Before I get to the annual onslaught of new "pumpkin spice" junk food, which started appearing on store shelves as early as August, I wanted to clear the decks by covering the second most important pairing of the past few years...behind Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, that is.
Like Taylor and Travis, Coca-Cola and Oreo would appear to have nothing in common...other than both being well-liked. Unlike Taylor and Travis, however, no one was rooting for them as a couple. It is also hard to imagine the offspring of Oreo and Coke being anything other than a disaster (unlike Taylor and Travis, who would undoubtedly combine to create the perfect children).
Unfortunately, just like the time you weren't able talk your best friend out of hooking up with that person they met in a bar when both of them were falling-down drunk, Oreo and Coca-Cola have now paired up...despite all of our misgivings. And we no longer have to imagine what their offspring would be like--they are both here, and they aren't pretty!
Let's start with the drink. You might expect it would be harder to create a cola that tastes like a cookie than a cookie that tastes like cola, and you would be right! Sadly, this Oreo soda only comes in a "zero sugar" version which automatically earns it a "-1" from me because I cannot stand the aftertaste of sugar substitutes. It is very hard to describe the actual flavor, though, because it definitely isn't true chocolate (although neither is an Oreo). There is a nanosecond when the liquid first hits your taste buds that it may actually remind you of an Oreo, but that moment is quickly gone and you are instead left with more of the taste of a bad cream soda. And that sucralose/aspartame aftertaste...
The cookie fares a little better, but not much. One side is the traditional black Oreo wafer; the other side is a golden wafer colored bright red. The chocolate wafer side is supposed to contain Coca-Cola syrup, but I honestly couldn't taste it. The flavor of the "creme" filling is hard to pin down. Even Oreo's own website avoids mentioning the flavor, just describing "smooth white-colored creme." It doesn't really taste that much like cola...more a slight cherry. Come to think of it, if you've ever accidentally (or intentionally) mixed the cherry with the cola from an ICEE machine, that's what it tastes like. It also contains microscopic "popping candy" (i.e. Pop Rocks) which is intended to simulate the effervescence of a carbonated soda. It doesn't.
As I learned from all of my childhood experiments combining crushed Bottle Caps candy with water, the best way to get the taste of a soda is to just buy an actual soda. That still holds true today. I don't know who wants a cookie that initially tastes like coke before tasting like an Oreo -or- a soda that initially tastes like an Oreo but then tastes like a weird coke. You are better off just buying the normal versions of each.
The marketing materials claim that the companies have "combined the best parts of both products." That's definitely not true, but you can't blame them for putting a positive spin on the news. In fact, I'm certain this is exactly what Taylor and Travis' publicist would say if their children turned out to carry recessive genes that caused them to look like their weird uncles and not their beautiful parents.
RATING: Coca-Cola 2 / 5 // Oreo 3 / 5
