Say Goodbye to Oreo O’s…and Hello to Oreo Puffs

Much like whomever’s daddy is at the body shop in that one song by Sam Smith, Oreo O’s are doing something unhole-y. That is to say, they will no longer be Oreo O’s but will instead live out their days as little, round puffs. Oreo Puffs to be exact (get it? unhole-y?). Now you may be thinking, “Doesn’t that just make them Cocoa Puffs? Are they slapping ‘Oreo’ branding on a cereal that already exists and convincing us it is Oreo related? Are we being punked by Big Cereal?” All good questions, and I am happy to report that we have answers to most of them.

So are Oreo Puffs just Oreo-branded Cocoa Puffs or not? What was wrong with the original O’s that Post needed to call in the big puffs? Do they taste different than Oreo O’s?

Much like Oreo O’s, these new Oreo Puffs purport to be produced with real, actual “Oreo cookie wafers” in the mix. As for what that actually means, we are not so sure. Maybe they crumble a single Oreo cookie into a gigantic vat of cornmeal just to say it’s in there, or maybe they actually add a lot of crushed cookies to the puff mix—that’s Post’s secret and they aren’t talking. We can, however, try Oreo Puffs (they’re already hitting stores!) and gauge their level of Oreo flavor for ourselves. We also happen to know that unlike Oreo O’s, Oreo Puffs come with little marshmallows (we realize the Mega Stuf Oreo O’s had ‘shmallows, but that cereal was a limited release, so it doesn’t count). That said, based on the color and appearance, I don’t think these will taste exactly like Cocoa Puffs. My guess is that they will taste a bit more like alkalized cocoa. In fact, this new Oreo cereal looks almost exactly like Kellogg’s recently released Wednesday cereal, which had a dark, bitter cocoa flavor we actually didn’t love.

As yet, no one is sure why Post made the switch from Oreo O’s to Oreo Puffs. Maybe Big Cereal has done research concluding that puffs are more in demand than O’s with the youths. Maybe the puff-and-marshmallow combo just has a better mouthfeel than the marshmallow-and-O’s combo. If Post had no other O-shaped cereals, then I’d think they could be moving to the puff shape to increase their profits and decrease production costs, but they do have another O-shaped cereal (Honey Ohs!), so my theory simply doesn’t work.

But there’s this: Until now, Post didn’t have a chocolate puff cereal in its roster. Now they can directly compete with Cocoa Puffs. And if there is one thing I know about capitalism, it is that you are supposed to compete with people by making copycat chocolate puffs and seeing what happens. Post/Oreo has done just that, so now I guess we will all see how the cookie cereal crumbles. And we will definitely have to try new Oreo Puffs to see how they stack up to the O’s.