Donald Trump is all about bluster and rage. If he stopped to consider his thoughts, he almost certainly wouldn’t have called an entire country criminal or flatly denied ever changing his own children’s diapers. So, we guess it’s expected that he didn’t check the source of a tweet that led to him boycotting Oreos: Oreo’s almost non-existent competitor Hydrox Cookies.
“@realDonaldTrump We’re making our @hydroxcookie in the US, not like @Oreo will be made in Mexico,” wrote a Twitter user named Ellia Kassoff and within days Trump was vowing to “never eat another Oreo again.”
It was remarkably good publicity for a brand that most people had forgotten and it was hatched by Kassoff, who just so happens to be the owner of the pre-Oreo Oreo company. Kassoff bought Hydrox in 2013 and was looking to revitalize the brand. He saw a great opportunity to get the word out via Trump.
“We have to be very creative in taking advantage of certain things,” Kassoff told Bloomberg. “This was something that was basically free.”
To give you an idea of how far the company had fallen, they weren’t even producing cookies at the time that Kassoff helped stir up Oreo-gate. But since Trump made his vow, the company’s future has been looking up. While sales across Kasoff’s entire company (which also includes other retro foods like Farts candies and Astro Pop) were at $1.5 million last year, he just signed a distribution deal with the grocery chain Kroger and expects to hit $5 million in 2016.
