I Tried 9 Oreo Flavors And Ranked Them From Worst To Best

If you're thinking, "Wow, Sarah, you've really made it if people are literally paying you to eat Oreo cookies," then you are correct: This is probably the pinnacle of my career, not least because I absolutely adore Oreo cookies and rarely (read: never) allow myself to buy nine packages at once. It was a real treat, as there are dozens of flavors from which to choose, especially if you wrap in the seasonal and gimmicky versions. Indeed, there have been so many over the years that some folks yearn for specific Oreo flavors to return.

And really, what can't you do with Oreo cookies? Almost everyone loves them, from your neighborhood two-year-old to the stateliest grandma. They're ideal for dunking with milk and make a perfect lunchbox treat. You can turn them into ice cream sandwiches or dirt cake. If it weren't for the fact that they'd be gone in three days (faster when PMS hits), I'd keep them in the cabinet year-round.

So, yeah, we like Oreo as a brand, but taste testing them did present a few problems. For one thing, there were so many flavors that we had to limit ourselves to the most common nine, eliminating any Double or Mega Stuf and novelty varieties. That meant we weren't able to include every seasonal flavor. For another, when you eat a kajillion Oreo cookies all at once, they start to taste the same. To counteract that, the family and I tried them on several different occasions (O, the hardship) to bring you the most accurate ranking of the worst and best flavors. Ready? Read on.

Toffee Crunch Oreo Cookies are ... best avoided. Like, seriously very bad, which is why they ranked worst in our entire lineup. Honestly, ugh. My first question, which I'd never have asked if I hadn't read the front of the package, is how do you artificially flavor something with sugar crystals? Isn't sugar natural? Are the sugar crystals a type of tiny rock candy, used to simulate the toffee effect? Whatever the case, it was not good, my friends. It was very not good.

There were signs the Toffee Crunch flavor would disappoint immediately upon opening the package. We were immediately hit by a blast of fake sugar smell, and not the good kind. Upon biting into the cookie, you got a powerful hit of faux buttercream frosting flavor, which was not improved by sampling the cookie, and tasted as though someone had added vanilla and butterscotch extracts to library paste. The cookies were fine because they always are, but the frosting itself was so atrocious that all four of us threw the second half of our sample away.

Overall, this was a disappointing experience because we all really like toffee. As the husband pointed out, had they used better ingredients, these likely would have been the best flavor, not the worst.

Birthday Cake Oreo cookies (which I could only find on Amazon in bulk) were only Slightly Less Not Good than Toffee Crunch. While they weren't the worst, by virtue of the fact that their frosting tasted more like actual frosting and less like buttercream-flavored poison, they were still pretty weird. The chocolate biscuit was per usual fine, but the crème on the inside tasted like a bizarre mix of cream cheese and fakeness, kind of like those pints of Betty Crocker cake frosting.

The husband's takeaway was that while he wasn't super into it, he would have been when he was younger and literally bought those pints to consume in one sitting. (Teenagers, amiright.) It is, he felt, at least true to its name, even if it wasn't that delicious. Overall, as Prue Leith says, this one is not worth the calories.

Now you're probably asking, "Did you count up all the calories in every package of Oreo cookies, Sarah?" And the answer is no, no I did not because if I did, I'd have to just end this simulation and restart my character. It's too depressing, and one shouldn't have to confront the realities of metabolism when one is simply trying to enjoy dozens of Oreo cookies, right?

Golden Oreo sandwich cookies are nearly as much of a classic as the regular chocolate variety at this point, at least according to the younger set, e.g., my children. While we millennials were like "Oh, yeah ... we've heard of them ... probably," the kiddos claimed to have seen these on the reg in school.

There's a reason they're popular, too: They're pretty darn good. I really liked it, personally, and thought it was better than the original cookie. The husband wasn't such a fan, labeling it "the white chocolate of the Oreo world" in what was most certainly intended to be a diss on white chocolate. The small boy appreciated it because it's not as crunchy as some other flavors, making it a smoother experience. The small girl agreed that while it is smoother, it's a little ho-hum for her taste, and has a slight chemical aftereffect. Overall, it didn't make it into the top half, but it's still quite decent.

I did notice, when resealing the Golden Oreo tray, that the packaging has improved over the years. Doesn't make it any less environmentally atrocious, but it sure does keep the cookies good longer, which prevents at least some waste.

Although the new Oreo Chocolate Covered Pretzel cookies are the first official sweet and savory cookie, this flavor does give them a run for their money with rich, umami, perfectly sweetened nut butter sandwiched between the classic biscuits. Peanut Butter Oreo cookies, which you can get on Amazon but for more than twice the price as in-store, were pretty good. Honestly, that they weren't ranked higher is more a product of the tastiness of other varieties than it is their own shortcomings.

Overall, the flavors of Oreo and peanut made for a good combo, which caused me to wonder if I'll like the new Reese's Oreo Milk Chocolate and White Creme Peanut Butter Cups. The husband pronounced it "better than I expected," while the small girl felt it should get credit for being exactly what it says it is: a peanut butter Oreo cookie. The small boy, who it must be noted doesn't like peanut butter, found it nasty.

While we wouldn't rank the Fudge Covered variety among the best Oreo flavors of all time, they were pretty decent, ranked midway down our list by dint of their deep chocolate flavor and rich coating on the outside. Once again, I could only find these on Amazon in bulk, but if you're having a big Halloween party and want a spooky base for some cookie bats or something, you could do worse than these.

