For some reason, limited edition and wacky flavor varieties of foods have become huge in the past few years. I assume it has something to do with the rise of social media since in the past, it was hard to reach any sort of significant audience and national attention simply by releasing a frigging soda-themed breakfast pastry, but alas, welcome to 2016. Hashtags dictate what every idiot does with their day and anything with more than six total fans can go viral in an instant.

One of the brands on the frontlines of this LE bombardment is the venerable Oreo. Nabisco sees fit to release them in every possible iteration you can imagine. While some of them are actually really good, some are overwhelmingly “meh”. The real crime isn’t necessarily trying out new flavor ideas, but really is releasing good new flavors, then taking them off shelves so they can think up new abominations like Swedish Fish Oreos or Limeade Oreos or who the hell knows, maybe Chicken Parmesan Oreos could be on the way.

Today, let’s take a look at their latest cookie mashup, Choco-Chip Oreos.

Choco Chip Oreos are made up of a vanilla/sugar cookie Oreo wafer, with some specks of chocolate thrown in, to resemble chocolate chip cookies. The cream itself is meant to also be a cookie-dough flavor, with more specks of chocolate. On paper, it sounds like a brilliant concept. People like Oreos. People like chocolate-chip cookies. It’s a winning combination, no? Well, kind of no, unfortunately.

Going into these, I actually was fairly excited since the wafers reminded me of everyone’s favorite nostalgic cookie lunch-snack, Dunk-A-Roos. These things even smell like them. For those of you who remember, Dunk-A-Roos had a flavor made up of chocolate chip cookie wafers with chocolate frosting. I know that it was Betty Crocker who made/makes them, not Nabisco, but when you’re dealing with generic, low-quality kid foods a lot of the ingredients end up tasting the same and likely using similar ingredients. And I will say right here, yes, the cookie wafers taste exactly like Dunk-A-Roos. That’s the good news!

The bad news is that the actual cream is really very unpleasant. The cream is meant to taste like chocolate chip cookie dough. I get that. But let’s be frank, in most cases imitation cookie dough flavor tastes like shit, for lack of a better description. And this cream is no different. It tastes mostly of chemicals and fake sugar flavor, with just the slightest, slightest aftertaste of cookie dough, which is what effectively ruins these. The tiny bit of cookie flavor the cream has, is lost in the flavor of the wafers. And the wafer flavor really just gets mixed in with the funky chemical taste that overshadows the cream.

Choco-Chip Oreos honestly would be great if they featured plain chocolate cream filling, instead of this weird attempt at cookie dough flavored cream. They’d legitimately be a Top 5 Oreo flavor, but as is, they’re actually kind of gross. I might even be able to say “Ahh what the hell, give ’em a try.” except these limited Oreo flavors are always more expensive than normal varieties. Maybe someday they’ll resurrect them with a different filling, but until then, skip these.

Should you eat Choco-Chip Oreos?

No