34 billion Oreo’s are sold yearly.
674 million dollars of Oreo’s are sold yearly in the US.
85 flavors of Oreo’s exist.

Oreo’s were created in 1912 and now 110 years later, they are the highest selling name brand cookie in the US.

Are they a ripoff?

Before Oreo’s, Hydrox cookies came out in 1908, made by Sunshine Biscuits, with a similar concept of being two chocolate cookies with a cream in the center and the logo on the top. They had initial popularity and for over 100 years, Nabisco has been accused of ripping the Hydrox cookie off.

Looking at if they are a ripoff or not, there’s some history.

Starting off, cookies are believed to be created in the 7th century in Persia, beginning as a product of sugar becoming available. They were for years mainly a middle eastern treat, until the muslim conquest of Spain and popularity rose in Europe as part of the Renaissance’s.

Amazing thing is the chocolate chip cookie was only created in 1938. The first recorded recipe was by a woman in Massachusetts named Ruth Wakefield who ran the Toll House restaurant in Whitman, MA.

The reason cookies existed for 1,300 years before chocolate chip cookies was mainly due to chocolate being a 20th century thing.

Cocoa beans were difficult to gather, there’s a long process of converting the beans into chocolate and manufacturing chocolate to actually tastes good has been seen as the biggest influence of the industrial revolution and food.

Pre chocolate, the most popular cookies in the world were ginger bread, wafers and arguably the biggest, macarons.

Macarons are basically just a cookie sandwich, where for centuries they’ve had creams, butters and jelly’s in between them.

There also for centuries were wafer cookies with jelly’s, creams, butters and more put between them. It was never anything unique.

This is why it’s pretty unfair to say Oreo’s are a ripoff of Hydrox, because it’s actually just a really simple idea.

Sunshine Biscuits, which made Oreo’s came up with the idea to do a sandwich cookie, but were just the first guys to put chocolate in them. They also did the branding of the logo on the cookie, but while that was unique for cookies, it was already being done by brands such as Hershey’s. Again, not a very original idea.

This makes it clear, while Sunshine Biscuits came before NABISCO, it really just wasn’t that innovative of an idea and just the result of chocolate being more available.

Now finally, there’s the question of why Nabisco would beat Sunshine and have Oreo’s outsell Sunshine.

There’s a few reasons discussed.

Some claim Oreo’s tasted better, having sweeter cream and the cookie melted in milk easier.
Some say it was just poor branding from Hydrox, where the name is supposed to mean hydrogen meets oxygen, while Oreo has no official confirmation on the names origin besides it sounding fun.

There’s a lot of ideas on why Oreo’s won, but the reason was likely just geography.

Nabisco was founded as a series of bakeries merging together to form a larger company. The first time it happened was in Massachusetts and after that, they merged with six New York bakeries, briefly having the name “New York Biscuit Company”. It spread to over 120 bakeries across the US becoming National Biscuit Company “Nabisco” in 1898.

Sunshine Biscuits started in Kansas City in 1902, forming early on as a southern brand.

Nabisco had an edge, because they were closer to major shipping ports being on the east coast, having west coast locations and bakeries also in Illinois.

Cookies at the time had shorter shelf lives, so it was harder to to distribute a Kansas City based product, not nearly as close to an ocean, relying on trains for shipping.

This is probably the reason Nabisco and Oreo’s won.

So final thoughts, it’s amazing how history looks at Oreo’s as a ripoff and while I’m sure Nabisco knew what a Hydrox cookie was, they were ultimately just chocolate versions of cookies popular for centuries.

This is why they weren’t a ripoff.