The Short Answer
OREO was created by the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) in 1912 and first sold on March 6, 1912, in Hoboken, New Jersey. A similar cookie, Hydrox, predates it by four years. The cookie’s name was filed as a trademark on March 14, 1912, and registered on August 12, 1913. Over the next century, Nabisco passed through RJR Nabisco, Philip Morris, and Kraft before OREO became part of Mondelēz International in 2012. This page gives the dates as the record shows them, and separates verified facts from popular stories.
Before OREO: Hydrox and the Sandwich Cookie
The chocolate sandwich cookie did not begin with OREO. In 1908, Sunshine Biscuits — the company built by Jacob Loose — introduced Hydrox, a chocolate wafer sandwich with a vanilla creme filling. Hydrox predates OREO by four years. OREO never cited Hydrox as its inspiration, and this page does not claim that it did; the two cookies simply shared the same format, and OREO followed Hydrox and became the longer-lasting standard. Hydrox itself had a long afterlife: Keebler, which took over the Sunshine brands in the late 1990s, renamed it Droxies in 1999; Kellogg’s bought Keebler in 2001 and stopped selling Hydrox in 2003; Leaf Brands revived it in 2015.
1912: The OREO Biscuit Is Born
The Chelsea Bakery and the Trio
OREO was developed and produced by the National Biscuit Company — formed in 1898 from the merger of the New York Biscuit Company and the American Biscuit and Manufacturing Company — at its Chelsea bakery in Manhattan, on the site of today’s Chelsea Market. On April 2, 1912, Nabisco announced three new “highest class biscuits” to its sales team: the OREO Biscuit, the Mother Goose biscuit, and the Veronese biscuit. Only the OREO survived.
The First Sale
The first OREO was sold on March 6, 1912, to a grocer in Hoboken, New Jersey. The cookies were packed in bulk tins and sold by weight. Kraft’s 100th-birthday fact sheet describes the moment plainly: “Magic happened on March 6, 1912 when two decoratively embossed chocolate-flavored wafers met up with a rich crème filling. Oreo cookies were born!”
The First Design
The first OREO cookie was embossed with a thin wreath around the outer edge, with the OREO name on the plain surface in the middle. The modern design, with the Nabisco colophon emblem, came later — in 1952, according to Kraft’s fact sheet.
The Name
The origin of the name has not been officially explained.
The Trademark Record
The Filing and the Registration
The OREO trademark was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on March 14, 1912, and registered on August 12, 1913, as Registration No. 0093009. The record lists the first use of the mark as March 6, 1912 — the date of the first sale.
The March 6 Myth
March 6 is widely repeated as the date the OREO name was registered as a trademark. The record shows otherwise: March 6, 1912, is the first sale and first use; the application was filed eight days later, on March 14, and registration followed more than a year after that, on August 12, 1913. National Oreo Cookie Day, observed on March 6, marks the first sale, not the registration.
The Early Decades
1921: Oreo Sandwich
In 1921, the name “Oreo Biscuit” was changed to “Oreo Sandwich.”
1923: The First Twist Advertisement
In 1923, the first advertisement showing the “twist” appeared on trolley cars, and OREO became available in a self-service fiberboard package. The twist was a marketing idea, not a patented invention.
1928: First Exports
In 1928, OREO was exported to several Spanish-speaking countries in Central and Latin America — the brand’s first step outside the United States.
1931: E. B. White Visits the Factory
In a short piece in the March 14, 1931 issue of The New Yorker, E. B. White described a visit to the Nabisco headquarters, where anyone could submit a new-product idea and trial batches were left by the water cooler for employees to try. After a few days, the department heads would meet and talk the idea over — and once a cookie had passed its tests, it got a name.
1937: Oreo Crème Sandwich
In 1937, the name “Oreo Sandwich” was changed to “Oreo Crème Sandwich.” Some secondary histories give 1948 for this change; this page follows Kraft’s own fact sheet, which gives 1937.
1949: Canada
In 1949, OREO was introduced in Canada.
1952: The Modern Design
In 1952, the cookie design was modified to include the Nabisco Biscuit Company’s colophon emblem — the design that, in its essentials, is still on the cookie today.