As for flavor, they were pretty tasty. The inside of the cookie is a plain old Oreo, which is no bad thing, while the outside is a soft candy coating reminiscent of a TimTam. Unfortunately, it being a little too reminiscent of a TimTam, I kept simply wanting it to become one. The husband, for his part, thought it tasted like a low-rent Thin Mint without the mint flavor, which the small girl thought the chocolate coating was overpowering, and the small boy thought the inside texture was off. Our opinion, as a diehard family of TimTam lovers? Make it as good as a TimTam or don't make it at all. (Yes, I do think I could write the word "TimTam" more times in one article, but let's not try.)

The Lemon Oreo ranked more highly than I thought it should, but I must admit it wasn't bad. With a strong lemon flavor in the frosting and a Golden Oreo biscuit base, it was a decent addition to the Oreo opus. If it were sitting on a cookie tray by its lonesome, without other competing Oreo cookies around it, I wouldn't send it packing. However, I preferred the Golden variety. (Not so the rest of my family, which thought Golden Oreo cookies were sickeningly sweet without the lemon flavor to cut the sugar.)

The truth is, if I want lemon flavor, I'll buy a lemon bar. Since it didn't taste anything like an Oreo, it was kind of jarring to see an Oreo shape but have it taste like a lemon sandwich cookie. The cognitive dissonance was not my favorite experience, but no one else seemed to mind.

I will say that this might be a good for use in the Oreo cookie cupcake hack, wherein you split open an Oreo, place it frosting side up on the bottom of a cupcake wrapper, then pour cupcake batter over the top. This effectively blends the frosting with the batter as it bakes, while simultaneously softening up the cookie and offering a pleasant surprise at the bottom of the cupcake ... typically the most boring part, at least for those of us who live for frosting.

It's a little confusing to describe the classic Oreo cookie because it was both very good and very boring. We're all familiar with Oreo cookies from childhood, and it's a rare and crunchy grocery store that doesn't have at least one flavor on its shelves. After all, it's the original American cookie, right? (Well, actually, no. Oreo is a knockoff of the original chocolate and cream invention, Hydrox.) Still, you expect this version to provide a baseline for all other Oreo flavors, don't you? Yet honestly, it doesn't.

Mainly, that's because the filling was really lame. Not flavor-wise (it exhibited the same vanilla cream taste that you know you'll get from an Oreo) but rather amount-wise. These cookies were the stingiest of the entire lot, being about half as thick as some of the more generous ones we got: peanut butter and mint, for example. One wonders if they perhaps minimized it after introducing the Double and Mega Stuf, as a way of convincing people to buy them?

That said, while the original flavor was therefore a bit difficult to compare to the other varieties, our objections to this flavor were mostly philosophical. While both adults and children wanted more cream, and everyone agreed that the chocolate was a little overpowering as a result, these were still at the top of the list for a reason. And if you really want to give the original flavor more of a shot, you might try the Costco version, which (believe it or not) contains different ingredients.

Mint Oreo cookies were our second favorite for a reason. Indeed, both the husband and the small girl rated them best overall, but as I voted for Dark Chocolate over them, and I am the most important/intelligent/venerable, I had the swing vote. Anyway, the point is that they were essentially tied with our No. 1 spot, so you can safely buy them, especially if you enjoy Girl Scout Thin Mints.

Why did we love it? Let me count the ways. The minty cream was the perfect balance of sharp, menthol flavor without losing the rich, sugary sweetness. The chocolate in the cookies played perfectly with the cream flavor. The result was both visually appealing and delicious, and we could not stop eating them.

If you need more evidence of how good they are, here it is: The small girl has a seriously depressed sense of smell and taste since suffering a bad case of COVID-19 a few years ago, so she had a hard time getting the mint flavor ... and she still thought it was amazing. For his part, the small boy labeled the mint ratio "perfect."

I can confidently advise you never to eat nine Oreo cookies in one sitting, let alone nine different kinds. I can even more confidently recommend that you not eat 25 Oreo cookies in a day (but I challenge you to resist with nine packages of them in the house). It's not a skill I've mastered, myself, that's all I'm saying. However, if you were going to eat 25 Oreo cookies, let it be the Dark Chocolate flavor. If this were a Yelp review, I would give it 10,000 stars out of five; that's how good they were.

Both my husband and children agreed that these were excellent, with the small boy rating them his favorite as well. They were dark, fudgy, and rich, with the perfect mix of crunchiness from the outer cookies and creaminess from the filling. I loved that the filling was nearly as dark as the cookies themselves, which made for a dramatic effect. While Oreo cookies always look nostalgic on a dessert plate, I wouldn't consider them visually classy, per se. These, however, were and I would happily put them on a holiday dessert plate. All I can say is: Get them.

Ranking Oreo cookies is a bit difficult on account of the fact that many of them are delicious and, let's face it, sugar is sugar. The trusty taste test team — me, my husband, the small girl, and the small boy — loved them all, with few exceptions. However, we did use several ranking factors: visual appeal, frosting, and overall flavor. Because so many people twist open Oreo cookies and eat the frosting before consuming the cookies (especially good when you dunk them in milk), we felt we had to try the frosting separately. We then tasted the cookie with the frosting to get the overall effect, so to the best of our ability, we represented fans of both approaches in this ranking.

We also put visual appeal in the ranking. Some of the cookies were just dang pretty. The Mint was vibrant, the Dark Chocolate was dramatic, and the Birthday Cake cookie was just straight-up weird. Because I'm a true believer in the idea that you eat with your eyes first, I felt this mattered. (And when you see the otherwise delicious Peanut Butter Oreo, you will understand exactly what I mean.)

Note that neither price nor availability counted as a distinguishing factor. While you can't necessarily get every flavor online at Amazon, say (though I've done my best to link them where you can), you can definitely find them in a Walmart or neighborhood grocery store. As for price, each family-sized package of Oreo cookies costs $4.97, with the exception of the Fudge Covered Oreo package, which costs $4.17 instead due to its significantly smaller size and number of cookies.