Via Dad via email comes this amusing article about the invasion of the Oreo cookie to the UK. The money quote for me:

Some Britons might think the Oreo is strange-looking at first. But she’s confident that they will fall for the Oreo and what she calls the “child-like, delightful ritual” of licking the cream and dipping it in milk.

Others disagree. One tabloid newspaper has attacked those “Yanks” who are trying to “snatch the biscuit from our mouths and replace [it] with a tackier piece of inferior confectionary.” Another described the Oreo as “an imperial juggernaut of a biscuit backed by one of the world’s biggest food companies.”

Emphasis mine. That is too funny - like we’re trying to invade Britain by first taking over their cookie dominance. I’m sorry, the Oreo beats out McVities any day.

He describes British biscuits as “thoroughbreds” specially designed – in a Darwinian process of the survival of the dippiest – over generations to suit British tastes. For example, he notes, “Our love of tea-dipping has influenced the selection of flour and the temperature at which biscuits are baked. Our biscuits are built for dunking.”

Yet the Oreo, because of its high-sugar content, is “woeful” when it comes to being dunked in tea, he says. “In my experience, it dissolves. It’s not a survivor in tea terms like the British biscuit is.”

Oreos are designed exclusively for milk dunking, dude. Milk!

Still, Faizaan Sackett, a recruitment consultant, has found himself “raging” at Oreo ads on buses, seeing them as part of “the American invasion of snacks.

“Before we know it, the next generation of kids will not know the word biscuit at all,” he grumbles. “Whether it’s fast food, TV chat-shows, or cookies, we must resist all that is American for the sake of our own souls.”

Yeah, because we’re evil that way - soul sucking Americans with our dangerous cookies.

There are comments attached to the article. The funniest thing I’ve seen in the PC wars is the following:

Seems to me I last had Oreos about thirty years ago. The commercials show people dunking them. I never bothered (graham #### are better dunked). To each their own. I’d take no offense if the Brits don’t take a shine to it. And, frankly, I wonder why Nabisco is bothering. Some things don’t translate well into other cultures. I don’t do Oreos any more. I’d rather bake a batch of butterscotch oatmeal cookies than buy pre-packaged stuff.
fatesrider 2:51 AM

Apparently, the PC-bot could not discern that “cracker” in this instance was not a racial slur, but in fact tied to the preceding word “graham.” Somehow it strikes me as sad that an online newspaper is censoring reader comments like that.

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1. Too funny! I do love Oreos but, if given a choice between the two, would choose a McVities chocolate covered digestive over an Oreo any day.

   Posted by  on  05/19/08  at  09:24 AM

2. I know, thinking about it more I would opt for the McVities first. However, that is just because we can’t get them as easily.

   Posted by  on  05/19/08  at  09:39 AM

3. I’m with Marmie - I’d choose McVities ANYWAY over Oreos.  World Market carries them all the time, so they are relatively easy to get.  Mmmm.....McVities....*drool*

   Posted by Jaynee  on  05/19/08  at  10:48 AM

4. True, I hardly ever go to the World Market, though.

   Posted by  on  05/19/08  at  10:52 AM

5. I keep a stash of McVities in the freezer.  Shall I bring some to Disney?

   Posted by  on  05/19/08  at  06:00 PM

6. They won’t make it that far. I give it no further than Lynchburg, maybe Greensboro.

   Captcha is “his” as in, the McVities are his.

   Posted by  on  05/19/08  at  08:02 PM

7. I cry foul! Marmie and Pop will have the McVities in their car. We’re not in one car on the trip down, remember?

   *sigh*

   Maybe I need to go to World Market this week.

   

   Posted by  on  05/19/08  at  09:13 PM

8. This just in! ....

   Tractor Trailer Overturns, Spilling Oreo Cookies on Highway
   Monday , May 19, 2008
   MORRIS, Ill. —

   Got milk?

   Police say a trailer loaded with 14 tons of Oreos has overturned, spilling the cookies still in their plastic sleeves into the median and roadway.

   Illinois State Police Sgt. Brian Mahoney says the truck’s driver was traveling from Chicago to Morris on Interstate 80 around 4 a.m. Monday when he fell asleep at the wheel and slammed into the median.

   “The boxes came out of the trailer and boxes were ripped open,” he said.

   The crash about 50 miles southwest of Chicago remains under investigation.

   Mahoney says no charges have been filed, but both lanes of traffic remain closed while authorities remove the cookies, which were “Double Stuf Oreos.”

   Posted by  on  05/19/08  at  09:36 PM

9. What ever happened to the Kenny Burger ?

   Back in the mid-60’s, on Route 29 just north of Charlottesville, was a locally-owned and operated fast food place called Kenny’s. It’s specialty was a hamburger smothered in its own home-brewed BBQ sauce--that was a Kenny Burger. In Arlington, Va. we had the Golden Point, another locally-owned and operated burgerteria. Sadly, both are gone now, and the Golden arches are in their stead.

   To bring me to my point--we have become so homogenized now, regionally, nationally, and internationally, that everywhere you go, it all looks (and tastes) the same. MacDonalds on the Champs Elysees for Pete’s sake? What’s next--a Starbucks in Buckingham Palace ? So I think the Brit’s are right to complain and resist being sucked in by the voracious black hole of American culture and its icons.

   So keep the Oreo’s out of Britain and give me back my Kenny Burger.

   Posted by  on  05/20/08  at  12:13 PM

10. Uncle Bill - try Five Guys. The best burgers in the area.

    You have a point about homogenization, but it works both ways. We have incorporated all cultural things into American life, too. Think of all the Thai and Vietnamese restaurants you can find that didn’t used to exist.

    Posted by jen  on  05/20/08  at  01:11 PM

11. Oh I know--it’s a no-win situation. In all of Annandale, there are only 3 or 4 western-style restaurants, all the rest are Korean.

    If it works both ways, then I will welcome japanese violinists (with great pleasure) if the Japanese will let me be a Kabuki actor.

    BG

    Posted by  on  05/20/08  at  01:19 PM

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