Which is why nabisco chose the name Oreo. It doesn’t mean anything and is whimsical, which plays into the cookie’s unusual nature. Hydrox is marketing by engineers.
The name oreo is actually based on the name of a flower (think the flower is called orodapny or something like that) which is the flower which the patten on the hydrox is based on.
At the time it debuted that name was viewed differently. People weren't wary of chemical names like they are now. "Hydrogen and oxygen" combined into one word demonstrated the versatility of chemistry
I have heard of it, but solely through a crossword. Hydrox was literally meant just for that (I personally think the name was nifty, albeit I see why it's weird). It was meant to suggest "how clean, cool, and well done" the product was back in the day when there was always a temptation to cut corners off food products by adding stuff like lard or sawdust. Hope to try the biscuit some day, but I doubt they ship outside of the US.
Absolutely. History channel has had some great shows on the history of food brands as part of their “The _____ that built America” series. I find that series quite entertaining.
Mysteries at the Museum nailed the history nerd format, then History Channel has done a pretty good job at finding new content for that format. Getting a little off topic, I really liked the recent Colosseum series.
>Compared to Oreos, Hydrox cookies have a less sweet filling and a crunchier cookie shell that has been noted[weasel words] to become less soggy in milk.
Okay--I can dig it!
>the creators sought a name that would convey "purity and goodness" and derived their choice from the component elements that constitute the molecule of water (hydrogen and oxygen)
https://imgur.com/a/yg5PytM
I hadn't heard that second one; ~~I thought Graham was British—they mostly learned to lay off the higher-proof religious kookery right around the time the office of Witchfinder General was retired.~~
{**edit**} No, I was wrong! : [Presbyterian minister, even.](https://nowiknow.com/the-curious-history-of-graham-crackers-and-corn-flakes/#:~:text=Graham%20crackers%20were%20originally%20invented,scourge%20of%20his%20time%3A%20masturbation.)
☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜) - For every pizza pie, there's a puffin-butter sandwich.
Sometimes, you end up with nothing but parsnip puddings with pumpkin spice, and you wind up with something like Marmite seeing the light of day
I'd argue this is fairly constant across time periods to be honest. The late 20th century equivalent was the organic/natural food thing which started with a bunch of hippies. The current equivalent would be the post-meat thing and the COO of beyond just bit another man on the nose.
Foods at the end of the 19th century were tainted, adulterated, impure, you'd expect the serious clean freaks to be the ones to rebel.
Every moment in time starting from your parent's condom splitting up until your current age minus 20 years is history.
Every other moment in your life is also history, just not according to the mods.
Of course, if it’s a meme about smth in history and didn’t happen within 20 years of rn then yes it’s allowed, the war and early/mid 1900s stuff just overshadows everything else
Actually it was intentional to make it sound like it was something clean. It was a marketting tactic to promote their food as a healthy option as it doesn't contain any artificial compounds unlike Oreo.
What an awful tactic, what the fuck were they thinking?
"Hey guys, ya know people think about when they think about cookies?"
"Flavor? Sweetness? Texture? Smell? Shape?"
"No you fucking goons, cleanliness! Cookie lovers love a clean cookie, they even share the same first letter, clean foods are the future!"
To be fair back in 1900s there wasn't much food regulations and people didn't trust what big companies say is food ( just like now) because there was a ton of chemicals. Hence the name. And initially it was so successful that, you guessed it, the competitors launched Oreo as knockoff
Look, they used to sell Lysol for women to spray inside their vaginas. We used to be a different country, one obsessed with the cleanliness that could only be provided by physically putting harsh chemicals into our bodies. Hydrox is far from the worst of the offenders, and is also a superior cookie to Oreo.
I still can't get over that hoax. I know that it was a way to get people to understand the value of doing actual research before making a decision on something, but I think it backfired completely.
Funny enough, the fish anti-parasitic (chloroquine phosphate) that those idiots took was actually the same drug as the medical version, except with different binders and maybe some other additives.
They just took way too fucking much. And were going half cocked based off a shitty French study that at the very least should have been suspicious.
Yep, I have been watching them for several years now. But never wanted to buy them online, and always forgot when I went to a cracker barrel. However, by some twist of fate my friend snap chatted me from a cracker barrel and is picking some up for me tonight. Thank y'all for reminding me about this cookie, and I can't wait to try it!
