What Goes Around

Most Baby Boomers vividly remember the "poor hungry children in China" who were, somehow, growing hungrier just because we brats wouldn't clean our plates at the dinner table.

Now, it turns out, those kids in China are not only eating tons of America's favorite sandwich cookie, the Oreo, but a fancy-schmancy Oreo created exclusively for them.

According to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, Kraft has "reinvented" the iconic cookie to make it sell better in the world's most populous nation. It's not a sandwich anymore. And it's not round. Instead,  the Chinese Oreo is made of four layers of long, thin, crispy wafers, filled with vanilla and chocolate cream, and coated with chocolate. I guess you'd call it the culinary version of re-inventing the wheel. (I don't quite understand, by the way, why the wrapper shows a round cookie if the product inside is rectangular.)

I will give credit, however, to Kraft for "going with the flow."  The world's second largest food company is currently undergoing what Chief Executive Irene Rosenfeld sees as a kind of "entrepreneurial transformation." That means giving the Chinese market a wispy,  four-layered wafer cookie if that's what the Chinese market wants. (Seems to me that's what the Kit Kat is for.)

I'm particularly impressed with Kraft's grassroots marketing campaign in China to "educate" the consumer about Oreos. Apparently 300 students were hired as "brand ambassadors" to ride around Beijing on bicycles with wheel covers that resemble the real Oreo. Other students have held Oreo-themed basketball games to reinforce the American notion of dunking cookies in milk.

I'm certainly willing to taste the reinvented Oreo...you know, in the interest of international cultural understanding, etc. But I'm pretty sure it won't be as much fun as the traditional experience: Take one sweet-smelling Oreo. Twist ever so gently 'til the sides pop apart. Dunk the plain side in milk and eat.  Then s-l-o-w-l-y scrape the creamy white stuff off the other half with your teeth and bask in the feeling of being 10 years old again.