The Oreo invades Britain
What fresh vulgarity have the Yanks brought now? Milk dunking!
from the May 13, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
The Oreo has landed in Britain. And it is giving rise to a furious Battle of the Biscuits.
The classic sandwich cookie may be as familiar and nostalgia-inducing as, well, Mom's apple pie for Americans, but the majority of us here have never seen or tasted one. Until now.
Now, Kraft, the makers of what some Brits refer to as "the black-and-white biscuit" is launching it across the United Kingdom in an advertising campaign that makes it hard for anyone who lives and breathes to avoid the Oreo message. Big blue-and-white posters on the sides of our iconic red buses implore us to "Twist Lick Dunk." A new TV commercial shows a young boy teaching his scruffy dog how to eat an Oreo: "First you twist it. Then you lick it. Mmm. Then you dunk it," he says, sploshing his Oreo into a glass of milk. This will be the first time that many Brits have seen a biscuit dipped in milk.
Supermarkets nationwide are promoting Oreos right at the checkout stands where the wait gives shoppers time to contemplate the curiosity.
Kraft hopes the Oreo will capture Britain as it has America (with 419 billion Oreos sold since they first appeared in 1912).
Since its 1996 launch in China, the Oreo has become the No. 1 biscuit in that vast country. But the Chinese Oreo is very different from the American one – it has less sugar and it is a crispy cream-filled wafer. The version being launched in Britain is the exact same as the American one. Only the packaging has changed. At 74 pence ($1.44) a go, we Brits will get our Oreos in a long, thin tube.
No biscuit in Britain is as dark as an Oreo – even the classic Bourbon, two thin chocolate biscuits with a chocolate filling, is light brown. So admits Jocelyn McNulty, director of UK biscuits at Kraft Foods.
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."
Blimey. Will we Brits soon be twisting, licking, and dunking like there's no tomorrow or erecting biscuit embargoes against the colonial cookie?
• • •
Britain is more than just a "biscuit market," warns Stuart Payne, author of "A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down." "There is a long history and culture in the way we consume our biscuits, and Oreo will have an uphill struggle convincing us to change our ways," he says.
We Brits are biscuit-mad. The British Department of Trade and Industry estimates that $3.1 billion is spent on biscuits here annually, and one newspaper estimated that the average Briton eats 1.5 tons of biscuits and cakes in his lifetime. There's the aforementioned chocolatey Bourbon; the Custard Cream, a vanilla-flavored biscuit with a baroque design stamped on it; the Rich Tea, a plain biscuit perfect for dunking in hot tea or coffee; the Jammie Dodger, a round shortbread sandwich of sticky raspberry jam. (My mouth watered as I typed that sentence.)
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