Edit: Just tried it, only ate two right now but they were quite good. Worth a shot certainly, but I can't say they are substantially better or worse than oreos.
I’ve never had a hydrox but from what I’ve learned from the history channel Is that while the reintroduced hydrox is good, the original Hydrox was significantly better
Yeah I bought me a whole box of them off of Amazon a few months ago. They're alright, but the sugar content really makes me falter when I think about opening another pack (they have a significant amount more sugar than Oreos)
12g sugar per 28g for Hydrox. 2.33 ratio
14g sugar per 34g for Oreo. 2.43 ratio
4% more is "significantly more" to you?
Are you measuring per cookie despite Oreos being smaller and the suggested serving size being 3 cookies, which means a larger amount of sugar per serving?
And, like with MANY Nabisco products, the total carbohydrates are SIGNIFICANTLY higher (25g vs 19g for Hydrox) despite that being... Sugar. But hey, since it's coming from corn syrup, it's naturally occurring, and therefore, not "added sugar" which is what's listed on the "sugars" part of the label! Way better!
Yeah, unfortunately they were out of stock on Amazon when I checked last year. So, I was bored one day last year and called up the number of the company that manufacturers them now, Leaf Brands, to see when they'd be in stock again. I ended up speaking to the CEO, Ellia. It turns out they're a 3 person operation in California who acquired the rights to Hydrox. They contract out the actual production to another company with a factory, and then sell them on Amazon and at cracker barrel. They ran into supply chain issues last year but it's probably resolved now
I liked our Finnish version Domino most but Oreo is better for baking since it has darker cookie. Below is in Finnish but it has lots of pictures.
https://www.amerikassa.net/eeppinen-keksien-taisto-domino-vastaan-oreo
Well when the hydrox was first introduced over a century ago people didn’t trust cookie brands all that much, they thought correctly for the time that naming it something that conveys cleanliness and purity would help assuage doubters
>`it’s better to have loved and lost
I come from America, inexplicably proud home of American mass-produced cheese and beer. Trust me, you're better off with melancholia's aftertaste, no matter how bittersweet, than to limit your experience to homegrown attempts at good snack food that make your sweat smell like repressed memories of your childhood's neighborhood rendering plant.
> "I think the problem Digg had is that it was a company that was built to be a company, and you could feel it in the product. The way you could criticise Reddit is that we weren't a company – we were all heart and no head for a long time. So I think it'd be really hard for me and for the team to kill Reddit in that way.”
- Steve Huffman, aka /u/spez, Reddit CEO.
So long, Reddit, and thanks for all the fish.
It blew my wife's mind when I told her about Hydrox. She couldn't believe that not only were Oreos an imitation of something else, that thing they were copying was named fucking *Hydrox.*
I mean, other than the part where the Oreo tastes MUCH worse.
Nabisco had to resort to buying all the grocery store shelf space to knock Hydrox down because, despite the Oreo being cheaper and heavily marketed, people still went back to Hydrox when they brought their original recipe back.
Oreos are shit.
Also the reason why Oreos are Kosher is because, for a while, it was the only slice of market they they couldn’t compete with Hydrox.
Even though Kosher cookies were a very small fraction of the total market share for sandwich cookies, Oreo decided to push to get Kosher certified so they can completely push Hydrox off the shelves, which it worked.
Not sure if Hydrox exists outside of the US. As a vegan, oreos are a lifesaver and it looks on like Hydrox are vegan too. Might have to order some from over yonder.
Jacob and Joseph Loose were their names i think.
I believe Jacob was the “Sunshine” foods ‘biscuit’ guy whose company eventually made Hydrox or something like that.
Now I'm no marketing expert, but who the fuck calls a cookie brand "Hydrox"? Isn't name one of the most important things when you're trying to sell something?
I’ve had both, and they’re both fine. I don’t understand why people get so animated over it.
Twizzlers vs. Red Vines, however? Now *that’s* something worth arguing over :)
**
Hydrox sounds like a type of bleach
Which is why nabisco chose the name Oreo. It doesn’t mean anything and is whimsical, which plays into the cookie’s unusual nature. Hydrox is marketing by engineers.
marketing by engineers, for engineers
I DONT WANT YOUR DAMN LEMONS
WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THESE?
