Do OR-3Os Dream of Electric Cream?

A Bloreogger is first and foremost an explorer. A thinker. An adventurer. Full commitment to our craft is always assured, dear reader. Yet from time to time readers ask me, "What do you think of Hydrox?" "What do you think of Duplex?" "What, Bloreogger, do you think of Cream Betweens."
I usually laugh and explain that I love all sandwich cookies equally, that some are better than others but any will do in a pinch. However, I do not review any "off-brand" delights.

This morning I was provided with a package of KaleidOs, the Kroger Supermarket version of Oreo. In my excitement I promised a review. A new frontier - but how could I manage this vast new array of treats without going insane again?

Explorer. Thinker. Adventurer. Scientist.

Introducing my new partner in this wonderful lifelong adventure: OR-3O the Oreoid.

I have decided to dedicate this Bloreog entry to the first test-run of OR-3O on the very KaleidOs that spawned his existence. As with any good scientist, I have documented the process.

OR-3O 1.0

1. Set-Up. OR-3O uses Firewire 3.0 for maximum speeds.

2. Cookie Calibration. I input the basic expectations for your average Oreo Cookie, roughly 5.0 ORs.

 3. Feeding. I make sure to provide both a full cookie as well as a split cookie. OR-3O is not yet waterproof, and therefore cannot run a Milk Taste Test.

4. I examine the results of our first test. You don't say, OR-3O.

1. IMPORT: KALEIDO
2. PROFILE: [CHOCOLATE COOKIE]
3. PROFILE: [VANILLA CREME]
4. BASE VALUE: 5.0
5. RUN SAMPLE = YES
6. TESTING
7. TESTING
8. TESTING
9. TESTING
10. VALUE: {CHOCOLATE} : 4.0 OR
11. VALUE: {CREME} : 5.0 OR
12. VALUE: {MILK TT} : ERROR
13. VALUE:  {GORGEABILITY} : 7
14. VALUE: {OVERALL SCORE} 4/5 
15. I LOVE YOU, FATHER.

Conclusions:

Once again I must take time to thank my brother Eric, who helped me construct this new tool for achieving my Bloreogging dreams.

OR-3O is proof that a dream followed is a dream achieved. But dreams alone won't always take you across the finish line. Study often, study hard. Put down those tablets and smartphones. Pick up a book. A galaxy of knowledge is available at your local library!

Most Stuf Oreo: Oreocalypse Now

Most Stuf Oreo

When I first accepted the Bloreogger life I knew what my choice meant. I would review every Oreo variety. Fruit Punch. Golden. Strawberry. Blueberry Pie. Apple Pie. Mint. Peppermint. Mint Chocolate Chip. Peeps. Peeps2.  Double-Stuf. “Mega Stuf.” Peeps. Mocha. Swedish Fish. Hot Chicken Wing. 

It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my cookie.

How do I get my Oreos? I keep an eye on Nabisco's press releases. I know my orders. A special trick? There's no trick. I just search, a linear hunt from store to store. Day to day. Week to week. Obsessively. Meijer, Target, Wal-mart, Dollar General. Walgreens, CVS, Kroger.  Regardless the flavor, the price, the calorie count. Regardless of whether I will even like them.

My brother Eric – bearded, congenial – works in the depths of the Carmel Meijer, managing their absurd and endless stream of new grocery product. He gives me a heads up sometimes. Today I was shopping there after work. He didn't know I was there, that I was in fact standing in the Cookie aisle.  I searched amongst the dozen varieties of cookies. Where were they? Nowhere to be found. 

I stood dejected, contemplating when I might see them. Should I purchase some other cookies to fill the void? No. I had only one target, and only that single target would complete my journey. 

I glanced at my phone. A text. From Eric. “I have something your heart most desires.” I knew immediately. This was it. We met by Electronics. He had two packages fresh from the crate. We rang them up on the spot. We opened the packages, each containing only 18 cookies.

