The maniacs at Oreo and Coca-Cola need to be stopped

Earlier this month Coca-Cola and Oreo released two monstrosities into the world — Coca‑Cola® OREO™ Zero Sugar and the OREO® Coca-Cola™ cookie.
Because no one told the mad scientists at both corporations not to, I guess.
Oreo-flavored Coke Zero and the Coke-flavored Oreo, in my opinion, are not a food and a beverage, and also not NOT a food and a beverage, and belong in some third category with the McRib and spray cheese from a can. They live among substances created in a lab, wholly devoid of a single ingredient found in nature. I can handle one substance like that at a time. I’m an avid Diet Coke drinker, after all, and love a good spray cheese covered cracker now and again. But two of these chemistry-experiments-turned-food at once seems excessive.
However, as the self-appointed Official Taster of Weird Sodas and Snacks for this publication, it was my duty to try both unholy unions of soda and cookie in the name of journalistic research.
I started with the Oreo-flavored Coke Zero simply because it seems to be more widely available. Regrettably I could only find it in a plastic bottle, which for my money is the worst possible vessel for soda. The vessel hierarchy, thanks for asking, from best to worst is: fountain soda from McDonald’s, fountain soda from anywhere else with pebble ice, can, glass bottle, plastic bottle. I’d rather not drink anything at all than drink my Diet Coke from a plastic bottle. It never feels cold enough and it has a weird, lingering note of artificiality and I do not care for it.
But this was not about what I wanted. It was about what would most enlighten the Deseret News reader. So I tried the bottled Coca‑Cola® OREO™ Zero Sugar. And … I didn’t hate it.
I really expected to hate it. But as soon as I removed the cap and got a whiff of the fizzy brown half-liter of liquid, I caught the vision of those maniacs over at Coke. It was an enticing, cool aroma that whispered, “I’m as refreshing as a diet cola and as delicious as your favorite cookie.” And that’s how it tasted, too. Like a sip of soda between bites of Oreo, while the pleasant taste still lingers in your mouth.
Sure, I started to feel unwell about halfway through the bottle, but that’s to be expected, I think. What was unexpected was how much I liked the drink.
I wish I could say the same for the OREO® Coca-Cola™ cookie. Every member of the committee that rubber-stamped the production of this cookie should be fired. Maybe imprisoned. I really expected to like them, because up until this week, I didn’t believe there was such a thing as a bad Oreo. But now I know better.
It took a while to find a pack of these special-edition Oreos. The first store I visited didn’t carry them, probably because a manager tasted one of the cookies and said “no thank you.” Once I did track down a package, I was immediately repulsed by the look of the cookie — one signature black cookie, one red, and a cream streaked with pink.
The actually cookie contains Coca-Cola syrup and the cream contains popping candy meant to emulate a fizzing sensation. The thing about Coke syrup is that it’s meant to be diffused. In its concentrated form, it’s way too much of a good thing and veers into the cleaning product taste category. Eating this cookie feels like taking a bite of a Lysol-inspired snack cake with little bits of gravel mixed in the cream. Horrendous all around.
But so it goes with science, I guess. Sometimes the creations of chemists better the world like with penicillin and Oreo-flavored Coke Zero, and sometimes they make it markedly worse, like with anthrax powder and Coke-flavored Oreos.
As scientific progress marches forward, I would just beg our food chemists to give their creations one final taste before mass production. Because I, as the self-appointed Taster of Weird Drinks and Snacks, would rather not taste a cookie like that ever again. But I will, of course, if that’s what the job requires.
The Coca‑Cola® OREO™ Zero Sugar and the OREO® Coca-Cola™ cookies are available now for a limited time. Which is probably for the best.