Not Chips Ahoy: The World's Best-Selling Cookie Made Its Mark In 1912
Place your bets! What do you think is the top-selling cookie in the world? You might guess a classic chocolate chip cookie brand like Chips Ahoy, but surprisingly, that's incorrect. The top-selling cookie in the world is Oreos.
Today, Oreos are sold in more than 100 countries, and 40 billion cookies are produced annually. First launched in 1912, Oreos are what industry people call a copycat brand. The beloved cookie was actually modeled after the Hydrox cookie, which came out years earlier in 1908. Like the Oreos we know and love, Hydrox featured vanilla cream sandwiched between two thin chocolate cookies.
Oreos languished in Hydrox's shadow for many decades. But in the 1950s, Nabisco's clever marketing helped to make Oreos the premium choice. The company started to sell Oreos for a higher price, and people began to believe it was a higher-quality purchase. Subsequently, Hydrox fell out of favor with consumers, and now the OG inspiration for Oreo cookies is all but impossible to find.
The surprising ingredient that Oreos finally ditched
For the last 100 years, the recipe for Oreos has remained largely unchanged. However, until the 1990s, Oreos contained a very surprising ingredient: lard. You might not expect a chocolate cookie to include pig fat, but Oreos contained lard all the way up until 1997.
The animal fat has now been swapped for partially hydrogenated oil, which means Oreos are a kosher food as well as vegan. However, if you have a dairy allergy, you should be cautious, as not all Oreo flavors are dairy-free, so there could be a risk of cross-contamination in the manufacturing process.
Over the years, there have been hundreds of Oreo flavors worldwide (and not all of these Oreo flavors have been good). This summer, some new limited-edition Oreo flavors were debuted, including the BTS Oreos (with brown sugar pancake-flavored creme instead of vanilla creme) and the Marvel Oreo Stuf of Doom (with amazing color-changing creme that turns from black to green after you lick it). Or try the new Sugar-Free Oreo, which launched in early 2026 for the first time in the U.S.