I've written about Oreo Stuf before, and how the traditional cookie is a perfect ratio of chocolate cardboard + sugary something. Double-Stuf are inferior. Mega-Stuf are truly inferior. But Most Stuf are the cookie of our age, the end result of a Nabisco's decade of Oreo experimentation. Most Stuf Oreos are the cookie at the end of the river. Broken, shameless, but enlightened as to their purpose. The Most Stuf. Nothing more. And nothing less. Nothing left.

Eating Most Stuf Oreo: one bite contains the entire grainy Stuf substance of a lone traditional Oreo, but the cookie takes at least three bites to complete. An entire serving of Oreo in three bites. It fucks with you a little bit. Your tongue numbs. Your mouth fills with saliva. The immediate aftermath, a woozy feeling as the sugar hits. Disorientation. You can't stop. Continue. Complete the cookie. Drive home or sit down. Feel it hit your gut. Guilt? Pain. Realization. Actualization.

The horror, the horror.

Hop your way to the store to get Carrot Cake Oreos.

Carrot Cake Oreo

History:

Carrot Cake Oreo are the first Oreo flavor to make my office workers say “Thanks” instead of the usual “Why did you bring these in.” I call that a win! 

They were first released in January 2019, a three-month-early prelude to Easter. Carrots - I hear Jesus loved them.

2018 saw a lot of experimental flavors (Cherry Cola, Kettle Corn, etc), so it’s nice to see a standard “other desert made Oreo flesh” kinda thing happening here. I can’t usually eat Carrot Cake because people are dicks about adding nuts to their recipes.

Oh.

Anyway, I liked allergen-free Carrot Cake I have eaten in the past, and this is one of the best cookies I’ve had from Oreo in awhile. Like, really. I think the last cookie I’ve felt this strongly about were the Waffle & Syrup variety. This is a strong contender for my Top 10 Oreo list. Half of which you can no longer buy. Sorry.

Cookie:

They’re the first cookie to have a ‘carrot cake’ cookie which is basically just slightly lighter ‘graham’ flavor.

Icing:

Cream Cheese, just like the earlier Red Velvet variety. But honestly it tastes just like regular vanilla icing - the kind you'd buy out of a can in the middle aisles of a grocery. Growing up it was a Dossey family snack to just take a graham cracker and cover it with a thick layer of icing. Delicious. That's how Carrot Cake Oreos taste, except in compact cookie form.

Milk Taste Test:

Yep, checks out.

Goregeability:

My 2019 diet is fucked.

I Love Oreo but I don't Love, Oreo

Love, Oreo

history:

Love, Oreo is the latest in a line of ambiguous Oreo flavors designed to attract curious consumers. A few years ago Nabiso released Mystery Oreo, which turned out to be Fruity Pebble. A goddamn re-release. Guess what: Love, Oreo is another goddamn re-release. Is it right for Nabisco to co-opt the concept of Love as a way of selling a repeat variant of their signature snack cookie?  I've bought every single flavor of Oreo released in the past seven years, so I can't give you a straight answer on that.  

I considered reviewing these Oreos erotically, maybe describing the way my tongue pleasantly licked the pink tartness or bringing up an “oreo-face” or calling it a “gangbang of flavors.” But I'm not into Love, Oreo. I could sit here pounding away on my couch but it's tough to get it going without passion.

Like I said: Love, Oreo is a repackaged flavor,  essentially a slightly fruitier version of the evergreen Lemon flavor. These might have been developed as Pink Lemonade Oreo at one point and then pushed out of the schedule because they found something more interesting to release this summer (I hope they're bringing S'Moreos back after a 3-year hiatus).

To me that's not Love. Being repackaged with a special name to make me all excited but then the same old, same old. Grumpier people might make jokes to make about how that's the natural trajectory of all relationships or some cynical bullshit but I don't believe that and generally that isn't what I've witnessed in a majority of the long-term romances I've seen. Certainly not my romance with Oreo, a cookie I actively crave day in and day out. I will always  Love Oreo but I'll never Love, Oreo again.

cookie:

chocolate, baby!

Crème:

Pink and lemony.

