This Chips Ahoy Collab Has To Be Seen To Be Believed

There’s always a strange food collaboration to talk about. And I mean always. Every week, we receive news of an odd new partnership that feels designed to grab attention – and hey, if the food that comes out is good, then that’s sort of a bonus, right? To prove my point: In the last few months, we’ve seen Cinnamon Toast Crunch work with Chamoy Mega on a new cereal, Wingstop has teamed up with Sour Patch Kids, and KFC China has dropped an Oreo chicken burger. It has been a particularly wild time, and we’ve watched with a sense of awe as these collabs keep on a-comin’. 

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This latest one, though, is especially…can I say unnerving? Because it does feel slightly unnerving. Chips Ahoy has just announced that it’s working with Heinz to release a tomato cookie. Saddle up. 

Chips Ahoy x Heinz: What’s Going On?

The cookie giant and the sauce giant have joined forces in China to release a limited-edition (in case there was any doubt) cookie that is mentally setting my tastebuds alight, and not necessarily in a good way. Dexerto and Foodbeast have both reported that the result of this collaboration is a tomato sweet chili-flavored cookie, which is studded with red chips. The release was accompanied by marketing images of the cookies sitting on a tray, surrounded by tomatoes and chilies, with steam coming off them, presumably to indicate how spicy they are. 

Apparently, they are pretty spicy – and what may come as a surprise is that people are saying they’re surprisingly good. According to Delish, customers have been reviewing the cookies on Chinese social media platform RedNote and have said the cookies have a strong tomato note and a balance of sweetness to savoriness. The spice, meanwhile, is there, but not over-the-top. It all fits into the never-ending swicy trend that seems to be infiltrating more and more foods as each day goes on. I thought we were past that, but apparently not. 

The Rise Of The Savory Cookie

This new Chips Ahoy flavor feels ever-so-slightly reminiscent of Oreo’s recent Chicken & Waffles Cookies, insofar as both of them trade in savory flavors as well as sweet ones. Like Chips Ahoy and Heinz’s new product, the Chicken & Waffles cookie was a surprise – we found it to be not half-bad, although that’s not a sentiment shared by everyone. So what does the future hold? Are we gonna get more sweet-savory mashups like these? I’d say it’s likely. Will they win everyone over? Absolutely not. How many weird food collabs are we going to see in the coming year? A lot of them.