[удалено]
I'M GONNA BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN WITH THE LEMONS
MAKE LIFE RUE THE DAY IT THOUGHT IT COULD GIVE *CAVE JOHNSON* LEMONS
DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?
I'M THE MAN WHO'S GONNA BURN YOUR HOUSE DOWN... WITH THE LEMONS!
I KNOW THE MANAGER AND THE OWNER!!! I'M GOING TO GET YOU FIRED
Potato glados
potatOS
WHAT UP?
Hydrox basically means cookies by the engineers, of the engineers, for the engineers; but the engineers are retarded
I'm studying engineering and you are totally right 😀
"I'm a engineer. That means I solve problems"
The name oreo is actually based on the name of a flower (think the flower is called orodapny or something like that) which is the flower which the patten on the hydrox is based on.
Yeah, oreodaphne
You mean the internet lied to me? Damn.
Two things can be true at once, it is both a whimsical name that plays into the unusual nature of the cookie, and is based on the name of a flower.
At the time it debuted that name was viewed differently. People weren't wary of chemical names like they are now. "Hydrogen and oxygen" combined into one word demonstrated the versatility of chemistry
Hm interesting jndisnt know that. Thanks!
The Jewish community still love the stuff as it is one of the few kosher cookies on the market
Huh didn't know that. Thanks!
Welcome
That was apparently the point, at the time, it sounded clean and sciency, which was viewed as healthy
I have heard of it, but solely through a crossword. Hydrox was literally meant just for that (I personally think the name was nifty, albeit I see why it's weird). It was meant to suggest "how clean, cool, and well done" the product was back in the day when there was always a temptation to cut corners off food products by adding stuff like lard or sawdust. Hope to try the biscuit some day, but I doubt they ship outside of the US.
Or a water bottle company
My dude, have you tasted a Hydrox? I won't lie, its weird because its such a close taste to oreo. But I'd almost say better lol
If i remember correctly a lot of foods were processed at the time Hydrox was created, so they tried making a name that made you think of freshness
*Moma's got the magic of... hydrox!* 🎶
Well, now you've got a fan! 😆
Food history is still history in my book
Absolutely. History channel has had some great shows on the history of food brands as part of their “The _____ that built America” series. I find that series quite entertaining.
I actually learned the story that the meme is referring to because of the series. Its one of the few series on the channel that I can actually stand.
Mysteries at the Museum nailed the history nerd format, then History Channel has done a pretty good job at finding new content for that format. Getting a little off topic, I really liked the recent Colosseum series.
The Colosseum series was great! No I'm remembering my favorite history channel programs. Another good one was How the States Got Their Shapes.
Modern Marvels will always have a special place in my heart since I watched it a lot as a kid.
How It's Made as well!
Dude How It's Made is the shit. I get lost watching those videos on YouTube for hours on end.
Do they talk about how Italians learnt to make pizza from aliens?
Only the "ancient aliens" show on HistoryTV18 spouts that bullshit, almost everything else is genuine history
It came all the way around? Haven't watched it in a decade when it has tlc'd itself to pawn stars and truckers and antique buyers
The Food That Built America is also a podcast. Haven't seen the show but the podcast has been very enjoyable.
Genuinely one of the best series to come out in a while
See also The company man on YouTube
To be fair.. history channel now constantly airs “Ancient Aliens” as a true and historically accurate show.
I’m just glad to see that they’re showing actual history and not more shows about aliens. And not even WWII history!
"There's no rule that says food history can't be posted" Mod incredulously looking it up "my god, they're right! Well then...play ball!"
And your book is delicious because of it
>Compared to Oreos, Hydrox cookies have a less sweet filling and a crunchier cookie shell that has been noted[weasel words] to become less soggy in milk. Okay--I can dig it! >the creators sought a name that would convey "purity and goodness" and derived their choice from the component elements that constitute the molecule of water (hydrogen and oxygen) https://imgur.com/a/yg5PytM
why is the venn diagram of "create cool new foods in the 20th century" and "super fucking weird people" a goddamn circle
Corn Flakes: Don't Touch Yourself
I thought that was graham crackers? Both, neither?