1965: Stack Packs
In 1965, OREO packaging changed to a one-pound cardboard carton containing three waxed-paper wrapped “stack packs” — a packaging format that influenced later OREO packaging.
Slogans Through the Years
Kraft’s fact sheet lists the brand’s slogans by year: 1950, “Oh!, Oh! Oreo!”; 1980, “For the Kid in All of Us”; 1982, “America’s Best Loved Cookie” and “The One and Only”; 1986, “Who’s The Kid with the Oreo Cookie?”; 1990, “Oreo, The Original Twister”; and 2004, “Milk’s Favorite Cookie.”
The Product Line Grows
The original cookie stood alone for more than sixty years. Then, in the 1970s, Nabisco began to build the range that exists today. For how the three main lines compare, see Original vs Double Stuf vs Thins.
1974: Double Stuf
In 1974, Double Stuf was introduced in the United States, with about double the creme filling of the original.
1983: Cookies ‘N Cream Ice Cream
In 1983, OREO cookies were supplied to approved ice cream manufacturers for products sold under the “Cookies ‘N Cream Ice Cream” name, and a complete line of single-serve items was introduced in the United States.
1985: Mint Crème
In 1985, Oreo Mint Crème cookies were introduced in the United States for a limited time. Mint Creme is still sold in regular size today.
1987: Big Stuf and Fudge Covered
In 1987, OREO celebrated its 75th birthday. Big Stuf cookies were introduced for a limited time, and Fudge Covered OREO sandwich cookies were introduced in the United States.
1991–1992: Mini
Mini OREO was first released in 1991 and was available nationwide in the United States in 1992. After being discontinued in the late 1990s, it was re-released in 2000.
2003: Uh-Oh!
In 2003, Nabisco launched “Uh-Oh!” — the chocolate creme on golden wafers, the reverse of the original cookie. It was originally intended as an “in and out” product, but it sold well enough that the brand kept it.
2004: Golden
In 2004, Golden OREO was launched, with golden vanilla-flavored wafers in place of the chocolate wafers.
2007: Cakesters
In 2007, OREO Cakesters were launched in the United States — soft snack cakes, not sandwich cookies. They were discontinued in 2012 and returned in 2022 after a petition to bring them back.
2015: Thins
In July 2015, OREO Thins were introduced in the United States — a thin version of the original cookie in chocolate and golden wafer varieties.
2021: Gluten-Free
In January 2021, Gluten-Free OREO was introduced, in original and Double Stuf varieties.
Who Has Owned OREO
Nabisco, 1898–1985
OREO was created by the National Biscuit Company, formed in 1898 and known as Nabisco. The company owned the brand for its first 87 years.
RJR Nabisco, 1985–1999
In 1985, Nabisco Brands merged with R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to form RJR Nabisco. In 1988, KKR bought RJR Nabisco in one of the largest leveraged buyouts of its time. In 1999, the tobacco business was spun off into a separate company, and RJR Nabisco was renamed Nabisco Holdings Corporation.
Philip Morris and Kraft, 2000
In December 2000, Philip Morris Companies acquired Nabisco Holdings for $18.9 billion — about $14.9 billion in cash for the shares plus about $4.0 billion of Nabisco debt it took on — and merged it into Kraft Foods.
Mondelēz International, 2012
On October 1, 2012, Kraft Foods split into two companies: the North American grocery business became Kraft Foods Group, and the global snacking business — including OREO — was renamed Mondelēz International.
OREO Around the World
OREO began as an American cookie and became a global one. It was exported to Spanish-speaking countries in Central and Latin America in 1928 and introduced in Canada in 1949. By 1993 it was sold in 30 countries. It was introduced in China in 1996 and, according to Kraft’s 2012 fact sheet, became China’s best-selling biscuit in 2006. It launched in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Italy in 2008, and in Poland, Germany, and India in 2011. Kraft’s 2012 fact sheet says OREO can be found in more than 100 countries, with the biggest markets in 2010 ranked as the United States, China, Venezuela, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, Spain, Central America and the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, and Argentina. OREO was made at 21 bakeries around the world.
