Oreo cookies have become a national pastime. The classic sandwich cookie with a creamy center between two buttery, chocolate cracker cookies is hard to beat in all of factory-made cookiedom. Dunk those in the milk of your choice and you have a hell of a combo. And since food ideas are like Hollywood ideas — favoring existing IP over everything — it’s no surprise to find that there are literally a bazillion flavors on the market at this point.
Which begs the question: What Oreo flavor is the best Oreo?
To find the answer, I decided to try 12 different Oreo varieties. Living in a city as international as Berlin, I have access to most of the American junk food, thanks to a pretty big American influence post-WWII. Nine of the 12 Oreos listed below are all available at your local grocery store if you live in the US. The other three are international flavors you can score on Amazon or grab at a specialty shop. No, I didn’t get the obnoxious Supreme Oreos, but I did get a whole lot of other gems.
Oreos Included:
- Double Stuf
- Strawberry Cheesecake
- Thins
- Golden Oreos
- Original
- Mint
- Peanut Butter and Chocolate Pie
- Birthday Cake
- Lady Gaga Edition
- Blueberry Ice Cream (SE Asia)
- Strawberry Creme (SE Asia)
- Choc’o Brownie (Euorpe)
I’m pretty sure I know which one will win. I’m very much a “classics” sort of candy eater. But let’s see how it all shakes out.
Part 1: The Taste
Taste 1:
Tasting Notes:
This tastes like a classic Oreo from my childhood from the first bite. It has a creamy, sweet, and soft filling. The cookie has a nice crumble to it with a real chocolate finish that lingers nicely. The ratio feels right as well.
This is going to be hard to beat.
Taste 2:
Tasting Notes:
This tastes nothing like cheesecake. It does taste exactly like strawberry bubblegum with that ultra fake strawberry gum flavoring that’s too powerful until you’re about 30 seconds into chewing the gum. There’s a buttery cracker counterpoint to all that overly saccharine strawberry but the chocolate seems to be completely lost.
Taste 3:
Tasting Notes:
This sucks. There’s no chocolate flavor. There’s no creamy flavor. It’s cardboard but not stale. It just feels pointless.
Taste 4:
Tasting Notes:
There’s a clear sense of butter, wheat grains, and light touches of vanilla extract. The graininess almost leans malty as the creamy vanilla leads to … I want to say banana. There’s a good crunch factor with a nice ratio of creamy center to cookie.
Taste 5:
Tasting Notes:
This has a browned butter feel that’s really nice with a thin yet creamy center that’s not overly sweetened. The chocolate of the cookie is very mild but present. There’s a slight grain factor but that might just be in my head from the last cookie.
Taste 6:
Tasting Notes:
This is very minty from the moment you open the package. The mintiness goes full menthol on the bite. That turns into a silky mint ice cream with crunchy bites of chocolate-y Oreo cookie in it.
Taste 7:
Tasting Notes:
This is straight-up a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in Oreo form. The peanut butter has that exact fake peanut butter taste and texture. The chocolate is definitely there but also has a processed vibe. It’s also kind of light for a cookie with peanut butter and chocolate creme in it.
Taste 8:
Tasting Notes:
The creme filling has this distinct buttery vanilla frosting feel and taste with a light touch of sparkles in it. Shockingly, this isn’t overly sweet but instead lands more buttery and chocolatey, with a real feel for exactly what’s advertised.
Taste 9:
Tasting Notes:
This one’s very much on the lighter side. The taste is like a chalky vanilla Necco Wafer that’s slightly stale. The chocolate in the cookie is a little dry and feels more like hot chocolate powder than anything else.
Taste 10:
Tasting Notes:
This is pure grape soda or Blue Kool-Aid turned up to MAX. There’s a buttery cookie in there with a clear bitter chocolate that tastes a little like instant espresso powder. Then there’s this light buzzing at the end that’s either the intensity of the sugary “blueberry” or coffee vibes coming through on the chocolate.
Taste 11:
Tasting Notes:
This is much easier going than the Strawberry Cheesecake above. The strawberry in this creme is closer to a strawberry hard candy. That’s counterpointed by a fairly buttery cookie but the chocolate seems to have been lost in the mix somewhere.
Taste 12:
Tasting Notes:
Huh. This is a wet brownie batter with a soft yet crunchy chocolate cracker crunch. There’s that signature buttery cookie edge. The brownie batter feels thick and kind of gooey while imparting a darker chocolate vibe.
Part 2: The Ranking
12. OREO Thins — Taste 3
Average Price: $3.67
The Cookie:
These are billed as Oreos with “a crisp, delicate and delicious twist.” They’re thinner and therefore crispier. Oreo goes onto say that they made the cookies with “less crumb” to add more crunch.
Bottom Line:
F*ck these pointless cookies.
11. Oreo Strawberry Cheesecake Limited Edition — Taste 2
Average Price: $10.85
The Cookie:
This limited edition uses strawberry flavoring mixed with its creamy center to recreate a classic NY-style cheesecake.
Bottom Line:
Overly sweet “strawberry” bubble gum and chocolate crackers do not belong together.
10. Lady Gaga Oreo — Taste 9
Average Price: $3.79
The Cookie:
These boxes were released to celebrate Lady Gaga’s Chromatica with a “Little Monsters pink” box. In the U.S., these are Golden Oreos that are dyed pink and green. In the rest of the world, they’re labeled simply as “vanilla” flavored and standard white and black Oreo shades.
