100 Years of Oreo

Nabisco is celebrating 100 years of the Oreo.  100 years of what has, since its 1912 production in a New York City factory, climbed the cookie ladder to become the best selling cookie of the 20^th century, a title it is likely to hold for the 21st, as well.  Certainly the cookie’s monster sales make this a centennial of snacking worth celebrating, but I want to ask some questions about the invitation before I R.S.V.P. to the birthday party of the sweetest sandwich around.

First, the banner invitation on these new packages invites me to “Celebrate the Kid Inside.”  Nabisco, a word of advice: If your product has something inside it, you need to consider your prepositions a bit more carefully.  I suppose this is intended to evoke childish nostalgia for those of us in (or on the edge of) adulthood who find ourselves filling our cookie jars with the same treats we so inconspicuously snuck from the jars our parents filled.  (“Who me? Couldn’t be!” we said, smiling through teeth flecked with the tell-all black crumbs.)  Just as our parents knew then, so Nabisco knows now, the careful twisting that opens this cookie opens a sense of childish wonder beyond simple sugar rush.

Yet still, I find myself looking at this blue, waving ribbon, draped over an open cookie, frosting face-up, and wonder if the banner’s bold-faced declaration of “Kid Inside” betrays a long-guarded Nabisco secret.  Is Nabisco the testing grounds for Kraft’s secret subsidiary, Soylent Green?  Have they found a way to distill the sugar, set aside the spice, and mix in just a touch of everything nice?  Is this what Oreos are made of?  Or does the banner allude, not to part of what’s processed, but part of the process?  When my tiny elementary school hands clumsily broke the cookie in a mismanaged twisting, was I unwittingly undoing the work of a similarly tiny pair of hands?  As the Keebler elves were hard at work in the hollow tree, were Nabisco’s own little laborers slaving away to keep Nabisco competitive?

Surely, this must be an inadvertent piece of marketing mismanagement, not a subtle spilling of company secrets.  No, if Oreo is to remain America’s favorite cookie, we must assume that the cookie-loving “Kid Inside” of us is allowed to enjoy these treats without there being ethically compromising kids inside the frosting or the factory.

But it is not just America that has decided to endorse Oreo as its favorite cookie.  Milk, too, has thrown its cap into the ring, and the recognizable blue packaging declares proudly that these chocolate sandwiches are “Milk’s Favorite Cookie.”  A bold claim, and one that’s got me wondering: How exactly did Nabisco reach this conclusion?  Was there a survey?  A census?  When ascertaining the preferences of milk, who does one ask?  The dairy farmer?  The cow?  The beverage itself?

Let’s assume Nabisco went straight to the product.  (Not straight to the source; that puts us back in the cow-farmer dilemma.)  If we make this assumption, we only open up more questions.  Was all milk surveyed?  And I don’t just mean all flavors, from chocolate to strawberry, and everything in between.  A spectrum of plain, unflavored milk must be considered, from skim to whole.  Given that they share a favorite cookie, perhaps milk operated like America, allowing the 1% to dictate the interests of all milk-kind.  Perhaps soy would have preferred the organic and vegan Newman O’s, while almond would seek nut solidarity and cast its vote for Nutter Butter.

Or another possibility:  When boasting the claim, “Milk’s Favorite Cookie,” Nabisco refers not to the bone-fortifying beverage, but to the Penn-portrayed politician Harvey Milk.  Could it be that this prominent boast is, in fact, a deliberately manipulated celebrity endorsement? Has Nabisco intentionally misrepresented Milk’s attempt to establish the cookie as the official snack of the gay rights movement? Though Rainbow Chips Ahoy were, it would seem, the obvious choice, consider the perfect union of two identical cookies, a marriage that America had already endorsed.  Like my other favorite “Black on the outside, white on the inside” piece of Americana, Barack Obama, it is time for Oreo to embrace Milk’s endorsement and come out openly in support of gay marriage.  Surely the happy marriage allowed these cookies should be allowed to all Americans.  (Since I originally wrote this, THEY DID!)

Or yet another possibility: I have gone too far in politicizing this delicious snack.  In exploring the surface of the packaging, I have touched on cannibalism, labor policy, the occupy movement, and gay marriage, but have failed to unsheathe the plastic sleeve and enjoy the goodness it contains.  The fact of the matter is, regardless of who favors it or how it’s made, this is a good cookie.  A great cookie, whether you choose to eat it as is, open it up, or dunk it in the drink.  A cookie that has been with me through thick (double-stuffed?) and thin (reduced fat?).  A binge-worthy comfort food, an excellent ice cream ingredient, a fixture at elementary school birthday parties, the pinnacle of the bartering-based cafeteria economy.

So, as Nabisco invites me to “Celebrate the Kid Inside,” I choose also to celebrate the cookie inside that distinctive blue package.  Oreo, I raise my glass of 1% and offer a toast to you in your centennial: Here’s to another century of America’s favorite cookie, to a new era of twisting and dunking, and to crumb-flecked smiles for generations to come.