New product Wednesday, in Dallas stores: Limited edition strawberry milkshake creme Oreo

by Teresa Gubbins

The Oreo cookie has seen dozens of spin-offs in the past 20 years, some of them not-so enticing (dulce de leche), others (mint, golden) coming close to duplicating the appeal of the original cookie.

Strawberry Milkshake Creme falls somewhere between. It's a limited edition flavor, initially introduced last spring. It wasn't, however, widely available in Dallas stores. But the flavor got positive feedback from consumers and became a hot seller on ebay, so Nabisco re-issued it in March 2008. (It's not listed on the Web site at all, likely since it's a limited-edition product, though you'd think there would be a mention of it somewhere on the site).

The best thing about it is the texture. The cream is softer and creamier than the usual white filling, while the cookie portion stays quite crisp. The contrast is pleasing.

The flavor of the cream is another matter. It tastes like a McDonald's strawberry milkshake. This is good if you like McDonald's strawberry milkshakes, but as anyone who's had a McDonald's strawberry milkshake knows, it's not an "authentic-strawberry" flavor. It seems to please childrens immensely.

The other significant aspect of this product is that a package holds 24 cookies -- half as much as the usual 51 that come in a regular package of Oreos.

The fact that this limited edition has come out two years in a row makes it seem possible the flavor will be added to the regular rotation. No reason why it wouldn't; there are already 45 various spin-offs as it is.