I Want M(Oreo): Chips Ahoy! Ladies
I have very few inconsequential things in my life that I would say I am fiercely adamant about: Steve Harrington is the character on Stranger Things with the most interesting arc, Battlestar Galactic freaking nailed that ending, and chocolate chip cookies are the absolute best cookie when they are done right and absolutely terrible when done wrong. To me, Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip cookies are an American tragedy.
Which is to say, I may have had some trepidation when seeing that my beloved Oreo was making a combo ice cream with Chips Ahoy!. Before we approach this frozen treat(?) though, let’s mount a quick sail through some chocolate chip history. When you Google Chips Ahoy!, one of the first things to come up is the question: “why are chips ahoy so good?” An interesting query indeed. According to an article on little known facts about these “cookies,” is that each package supposedly contains 1,000 chocolate chips. Which honestly sounds absurd until you do the math. There’s roughly 30 cookies in a container and so about 33 chips a cookie, which is too many, but they are small chips.
Chips Ahoy! debuted in 1963, so roughly 50 years after Oreo. Nabisco was quick to point out that the name was a reference to the phrase, “Ships ahoy!” in case that was lost on anyone. The cookie originally featured a mascot, Cookie Man, who would fight off any creatures that would dare to eat the cookies. Strips featuring Cookie Man were included in the packages of cookies. Cookie Man was later replaced by the creepy anthropomorphic singing chocolate chip cookies that haunted the commercials of my childhood. And then I “coincidentally” grew up to be a horror writer. Interesting.
Unlike its glorious Nabisco colleague, the Oreo, Chips Ahoy! has had relatively few twists on its original form, though it does come in a chewy variety as well. The cookie featured in the 2-in-1 Oreo & Chips Ahoy! ice cream recently put out by Oreo appeared to be the classic and crispy version. When I picked up the Frankenstein’s Monster-esque container, I expected to enjoy the Oreo half and resent the other half. Upon opening the package, I was way too delighted by the neat halves of ice cream that mingled only slightly in the middle. This is basically magic, I said to my rightfully baffled partner, as if I’d literally never seen anything remotely interesting in my life.
The ice cream itself? The Oreo side was a pleasantly creamy but unexceptional cookies & cream (ranking at mid-level on my list of best versions of this ice cream variety). But in a shocking twist, the Chips Ahoy side was oddly quite tasty? It tasted exactly like a chocolate chip cookie that has gone soggy with milk. Which is exactly what you’d want it to taste like. To my utter dismay, I liked it? I feel set adrift and chipwrecked by this revelation.
