08.26.08
Or perhaps Greek for “water ox”?
I admit to feeling cookie deprived. The grand celebration that resulted when the Kellogg company brought back Hydrox cookies on August 21 took me by surprise—mainly because I’d never heard of Hydrox cookies. My obliviousness came not because the treats were before my time; they were very much in my time, but I guess I was too caught up in almond windmill cookies, edible wax lips, Milk Duds, Mallo Cups, and those little wax bottles filled with some kinda sugar liquid inside to pay attention to this pre-Oreo crème-sandwiched-by-chocolate cookie.
Hydrox cookies were introduced in 1908 by Sunshine Biscuits. Competitor Oreo came double-rolling along in 1912. (Neither of which are my time, in case you were wondering.) Eighty-eight years later, Keebler swallowed up the Biscuits, and Kellogg subsequently gobbled up the elves in an apparent quest to monopolize companies beginning with K. Comes 2003, and Kellogg dropped the cookie brand, since renamed (more on that in a moment).
Fading sales apparently doomed Hydrox. I’ve not seen a lot of detail on what might have forced a sales decline, but I’ll offer a possible contributor. The name.
Certainly, a number of factors worked against Hydrox, though the product itself is not likely at fault given how ravenous the fandom is (apparently phone calls and letter-writing inspired the revival). But for the moment consider a name that I don’t think aged very well, one that now sounds like a plant food, a faucet-spigot cleaner, a character in a Douglas Adams novel, or Godzilla’s next wrestling partner. Hydrox wandered into later decades that were characterized by product-naming mania, particularly in the tech, pharmaceuticals and household cleaning product sectors. And in fact, a Hydrox Laboratories (slogan, “Solutions for Your Solutions”—honest) issues a line of beauty and health care products, ranging from facial astringent to perineum wash to kiwi melon shampoo (which probably doesn’t taste too good between chocolate wafers).
The Hydrox name is a portmanteau of the atomic components of water: hydrogen and oxygen (water . . . cookie . . . get the connection? because I don’t). Keebler in infinite elfin wisdom changed the name to Droxies. Catchy, eh? Or maybe I should say, Catchies? I’m not sure what Droxies sounds like, but of all the possibilities, none of them seems edible. Kellogg made dropsy with the Droxies, but now on the cookie’s hundredth anniversary the company is bringing the brand back for a while.
That makes me happy for the cookie’s many fans. To them, I say enjoy. Myself, I’m going to slink into a corner and pout until they bring back Screaming Yellow Zonkers.
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JohnnyB said,
August 26, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I did not know that Hydrox made a comeback; but then, I didn’t know they were gone. I do remember them being around when I was growing up on the West coast (a bit after 1908). In college there were Oreo fans and Hydrox fans pledging allegiance to their chosen cookie (akin to the Coke/Pepsi camps) . For some reason, my family was primarily a Nabisco family, though I was a big fan of these cookies, well past the appropriate age.
But I seem to have digressed from your point. Hydrox is sort of an off-putting name. Oreo is nicer but doesn’t seem to be a natural cookie type name. And why do the Wicked Wtch’s guards sing about O-re-os as they march around the castle?
Bill Brohaugh said,
August 26, 2008 at 1:14 pm
And you thought product-placement advertising was a new thing . . .