The Discontinued Oreo Creation That You Might Never Get Again

On the list of discontinued foods from the 2000s that we will likely never eat again, you could be forgiven for forgetting about Oreo Magic Dunkers. These cookies, after all, only lasted for two months in the year 2000 before they were unceremoniously yanked from shelves. Oreo is no stranger to disappearing flavors, having gone through countless more or less successful permutations over the years ... remember the discontinued Jelly Donut Oreos? How about cotton candy, limeade, or rocky road trip? All these flavors had their moment in the sun before fading away. Even given rapid Oreo flavor turnover, however, Oreo Magic Dunkers stand out for having had a very, very short lifespan. They were merely a blip in the rolling waves of snack history — a drop in the ocean, if you will.

The big gimmick behind Oreo Magic Dunkers? When dipped in a glass of milk, they turned the milk blue. Was this enough to make the Oreo cookies memorable? Comments on a Reddit post dedicated to nostalgia suggest so, with Redditors recalling that they missed the cookies, and they wished parent company Mondelez would bring them back. Given a nifty dunking trick that stuck around in at least some snackers' memories, why did Magic Dunkers get pulled from production so quickly? The actual answer is lost to time, but we can't help but wonder whether the very same feature that made these Oreo cookies unique was also what made them unpopular.

In a 2000 press release, former manufacturer Nabisco touted the technology that colored Magic Dunker Oreos and anything else they touched. Nabisco Senior Food Technologist Jessica Aronofsky said that the dye in the cookies "is safe and easily washes off [...] just like the coloring used in ice pops and candies" (via Bakery Online). Yet, that benign dye, with its pronounced blue-ing effect, may have been just the problem. In a commercial for Oreo Magic Dunkers, a pair of kids dunk their cookies happily. A little boy holds his hand up, revealing his fingers stained blue. Perhaps presciently, a pair of anthropomorphic cows shake their heads over the scene. "Blue milk?" one declared. "It's just not right."

Undoubtedly, a lot of parents agreed. Who actually wants their children consuming enough blue dye to stain fingers? The year 2000 was a bit before the push to ban food dyes in children's snacks really took off, but common sense dictates that a cookie that turns milk blue is complete junk food, and not in a good way. One reason why a fellow cult-favorite turn-of-the-millennium snack, Sprinkle Spangles cereal, was discontinued, was because the confetti sugar studding the oat-y stars had a tendency to tear up the roofs of diners' mouths. No matter how cool the product, consumers tend not to like food products that come with unintended negative side effects. A case of the blues may have been the death knell for Magic Dunkers.