When I was growing up, my favorite cookie was two round chocolate wafers with a creamy white filling between them. Yep, that’s right they were Hydrox cookies. I know, you probably thought I was talking about Oreo cookies, but believe it or not, we didn’t have Oreo cookies in Maysville. Hydrox was manufactured by Sunshine Biscuits, a company that made most of the cookies sold in my dad’s and granddad’s stores.
Hydrox cookies were first sold in 1908 and were the inspiration for the Oreo cookie that was introduced in 1912. The Oreo eventually exceeded Hydrox in popularity, which resulted in Hydrox being perceived as an imitator, although it was the original.
The creators of the Hydrox cookie looked to name it something that conveyed “purity and goodness.” The name they came up with was derived from the elements that constitute water — hydrogen and oxygen.
The origin of the name Oreo is unknown. Some say it was derived from the French word or, meaning gold, others think it’s from a Greek word meaning mountain and some think Oreo was chosen because it is short and easy to pronounce.
I personally favor Hydrox over Oreos, but over the years I’ve chosen Beta over VHS, 8-track over cassettes, WordPerfect over Microsoft Word, I had an Apple Newton and liked the New Coke so I may not be the best person to endorse products. We do have Oreos in our house and I’m sure our grandkids would choose them over Hydrox in a taste test.
But after becoming the king of cookies, not even Oreo can survive being touched by scandal. I realize that the nation is currently faced with many scandals, but the fiasco I’m about to tell you about threatens our very notion of truth and goodness. Double Stuf Oreos do not contain twice the stuf that are in normal Oreos!! I know this is true — it was on the Internet.
Say what you will about our education system, but a high school math class conducted an experiment and concluded that Double Stuf Oreos contain only 1.86 times more stuf than the original Oreo cookies. As might be expected, Nabisco, the maker of Oreos, said that the cookies do indeed contain twice as much.
The legal community is offering up as a defense, the fact that a Subway footlong sandwich isn’t really exactly 12 inches. Now here’s the problem with that — the dictionary defines “footlong” as “approximately one foot in length.” The dictionary definition of “double” indicates it’s a mathematical phrase signifying “twice as much.”
So the argument comes down to, “is corporate American knowingly cheating our children?” Actually, not just children — adults like Oreos, too.
You may notice that I haven’t really taken a stand here — I’m still trying to figure out what “stuf” is. I thought it was the white filling between the two chocolate cookies, but stuf isn’t listed in the dictionary and the closest word, stuff, doesn’t describe anything like that white filling…. so maybe if things really get ugly and the big Oreo Fraud trial finally overtakes coronavirus and statue toppling in the news, lawyers will reveal what “Stuf” is. I guess until this is all sorted out, just follow the old advice of “buyer beware.”
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