What could be wrong with that? Crumbled crackers are used to top all sorts of casseroles; I'll bet these are great for that.

The Wikipedia page says that in Australia, Nabisco makes a Vegemite-in-a-Biskit cracker. That's taking things too far.

Another foreign snack that has a chicken variety is Twisties, made by Smith's Snackfood (owned by Pepsi). In Italy they are sold under the name Fonzies.

Aaaaayyyy!

I wondered if they were actually named for the internationally popular character Arthur Fonzarelli, the Fonz, portrayed memorably by Henry Winkler. Longwhitekid, who runs an amazing blog on New Zealand stuff (and a lot on food), believes so:

Interestingly, Twisties are produced in Italy under the brand name “Fonzies”. In the mid 1970s, General Foods and Bluebird, on the back of the success of the T.V. series “Happy Days” and the resulting 1950′s retro/ Greaser style revival that resulted – did a licensing deal with Paramount Pictures and marketed a cheesy snack product named “Fonzies”, for actor Henry Winkler’s character “The Fonz”, which was the epitome of cool to boys at that time and much impersonated.

My question, though, is this: Since Henry Winkler is Jewish (which came as a crushing blow to the Italian kids in my school -- not that the Fonz was Jewish but that he was not Italian), are Fonzies kosher? Hmm....

Here's something to ponder: Winker is 68 now; when he started playing the Fonz he was 28. The show Happy Days was originally set in the mid-50's (a second-season episode centered around Eisenhower's reelection campaign). Assuming Fonzie was the same age as the actor playing him, the Fonz would now be about 85. Which means Winkler could kick Fonzarelli's butt. 

Here's another: The great Al Molinaro played the character Al Delvecchio on Happy Days, but he was well known before that for playing Murray Greshler, a Jewish cop on The Odd Couple TV show. So while the Jewish Mr. Winker was playing the Italian Mr. Fonzerelli, the proprietor of the diner had once been an Italian actor playing a Jewish cop. Somehow I don't think that would have comforted the Italian kids in my school, though.

And a third: I thought Nabisco had been taken over by some bizarre Spanish firm, as all the product boxes say "Mondelēz" on them. But no: They decided to change the parent name from Kraft Foods, and while the company is still American, they chose a stupid name in a stupid way: "The Mondelēz name, adopted in 2012, came from the input of Kraft Foods employees at the time, Monde being French for world and delez an alternative to delicious." Mrs. Key thinks this a team-builder and a boost for employee morale. I call it maize. Which is in keeping with many of the fine corn-based Mondelēz products.