To my loyal readers, I regret to inform you that this week I will be taking a brief departure from my usual rantings about farm equipment and my thoughts on them to bring to you a larger observation about life. I understand that this comes much to the dismay of our Opinions section editor who recently told me that he from here on out he would like to be referred to as: “Admiral General Gottfried, Supreme Leader, Chief Ophthalmologist, Invincible, All Triumphant, Beloved Oppressor of the People of Brandeis and excellent swimmer, including butterfly.” He has made it strikingly clear that there is no further abbreviation for his new title as well. Whenever we are to address him we must use the full title and nothing short of it.

I am beginning to think that all the praise and flattery I had assigned to him in earlier articles has gone to his head. He is now so consumed in his own power that he cannot understand a world where it physically does not revolve around him. But how could you not think that when your smile illuminates the night sky and parts the clouds on rainy days? The flattery I have given to our Opinions editor, sorry I mean to Admiral General Gottfried, Supreme Leader, Chief Ophthalmologist, Invincible, All Triumphant, Beloved Oppressor of the People of Brandeis and excellent swimmer, including butterfly seems to be grounded. But alas, I must stop so that his insatiable desire for more power and flattery is diminished. To start this on the right foot I want to flat out express what should never be diminished: “Oreo Thins.”

Have you ever looked at an Oreo but thought to yourself, “this is too much cookie and not the right amount of cream?” Or perhaps tried to stomach more than three “mega stuf Oreo” cookies but then felt a sudden urge to throw up due to all of the food you just slammed down your pie hole? Well then I can tell you right now that you are certainly not alone in this fight against those tyrannical idiots at Nabisco. 

Let me introduce to you, only seven years after their first appearance on shelves across these United States, to “Oreo Thins.” This new cookie has simply perfected what it means to be an Oreo cookie. As someone who recently lost his “Oreo Thins” purity let me tell you that these little guys should be on the FDA’s gateway drug list. I cannot seem to stop purchasing those little baby blue boxes which are filled with the best cookie known to man that is an Oreo.

But what makes the “Oreo Thin” such a great cookie you ask? Well thank you for asking by the way but let me tell you exactly why this is the case! The entire cookie fits in your mouth and cracks like a potato chip when you eat it. It is so easy to slam one into your mouth and once you feel that satisfying crunch, another cookie will be sure to follow the last one shortly. But the reason you can enjoy the entire cookie in your mouth is sure, due to its small size, but the true answer is the perfection of proportions when it comes to the cookie and cream within one. 

The original Oreo was onto something big. A cookie that was really two cookies with a little cream filling holding it together in the middle; what an invention! I am sure it blew the suspenders of every early 20th century individual who tried one. But there was a clear issue with the cookie from its inception. People just wanted the cream! They would split the cookies to achieve greater access to the cream—a signal to the Oreo creators that there was too much cookie and not enough cream.

Unfortunately, Oreo went in every other direction when trying to alleviate this issue. They created Golden Oreos, an Oreo with vanilla cream and vanilla cookies on either side. What an oversight you Nabisco fools! You have the right components, just the incorrect amount. But Nabisco doubled down on their incorrect ways of creating cookie Frankenstein creations such as “Mint Oreos,” “Golden Chocolate Oreos,” “Double Stuf Oreos” and even “Mega Stuf Oreos.” Yet the issue persisted that people only wanted the cookie for the cream and not for the cookie eating experience. 

Then what I can only imagine happening at a Nabisco meeting in 2015 was that one brave soul stood up at an Oreo meeting and began preaching the Gospel according to Oreo perfection. This brave soul had the courage to say what none of the other people in the room did as he clearly recited what his wife had said to him a number of times, “No, you don’t need to be the biggest, you just need to be you and own up to it.” From there Nabisco knew that they had been going the wrong way all along, the race was never to create the largest cookie, but to create the perfect one. The larger cookies are far too painful and filling to be truly enjoyable, therefore what was needed was an understanding of what truly makes a good Oreo. 

In that moment the brave soul at Nabisco must have said something along the lines of, “if we want to be in more people’s pantries what we need is to shrink.” For it is not size that matters when making the perfect Oreo but proportion. Thus, the ideal Oreo was made. A cookie with the original design, vanilla cream between two chocolate cookies but shrunk in size. Creating the perfect ratio of what an Oreo cookie is. One with just enough cream that you taste it despite there being more cookies, but not too much in which it entices the consumer to split the cookie in an effort to just reach the cream. It is the modern existence of the “Oreo Thin” which gives me hope that every cookie will aspire to reach the top of the leader board as “Oreo Thins” have in my heart.

So this year, challenge yourself to not look for the cookie with the most inside it because what those cookies have in size they lack in quality. Bigger, as Nabisco found out after 80 years of product testing, is never the answer.