The Grossest Oreos To Hit American Shelves

“Eww?  Right, that should be my response?  Eww?  I still want to try them.”

~American Oreo Consumers

Oreos are great.  We’ve discussed in some length the history of the company, and some of their more interesting products (here’s looking at you, Football Oreos) in the past, but we feel like we have to really bring that point home because sometimes it’s hard to remember exactly how good Oreos are.  Whenever an American sees a full glass of milk, they instinctively try to twist open an Oreo even if they’re not even holding one.  That’s called conditioning, and it was invented by a bell-maker named Pavlov.  Though, despite the fact that Oreos are a timeless classic, the past few years have seen a slew of “Limited-time” flavors appear that range from “not chocolate and cream” to “no, seriously, why are you making Oreos that are flavored anything other than chocolate and cream?”  It’s gotten to the point that we at AFFotD feel it’s time to step in and take a hard look at some of the odd varieties of Oreos that people have flocked to Target to buy.  Every single one of them shouldn’t work…and honestly, probably don’t.  But you have to at least give Nabisco credit for trying.  Even if they’re tampering with perfection.

The Grossest Oreos To Hit American Shelves

Oreos are such a staple in American society that some people will go out of their way to make a machine that actually separates the cream from the cookie, even though you’d have to be a raving lunatic to prefer the cookie over the cream.  Of course, Americans always strive for progress, so even when you just about perfected your product back in 1912, the R&D department’s still got to justify why they exist.  As a result, you get a slew of limited-edition cookies that are just daring you to buy it, if only to see if it could possibly taste as bad as it looks.  Yup, there are Americans among us who have actually purchased…

Watermelon Oreos

In nature, animals and plants tend to be brightly colored as a warning sign that they’re either dangerous or poisonous.  But dull colors?  That lets you know it’s safe.  If an animal stumbled across a plain old black-and-white Oreo, they’d not hesitate to try it, and would be rewarded with chocolaty-creamy goodness.  Even when someone tries to play a trick on you by giving you “Golden” Oreos, it’s still just a dull yellow with white cream.  Not so for the Watermelon Oreo, which swirls unnaturally bright green and pinkish red cream within vanilla cookies to create the snack equivalent of those bright red berries you ate a few of that one summer as a kid that made you sick for a week.

When you’re making an Oreo, you’d probably assume that since your medium is cookies and cream, you’d want to limit your flavors to to those that actually would taste good in cookie or cream form.  Watermelon does not meet that criteria.  Some fruits mix well with cream.  Strawberries and cream?  Sure.  Raspberries and cream?  Delicious!  Watermelon and cream?  What the fuck is wrong with you?  That sounds disgusting, why the hell are you pitching taste ideas to a food company if you clearly were born without taste buds?

Yes, they’re bad, though apparently a handful of people seem to really like them, which is worrisome because we didn’t think that the watermelon lobby had so much clout.  The watermelon taste is apparently very faint, which is good for people who don’t want to gag down Oreos that reek of artificially flavored watermelon, but is bad for people who are able to think to themselves, “If this is so brightly colored, yet doesn’t have any flavor… what are they putting in here?  What are you hiding, Nabisco!?” 

Ice Cream Rainbow Sure, Bert!

Sometimes, we have staffers that like to go on thinkgeek.com and buy ghost pepper flakes.  Basically, it’s crushed red pepper, only instead of using a slightly spicy chile pepper, they make it out of one of the spiciest peppers to ever exist.  We’re talking “400 times spicier than Tabasco sauce” spicy.  Anyway, one thing we sometimes do is go into pizza places that we don’t like or that yell at us when we try to chug a bottle of bourbon while waiting for our order, and we swap out the red pepper flakes on their tables for the ghost pepper.  They look exactly alike, but everyone who sits at that table ends up with the worst surprise they’ve ever had.  One time we saw someone get wheeled away in a gurney.

The point we’re trying to make is, Oreo released not one, but two, limited-edition Oreos using vanilla cookies and the exact same two colors of frosting.  One tastes like Watermelon’s ass with an hour-long lingering aftertaste, and the other is a horrible pun that combines lime and raspberry sherbet flavors, because when you have a cream-based product you might as well try to make it taste like a non-dairy alternative to ice cream.  So you’d have a hard time discerning between the two if they were both presented to you at the same time.  Though, instead of being the difference between crushed red pepper and burning hell flakes, no matter which Oreo you end up here, you’re going to lose in the long run.  They’re apparently pungent, with a distinct fake-fruit flavor, and, okay seriously, there’s no reason to even try to discuss the merits of this product, since just by naming it “Shure, Bert!” you’ve ensured the hatred of a nation.

Actually, allow us a minute to harp on this product name.  At first we thought that maybe it was a Sesame Street tie in or something.  It wasn’t.  So that just left us with more questions than answers.  Why can’t you just call it “sherbet”?  And if you really like puns that much, why is “sure” spelled “Shure”?  Wouldn’t “Sure, Bert” actually make more sense?  At least that wouldn’t set off the red squiggly lines of Nabisco’s spell check programs.  You know what, we don’t want to know the logic behind this.  We’re probably better off not knowing.

Candy Corn Oreo

Eww.  Granted, just about all of these entries can start with “eww” but candy corn tastes so fake to begin with that making an even more fake version of it seems like some cruel method used primarily to punish diabetics.  Oreo at least has the good sense to use the vanilla cookie instead of chocolate when making these sickly sweet creations, which is about as high of a compliment as heaping praise onto someone for using a condom when they pick up a twenty dollar hooker off a street corner.  Candy and cookies are two different things, and they should be treated thusly.  The people at Oreos should be ashamed for even thinking this was a plausible idea.  If someone ever goes to you and says, “Oh yeah, I’ve had the candy corn flavored Oreos” you should probably just give them a hug and whisper, “It’s okay.  We’re sorry.  We’re so sorry.”

Banana Split Crème Oreos

On a purely philosophical level, this flavor works.  Banana splits are made with ice cream, and usually have a scoop of chocolate in there somewhere.  And hey, everyone loves a chocolate covered banana, right?  And then you look at the crème inside the Oreo here.  It’s pretty much the equivalent of taking home a one night stand and discovering she was wearing four pairs of spanx.  Once you open up, you just have to sort of hide your disappointment and get on with it.  They took a perfectly good Oreo and decided to make the inside of it look like they melted down The Yellow Bastard from Sin City.  We don’t even care if it ends up tasting good (apparently it just tastes and smells very strongly of extremely artificial banana, so hey if that’s your thing) we’re not going to eat an Oreo where the insides look like they were scrapped out of a biohazard waste bin.  Let’s put it this way—there is a facebook group out there petitioning the return of the Banana Split Crème Oreos.  It has six members.  Six members.  Seriously, you could find more people in support of bringing back Smallpox.  We’re not saying that Smallpox is better or more popular than Banana Split Crème Oreos, we’re just saying that if Nabisco didn’t want us to make that assertion maybe they should have worked a little harder at finding a not-gross food coloring for their cream filling.

Oreo 100^th Birthday Cake Cookies

No.  False.  You are not allowed to put sprinkles inside your cookie, Oreo.  We don’t care if it’s your goddamn birthday.  Stop it.  Stop it.

Nothing to see here, folks.  Just go back to your loved ones and open up some classic Oreos with a glass of milk and be happy.  Or, if you really want to push the envelope, go with Double Stuf Oreos.  Now that is an innovation.