On sales, this page quotes its sources rather than making the claim itself. Kraft’s 2012 fact sheet calls OREO “the world’s favorite cookie” and “the best-selling cookie brand of the 21st century.” A 2018 Smithsonian article, citing Statista, describes it as the second-best selling cookie in the United States today. The two claims measure different things — the world against one country — so they are given here as attributed quotes, not as this site’s own claim.
OREO in Culture
The 100th Birthday, 2012
OREO celebrated its 100th birthday in 2012. The centerpiece was the Daily Twist: from June 25 to October 2, 2012, OREO published one new digital image every day for 100 days, each one reworking the cookie around a news story or cultural moment — the Pride parade, the Mars rover landing, Elvis Week, the anniversary of the first high five. The Birthday Cake flavor, created for the centenary, was sold from February to July 2012.
Dunk in the Dark, 2013
On February 3, 2013, during Super Bowl XLVII, a power outage at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans stopped play for 34 minutes. OREO’s social team, working with its digital agency 360i from a war room set up for the game, published a single image within minutes: a cookie spotlit against a black background, with the line “You can still dunk in the dark.” The tweet read “Power out? No problem.” Ad Age reported that it was retweeted 10,000 times in one hour, and the Associated Press reported more than 15,000 retweets within the first day. The moment became the reference case for real-time marketing.
The Twist, Lick, Dunk Ritual
The “twist, lick, dunk” ritual is the brand’s own language for how to eat an OREO, and it appears in Kraft’s 2012 fact sheet as “the iconic ‘twist, lick, dunk’ ritual.” According to that fact sheet, 50 percent of all OREO eaters pull apart their cookies before eating, with women twisting them open more often than men.
OREO Way, 2002
A stretch of West 15th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in New York City was designated “OREO Way” in 2002, honoring the site of the original Nabisco bakery where the first OREO was made.
What the Record Does Not Say
Three popular stories do not survive a check against the record. First, OREO was not the first sandwich cookie — Hydrox predates it by four years. Second, March 6, 1912, is not the trademark registration date; it is the first sale, and the trademark was filed on March 14, 1912, and registered on August 12, 1913. Third, the origin of the name has not been officially explained, and this page does not offer a theory as fact. Where sources disagree — the 1937 and 1948 dates for the “Oreo Crème Sandwich” rename, or the price per pound in 1912 — this page follows the primary source and says so, or leaves the figure out.
Timeline at a Glance
- 1898 — National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) is formed.
- 1908 — Hydrox is introduced by Sunshine Biscuits.
- March 6, 1912 — The first OREO is sold, in Hoboken, New Jersey.
- March 14, 1912 — The OREO trademark is filed.
- August 12, 1913 — The OREO trademark is registered (No. 0093009).
- 1921 — “Oreo Biscuit” becomes “Oreo Sandwich.”
- 1923 — First advertisement showing the “twist.”
- 1928 — First exports, to Spanish-speaking countries in Central and Latin America.
- 1937 — “Oreo Sandwich” becomes “Oreo Crème Sandwich.”
- 1949 — OREO is introduced in Canada.
- 1952 — Cookie design modified to include the Nabisco colophon.
- 1965 — One-pound carton with three “stack packs.”
- 1974 — Double Stuf is introduced in the United States.
- 1985 — RJR Nabisco is formed; KKR buys it in 1988.
- 1991–1992 — Mini OREO is released, then available nationwide in the United States.
- 1996 — OREO is introduced in China.
- 1999 — RJR Nabisco is split; the company becomes Nabisco Holdings Corporation.
- December 2000 — Philip Morris acquires Nabisco Holdings for $18.9 billion (about $14.9 billion in cash plus about $4.0 billion of assumed debt) and merges it into Kraft Foods.
- 2004 — Golden OREO is launched.
- 2007 — OREO Cakesters are launched in the United States.
- October 1, 2012 — Kraft Foods splits; the global snacking business becomes Mondelēz International.
- 2012 — OREO’s 100th birthday; the Daily Twist runs June 25 to October 2.
- February 3, 2013 — “Dunk in the Dark” at Super Bowl XLVII.
- July 2015 — OREO Thins are introduced in the United States.
- January 2021 — Gluten-Free OREO is introduced.