Sometimes Foodie: New Oreo Thin Flavors: Coconut & Salted Caramel

Coconut & Salted Caramel Oreo Thins- Walmart

It's been a minute since my last post, and since then my household has gained: a chalkboard wall, an 18" deep trench around the pool, a friendly baby chinchilla, and a thriving cherry tomato plant. I've also (unfortunately) discovered and destroyed a bunch of poison ivy in the yard (after kneeling in it, oops.), and I've managed to dismantle a small chunk of my cardboard-castle-filled living room. Who knew I had so much stuff?! (And so few chinchillas.)

So yeah, it's been quite the adventure, but it's a fun adventure, so let's celebrate some slim victories with some slim cookies!

When Oreo thins were announced I was a non-believer. I thought it was a scammy marketing trick to make consumers to get significantly less cookie for only slightly lower prices while thinking they were saving calories in the process. I declared shenanigans...but after trying them, I changed my tune. I still say it's not the best value for you money, but they are really delicious. Something about the thinner cookie and significantly less creme filling makes these addicting, like potato chips! It's a dangerous game, because they're so easy to eat...well played, Oreo. Well played.

Even though Oreo thins appeal to a wide audience, this packaging and it's flavors target the young adult-to-adult bracket. I mean, salted caramel? Sounds great to me, not so great when I pitch it to 7 and 10 year olds. The packaging is a smaller, rectangular version of the usual peel-top package, and there are no fancy illustrations or bells and whistles when it comes to announcing which flavor is which. It's nice branding and I love the thin typeface, but something about it feels stuck between casual snacking and pinkies-up food fodder.

Let's start with the one I was the most excited for, coconut.

Inside the package are tightly packed rows of thin chocolate cookie disks with hints of white creme filling peeking out around the edges. The cookies smell sweet and nutty, like canned coconut crema, with a hint of dark cocoa powder. I dig it.

I took a bite as-is, and the chocolate cookie mellows out the coconut filling more than I would have liked, but it's still pretty darn good. Almost like a Mounds bar. Just replace the shredded coconut being stuck in your teeth all day with a crunchy crispy chocolate cookie. Not bad, not bad at all. Coconut lovers may desire more, but for general snacking, this is quite lovely.

On it's own, the creme filling has more of the coconut-crema flavoring I had been hoping for, but that's to be expected. Every fancy flavored Oreo we've ever had is mellowed out by it's cookie exterior, it is what it is, and even though it's mellow...it's still yummy.

Next up, Salted Caramel.

This flavor was a riskier buy for me. Salted caramel is yummy, but it's a victim of the foodie-hype-machine. It's everywhere, and for the most-part, commercial products just don't do this sweet and salty flavor duo justice. They try to recreate the flavor without using either of the real components and without any texture. In the end, things are either too sweet or too artificial.

Once opened, the cookies smell like caramel and coffee? I'm getting flashbacks to the Cookie Dough Oreos I reviewed a few years ago that also had some underlying coffee notes. It's a really nice aroma, but at first sniff, I would have thought these were caramel coffee flavored.

Combined, the first thing you taste is the mild vanilla cookie, it takes a few chews before the filling starts to shine, and when it does...I'm eating my words. These are so good! In my defense, they don't taste like real salted caramel, but they are so delicious and addicting that I really don't care. It reminds me of homemade fudge and free fudge samples on the boardwalk.

The cookie wafers mellows out the filling when eaten together, but when you eat the filling on it's own, there are some grains of salt mixed in there to amp up the saltiness while adding some gritty texture.

Sometimes gut feeling are wrong. I went into this thinking coconut would be the end-all-be-all of Oreo thins, combining my love of the superior-chocolate cookie base and creamy coconut into a perfect crispy cookie. Instead, I've been converted to the vanilla-cookie-caramel-side. The coconut ones are okay, and I still enjoy them, but the salted caramel is where it's at. They're really yummy, and satisfy my craving for salty snacks and sweets at my desk, and so far everyone that has tried them agrees that the caramel taste far better than they ever expected.