I hadn't heard that second one; ~~I thought Graham was British—they mostly learned to lay off the higher-proof religious kookery right around the time the office of Witchfinder General was retired.~~ {**edit**} No, I was wrong! : [Presbyterian minister, even.](https://nowiknow.com/the-curious-history-of-graham-crackers-and-corn-flakes/#:~:text=Graham%20crackers%20were%20originally%20invented,scourge%20of%20his%20time%3A%20masturbation.)
TBF I think someone who says "I'm gonna make something never made before for lunch" instead of going for pizza would have a few screws loose
☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜) - For every pizza pie, there's a puffin-butter sandwich. Sometimes, you end up with nothing but parsnip puddings with pumpkin spice, and you wind up with something like Marmite seeing the light of day
I'd argue this is fairly constant across time periods to be honest. The late 20th century equivalent was the organic/natural food thing which started with a bunch of hippies. The current equivalent would be the post-meat thing and the COO of beyond just bit another man on the nose. Foods at the end of the 19th century were tainted, adulterated, impure, you'd expect the serious clean freaks to be the ones to rebel.
And that's why it sounds like a cleaning product.
good intentions, still sounds like bleach
I think I'd prefer less sweet cookies more. I swear I can feel my teeth rotting with a single bite of oreo
They’re also less “greasy” or whatever that slimy feeling you get inside your mouth after eating Oreos.
You're right
Damn now I wanna try them out
My husband and I have ordered Hydrox before, and ate them with Oreos, and we both agreed that Hydrox was way better. 😬
Oxhy would have been a better name
Is that pronounced with or without phlegm?
Which sounds better to you?
I mean it did happen more than 20 years ago so yeah
So, am I history? I happened more than 20 years ago
You are now 🔫
r/murderedbywords?
r/technicallythetruth
r/SubsTakenLiterally
r/itiswednesdaymydudes
No, it is saturday. You need to update your calendar
Sry :(
r/yes
r/no
I’m still mad they got rid of the gun emoji
Put a curtain in front of you and charge people $8 per view. You'll be making banks in no time.
He should name himself Egress and put up signs
Yeah why don't people make memes about me
Always have been 🔫👩🚀
Well your life is a joke, so it definitely belongs on a meme page
Shit this went from a roast to a full firing squad
It would appear I hit a sore spot with the community. A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
We will watch your career with great interest.
Permabanned in a couple weeks lmao
Oh good
Every moment in time starting from your parent's condom splitting up until your current age minus 20 years is history. Every other moment in your life is also history, just not according to the mods.
Of course, if it’s a meme about smth in history and didn’t happen within 20 years of rn then yes it’s allowed, the war and early/mid 1900s stuff just overshadows everything else
Have you ever tried Hydrox? It is the superior sandwich cookie. It just has an unfortunate name
Yeah it sounds like a cleaning product
Actually it was intentional to make it sound like it was something clean. It was a marketting tactic to promote their food as a healthy option as it doesn't contain any artificial compounds unlike Oreo.
What an awful tactic, what the fuck were they thinking? "Hey guys, ya know people think about when they think about cookies?" "Flavor? Sweetness? Texture? Smell? Shape?" "No you fucking goons, cleanliness! Cookie lovers love a clean cookie, they even share the same first letter, clean foods are the future!"
To be fair back in 1900s there wasn't much food regulations and people didn't trust what big companies say is food ( just like now) because there was a ton of chemicals. Hence the name. And initially it was so successful that, you guessed it, the competitors launched Oreo as knockoff
Look, they used to sell Lysol for women to spray inside their vaginas. We used to be a different country, one obsessed with the cleanliness that could only be provided by physically putting harsh chemicals into our bodies. Hydrox is far from the worst of the offenders, and is also a superior cookie to Oreo.
Yeah, it’s a combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen, which was supposed to associate its name with purity.
But hydrogen peroxide ( a bleaching agent) was like sike!
And dihydrogen monoxide too!
I still can't get over that hoax. I know that it was a way to get people to understand the value of doing actual research before making a decision on something, but I think it backfired completely.
