Food Companies Need To Stop The Never-Ending New Flavor Roll-Outs

It's got to stop!  The news that Nabisco was getting ready to introduce a buttered popcorn flavor variety of their Oreo cookie product was the straw that broke the proverbial camels back in my book; this trend of a never-ending onslaught of new flavors and varieties of long-time-favorite food products needs to end.

Let me be the first to readily admit that I'm not an Oreo cookie fan.  Nothing against the company or against people who eat them - they're just not a favorite of mine.  Oreo's flavor profile just isn't one that I care to eat - in the same way that some people prefer chocolate chip cookies over, say,  peanut butter.  All of that said, I respect the longevity of the product and who am I to call out someone else's preferences.  (I mean, I know that horseradish can be an acquired taste)

What gets me is the constant need to keep reinventing the brand.  I tried (in vain) to find a comprehensive list of all of the different limited-edition flavors of Oreos.  While I wasn't able to come up with an accurate count, I did manage to determine that there have been more than 30 different limited-edition flavors since the early 2010's.  More than 30!

To be fair - you can't just blame Oreo for the never-ending roll-out of new flavors.  A quick search on Lay's Potato Chips (another company that's guilty of doing the same thing) shows that they have had more than 166 different flavors in stores in the past few years!  (And perhaps they've had more than that; again, I couldn't turn up a fully-accurate accounting of how many different Lays flavors there have been).

My prediction:  the current trend of hundred of limited-edition flavors will swing back the other direction and soon you'll find food companies going "back to basics"; then, the companies can add a slogan to their packaging that says "we offer only one flavor".  They say that everything old is new again - and maybe it's time for that to happen with food brands.