Milk-dunk test:

I didn't bother.

Gorgeability:

I ate several over time but I'm on a goddamn diet.

Wasabi Oreo & Hot Chicken Wing Oreo: Rare Imports

Wasabi Oreo & Hot Chicken Wing Oreo

Those in-the-know can write reams about the way American Snack-Food Imperialism has adapted products like Kit Kats for foreign markets. It's that way across the world, on every continent (fyi the Kit Kats out of Europe are the absolute bomb). For Western tongues the flavors that emanate out of China and Southeast Asia are particularly legendary. Japan, for instance, has Rum Raisin, Green Tea (which are great), Blueberry, and Grape Kit Kat bars. Good shit.

Oreo has taken awhile to get on the bandwagon, at least in terms of advertising their geography-locked flavors globally to build up hype. Last August's announcement of Wasabi and Hot Chicken Wing flavors spread across the internet like wildfire, but getting them was still pretty difficult. I was holding off – at $10 a pack, getting both would be a real price to pay for what sounded like horrible cookies. Thankfully my friend Danitza got them for me for Christmas.

They arrived today, 1 / 2 / 2019 in a package that looked somewhat suspicious to my wife. Turns out it was a transpacific flavor bomb.

I opened them as soon as I arrived at home, taking one of each and placing them on a plate for ocular appreciation. They're thinner than regular Oreos, ever-so-slightly smaller and less creme filled.

Time to dig in.

Wasabi Oreos

Back in Junior High some of my friends would snack on Wasabi-flavored chickpeas. I was never a huge fan of the snack but I would eat pretty much anything back then, and they did the trick. I have wasabi in other dishes from time to time. The idea of Wasabi flavored Oreos wasn't terribly odd.

As always chocolate Oreo flavor once again sucks and can't really go it alone - it has to mesh with the creme. That's a problem with most of the bad Oreos. The blunt 'chocolate' of an Oreo cookie does not mix well with the Wasabi flavor. It's terrible. Not life-changing terrible, but bad enough that I couldn't think of a reason to finish an entire cookie. 

Thinking positively, I think there may well be an audience for this cookie. If you love Wasabi flavor, and don't mind mixing it with chocolate, you may actually enjoy it.

Hot Chicken Wing

 what  the fuck did we expect? 

The Bloreog the Oreo Blog 2018 Yeareo in Revieweog

Bloreog the Oreo Blog went on a hiatus after the dismal and disappointing Mocha Oreos in summer 2017. Sorry. I just couldn't to it anymore. My dream flavor was a nightmare. Flavors from 2017 I never reviewed: Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Cookie Butter, Mystery (Fruity Pebbles), Hot Cocoa. You didn't miss much.

But I don't want to go for the whole of 2018 without providing at least one review. So I'll do you one better:

THE BLOREOG THE OREO BLOG 2018 YEAREO IN REVIEWEOG.

FLAVOR: Chocolate Hazlenut

STYLE: Golden Cookies and Nutella icing.

VERDICT: It's not like I was even able to eat this, so, none. I'm sure you might have liked them, but you can't get them anymore because they came out last February.

FLAVOR: Hot & Spicy Cinnamon

STYLE: Chocolate cookies with cinnamon icing.

VERDICT: Goddamn delicious! I at several of these. Spicey aftertaste. Particularly great if you take a box of them into a bar and dip them in a porter.

FLAVOR: Peeps Oreos 2

STYLE: Chocolate (!) Cookies with Marshmellow Frosting

VERDICT: Honestly, fantastic! I love the chocolate + purple icing combo as a visual, and I'm a fan of the gritty marsh mellow delight that are Peeps. These were some of my favorites this year.

FLAVOR: Cherry Cola

STYLE: Chocolate cookies at “cherry cola” icing.