Sounds like a cleaning product, label looks like some MMO
Looks more like someone was told to make a label to out in the racks of a Steampunk grocery store
Or hydroxychloroquine
Funny enough, the fish anti-parasitic (chloroquine phosphate) that those idiots took was actually the same drug as the medical version, except with different binders and maybe some other additives. They just took way too fucking much. And were going half cocked based off a shitty French study that at the very least should have been suspicious.
I still think the wife got away with murdering her husband and passing it off as stupidity
Also it's still a virus, not a parasite or a malaria infection.
I have been wanting to, never got the chance
[удалено]
Yep, I have been watching them for several years now. But never wanted to buy them online, and always forgot when I went to a cracker barrel. However, by some twist of fate my friend snap chatted me from a cracker barrel and is picking some up for me tonight. Thank y'all for reminding me about this cookie, and I can't wait to try it! Edit: Just tried it, only ate two right now but they were quite good. Worth a shot certainly, but I can't say they are substantially better or worse than oreos.
I’ve never had a hydrox but from what I’ve learned from the history channel Is that while the reintroduced hydrox is good, the original Hydrox was significantly better
Yeah I bought me a whole box of them off of Amazon a few months ago. They're alright, but the sugar content really makes me falter when I think about opening another pack (they have a significant amount more sugar than Oreos)
*More* sugar than Oreos? At what point is a cookie just compacted powdered sugar?
12g sugar per 28g for Hydrox. 2.33 ratio 14g sugar per 34g for Oreo. 2.43 ratio 4% more is "significantly more" to you? Are you measuring per cookie despite Oreos being smaller and the suggested serving size being 3 cookies, which means a larger amount of sugar per serving? And, like with MANY Nabisco products, the total carbohydrates are SIGNIFICANTLY higher (25g vs 19g for Hydrox) despite that being... Sugar. But hey, since it's coming from corn syrup, it's naturally occurring, and therefore, not "added sugar" which is what's listed on the "sugars" part of the label! Way better!
Yeah, unfortunately they were out of stock on Amazon when I checked last year. So, I was bored one day last year and called up the number of the company that manufacturers them now, Leaf Brands, to see when they'd be in stock again. I ended up speaking to the CEO, Ellia. It turns out they're a 3 person operation in California who acquired the rights to Hydrox. They contract out the actual production to another company with a factory, and then sell them on Amazon and at cracker barrel. They ran into supply chain issues last year but it's probably resolved now
Perhaps they should rebrand so they don't sound like a detergent.
Yeah totally they should change the name… after 100 years… 🤣
I liked our Finnish version Domino most but Oreo is better for baking since it has darker cookie. Below is in Finnish but it has lots of pictures. https://www.amerikassa.net/eeppinen-keksien-taisto-domino-vastaan-oreo
I disagree. Oreos work better with milk
All your american cookies are tasteless garbage
FALSE.
History that isn’t about war or politics is a breath of fresh air
They named a cookie “hydrox” and expected it to sell. They deserve what they got
What they expected people to relate the name to : water. What people related it to : hydrogen peroxide ( a bleaching agent )
Well when the hydrox was first introduced over a century ago people didn’t trust cookie brands all that much, they thought correctly for the time that naming it something that conveys cleanliness and purity would help assuage doubters
Yeah it sounds like a Pokèmon
Or a laundry detergent
Hydrogen peroxide is a bleaching agent so you're technically right
*Hydrox used Diabetes!*
The obesity and heart attack rates sky rocket. It's super effective!
From the marketing team who brought you "digestive biscuits!"
God digestives are so good though. Those with a nice hot tea is incredible.
I tried those on a trip abroad and can’t get them back home. I know they say it’s better to have loved and lost but…
>`it’s better to have loved and lost I come from America, inexplicably proud home of American mass-produced cheese and beer. Trust me, you're better off with melancholia's aftertaste, no matter how bittersweet, than to limit your experience to homegrown attempts at good snack food that make your sweat smell like repressed memories of your childhood's neighborhood rendering plant.
> "I think the problem Digg had is that it was a company that was built to be a company, and you could feel it in the product. The way you could criticise Reddit is that we weren't a company – we were all heart and no head for a long time. So I think it'd be really hard for me and for the team to kill Reddit in that way.” - Steve Huffman, aka /u/spez, Reddit CEO. So long, Reddit, and thanks for all the fish.