Bottom Line:
The vanilla flavor is sort of there. Overall, these felt more like rejects from the assembly line than anything else, much less anything rendered with a clear flavor profile.
9. Oreo Ice Cream Blueberry Flavor — Taste 10
Average Price: $17.82
The Cookie:
This cookie from the Southeast Asian market is all about recreating a sweet and berry-forward creme center to an Oreo. The berry flavoring is meant to offer a cooling feeling. Like you’re eating ice cream, supposedly.
Bottom Line:
This was a real “wow, that’s amazingly sweet in the fakest way possible” bite. I get the “blueberry” moniker becasue I grew up in the 80s drinking fake-ass sugary waters that were dyed blue or purple and called berry blast or whatever. But there was zero ice cream vibe in play. And that coffee buzz on the end was a trip.
8. Oreo Strawberry Creme — Taste 11
Average Price: $5.49
The Cookie:
This is another Southeast Asian Oreo treat. The strawberry flavor in the creme is meant to be sweet yet bright with an almost strawberry shortcake feel to it.
Bottom Line:
This was much more dialed in than the “Strawberry Cheesecake.” Sure, it was sweet but there was a tiny touch of nuance. Still, I’m not going to be reaching for these ever again.
7. Oreo Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie — Taste 7
Average Price: $3.67
The Cookie:
This cookie is devised with a half peanut butter and half chocolate creme filling that’s sandwiched by a Graham-infused cracker that leans away from the classic chocolate Oreo (though the version I got seemed to have regular Oreo chocolate wafers).
Bottom Line:
This was good but just reminded me to go to the store and buy some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
6. Oreo Choc’o Brownie — Taste 12
Average Price: $8.99
The Cookie:
This Oreo amps up the creme filling with 29 percent cocoa sandwiched between two chocolate cookies with a dash more chocolate in them as well. The whole experience is to double up on the whole cocoa experience in every bite.
Bottom Line:
This was kind of like the Peanut Butter and Chocolate Oreo in that it just made me want brownies and not another one of these Oreos. I suppose if I didn’t have any brownies on hand, these would quell that craving for a minute or so.
5. Oreo — Taste 5
Average Price: $3.10
The Cookie:
This is the classic Oreo where two chocolate crackers (or wafers) sandwich a rich creme filling. It’s simple and you know exactly what you’re getting.
Bottom Line:
This was a pretty damn good cookie. It’s weirdly not nearly as sweet as some of these, which was a nice change. The composition seems well-balanced. Though, it still wasn’t anything mind-blowing or surprising. It was just an Oreo and that’s okay.
4. OREO Golden — Taste 4
Average Price: $3.67
The Cookie:
This is the classic Oreo creme filling that’s sandwiched between two vanilla wafers instead of chocolate ones. That vanilla brings out more grain and crumb to the cookie while bending a little closer to the flavor of the creme filling.
Bottom Line:
That slightly malty note with a touch of vanilla was a ray of sunshine amongst the fake fruit sweetness and rollercoaster of chocolate intensity of most of the other cookies. Did this rank higher becasue it was such a change of pace? Maybe.
It’s also just a solid entry in the Oreo lineup.
3. Oreo Mint Flavored Creme — Taste 6
Average Price: $3.67
The Cookie:
Bright, rich, and cooling mint is added to the Oreo creme filling to create this cookie. Otherwise, this is a classic Oreo.
Bottom Line:
I was prepared to dislike this after getting hit with menthol when opening the package. But … that mint ice cream vibe with Oreo chocolate cookies as a counterpoint is hard not to love. There’s a reason mint Oreo cookie ice cream is the freakin’ best.
2. Oreo Double Stuf — Taste 1
Average Price: $3.10
The Cookie:
These Oreos are “double stuf” in name only. They’re actually only 1.86 times more stuffed than a standard Oreo. Well, that 0.86 worth of “stuf” makes a hell of a difference in the quality of this cookie-eating experience.
Bottom Line:
This felt like the Oreos my grandmother kept in her cookie jar when I came over when I was five. Nostalgia is powerful stuff.
But this didn’t surprise me. I knew it and it was exactly what I wanted, sure. But that’s not everything.
1. Oreo Birthday Cake — Taste 8
Average Price: $3.67
The Cookie:
These are standard Oreos with a party-time twist. The creme filling is reworked to lean into birthday cake frosting with sparkles sandwiched between chocolate cookies.
Bottom Line:
This was a legitimate shock. If you asked me before I tasted these which one would be the dumbest and sweetest crap, I’d have said Birthcake without hesitation.
While this is sweetish, there’s a real sense of butter/vanilla frosting and white pound cake with a chocolate cookie crust that just sings. It delivers on exactly what it promises without going too fake, too sweet, or too far away from a classic Oreo flavor.
Part 3: Final Thoughts
Birthday Cake Oreos… Huh… Well, here we are. I liked the most gimmicky of the Oreos. Who doesn’t like buttery vanilla cake frosting though? Or maybe I’m just buzzing from a sugar high.
Sugar high or not, the top seven really all were perfectly fine Oreos with the top five all being solid. I’ll be reaching for those again if I ever have a hankering for an Oreo. The rest were … not trash… but pretty close. Especially the Thins. Those sucked in every way, to the point of being offensive to all cookies worldwide.