VERDICT: I once had a dream about finding Cherry & Black Cherry oreos at the Fishers library and being forced to choose between them. This is a dream flavor of mine. It's still a dream flavor of mine – give me some of that sharp Starburst flavor cherry bullshit between two bland chocolate wafers. Slap the Oreo logo on them. Watch me sob with joy. This ain't that. The Cherry Cola Oreo is trying to approximate the flavor of Cherry Coke, which is kind of a bullshit flavor anyway. These were honestly terrible.

FLAVOR: Kettle Corn

SYLE: Golden cookies with “kettle corn” icing.

VERDICT: For some reason they wanted to make the experience as authentic to Kettle Korn as possible, which meant including what felt like real corn kernal shells in the icing to get stuck in your teeth? The flavor is mostly that of 'butter,' which made it worse. No.

FLAVOR: Pina Colada Thins

STYLE: Golden wafers with Pina Colada icing.

VERDICT: These were delicious, but I'm a fan of fake pineapple.

FLAVOR: Chocolate Peanut Bueter Pie

STYLE: Chocolate with Peanut Butter filling

VERDICT: Once again, I can't eat these, so – no. But you can still buy them at Wal Mart.

FLAVOR: Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake

STYLE: Golden + Strawberry cookies with Strawberry filling.

VERDICT: Delicious, but essentially the same flavor as the previous Strawberry flavors they've released, including the one I reviewed a few years ago here.

FLAVOR: Rocky Road Trip

STYLE: Chocolate w/ Rocky Road filling.

VERDICT: Technically the nuts in this are 'soy nut infusions,' which may well be edible for me with my allergy. But I never felt safe trying them, and by the time these came out I was on a diet and basically gave up on Oreos anyway.

FLAVOR: Peppermint Bark

STYLE: Chocolate cookies with Peppermint icing.

VERDICT: Similar to Peppermint two years ago, but with two-color icing. Whatever.

Anyway, that's my 2018 Oreo Year in Review.

Mocha Oreo :(

Mocha Oreo.

History: 

Like everyone I have daily rituals and coffee is amongst my most sacred. Not surprising. I started drinking coffee in college as an alternative to my first and truest liquid love Diet Mountain Dew, which I have been trying to kick since 2005. It didn't work and instead I developed a happy habit of drinking coffee or/and DMD every day. For the past ten years.

When I drink coffee with creme or milk (no sugar, wtf) - just enough to give it a light mocha color but not enough to remove the bitterness completely. I'll take it dark if I have to.  I have no mercurial preference for how the coffee itself tastes. I couldn't tell you how different roasts work or how certain beans differ. My taste in food has never been terribly picky (I mean, Diet Mountain Dew).

My favorite ice cream flavor is coffee (particularly Blue Bell Brand which isn't sold in Indiana anymore, apparently). When coffee isn't available mocha is generally a decent substitute - my use of milk and creme in coffee generally pushes it a little closer to a mocha-style beverage anyway. I enjoy chocolate covered espresso beans, mocha candy bars, mocha milkshakes. Most coffee-flavored or related products are on my either my 'tried' or 'to try' list.

For as long as I have enjoyed Oreo I have hoped for a coffee or mocha variant. At long last Mocha Oreo is available as the third and final 'breakfast' flavor (after Jelly Donut and Waffle & Syrup).

Cookie:

A chocolate Oreo, still the best of the bunch and perfectly suited to pair with a mocha flavor

Creme:

Bullshit. This isn't what I was hoping for. I don't mind Dunkin' Donuts but there's no question that their coffee is generally on the  burnt side (look, I don't really discern bean flavor but burnt isn't beyond my perception). I don't mind drinking burnt coffee, but somehow the Mocha Oreo has a rather tasteless creme with a harsh burnt aftertaste. It's an odd cookie experience because the longer you eat it, the worse it gets. Mocha should be sweet with a slight bitter aftertaste. It should, at the least, feel a little creamy. Mocha Oreo does not capture any part of the ideal Mocha experience.

Gorgeability:

I hoped for a cookie that I would want to eat forever, that I might want to stock up on for when they disappear off shelves (like Pumpkin Spice Oreo or Caramel Apple Oreo). No such luck.

Rating:
2/5 Oreo.