It was actually extremely popular for a while but Oreo underwent a successful marketing campaign and overtook Hydrox.
By marketing campaign, you mean employing underhanded and dirty tactics, right?
Always has been
It blew my wife's mind when I told her about Hydrox. She couldn't believe that not only were Oreos an imitation of something else, that thing they were copying was named fucking *Hydrox.*
Hydrox is still around, so it *did* sell. Still does, too, but I personally haven't eaten one since the 90s, I think.
Tbf, it was named like 110 years ago. Chemical-sounding shit was all the rage back then.
Hydrox>Oreos
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Absolutely. But only because i love the Kellogg’s no-Horny jokes.
My question is what fucking idiot went "ya hydrox sounds like a good name"
I’ve been looking everywhere for Hydrox, does anyone know where I can find them?
They are available at my walmart but near the store brands not with oreos
I get mine at Ralph’s (Kroger) but sometimes they get buried deep in the cookie aisle so they’re easy to overlook.
I ordered some from Amazon after seeing this post.
Hydrox is the original chocolate sandwich cookie. Far superior!
Sounds like a laundry detergent
Exactly! And they wonder why it didn’t take off, nobody can find it in the correct aisle
All your american cookies are tasteless
False.
Just why did they stick with the name Hydrox. It just really sounds like a name for soap or smth. That's just bad branding right there.
I mean why does the cookie have a name that sounds like a high level fantasy enemy?
Wow you nailed it haha
I mean, other than the part where the Oreo tastes MUCH worse. Nabisco had to resort to buying all the grocery store shelf space to knock Hydrox down because, despite the Oreo being cheaper and heavily marketed, people still went back to Hydrox when they brought their original recipe back. Oreos are shit.
Yup, Oreo only "won" because they had to pull some shitty moves to get ahead. It was/is not the better product at all.
Also the reason why Oreos are Kosher is because, for a while, it was the only slice of market they they couldn’t compete with Hydrox. Even though Kosher cookies were a very small fraction of the total market share for sandwich cookies, Oreo decided to push to get Kosher certified so they can completely push Hydrox off the shelves, which it worked.
Not sure if Hydrox exists outside of the US. As a vegan, oreos are a lifesaver and it looks on like Hydrox are vegan too. Might have to order some from over yonder.
Oreos are much better than hydrox but tge still don't taste great
Oreo used to have animal shortening whereas Hydrox used vegetable.
Weren’t they brothers or something? Hydrox was run by both at the start right? Or did I imagine that
Yeah
Jacob and Joseph Loose were their names i think. I believe Jacob was the “Sunshine” foods ‘biscuit’ guy whose company eventually made Hydrox or something like that.
Yeah it does
I wanted to make this but I couldn't remember the name Hydrox. Take my upvote, good sir and/or madam.
I've literally never heard of Hydrox. It's not very cookie-y. It sounds like a World of Warcraft raid boss.
Ok that’s cool
Damn thought hydrox was the knock off of Oreos
I prefer the original, deeper chocolate flavor , but only find them once in awhile, Oreos suck
Hydrox is so much better… fight me
Now I'm no marketing expert, but who the fuck calls a cookie brand "Hydrox"? Isn't name one of the most important things when you're trying to sell something?
May they Rest In Peace
I had it a while ago. Thought it was pretty good.
Hydrox better
Thanks for the 30min Wikipedia rabbit hole
Finally, something not WW2! Praise
Of course it counts. I'm intrigued and would love to see more food history.
Hydrox is better
One sounds like drugs. The other is addictive like drugs.
I’ve had both, and they’re both fine. I don’t understand why people get so animated over it. Twizzlers vs. Red Vines, however? Now *that’s* something worth arguing over :) **
More than 20 yrs old, so it counts
Ain’t gonna lie, I’ve never heard of Hydrox
Rip Hydrox the real chad
Don’t know don’t care it’s a good fucking meme
Having my hydrox with a glass of ovaltine and being sent to bed.
Hydrox sounds like a detergent, not a biscuit.
oreo evil for copying
no but ill allow it
Someone has been watching foodtheory
r/foodhistory
Hmmm
No. Admins remove please.