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Comment by nxc18 | Hacker News Reader

Author is way off base. Might as well tell me to stop breathing air, except they stopped selling air 6 years ago and I’ve been gasping ever since.

Chromatica Oreos were absolutely wonderful (as far as mass produced garbage that is unfit for human consumption is concerned) and I miss them dearly. Telling me to stop eating them is like telling me to stop seeing a boyfriend who died tragically years ago.

Worse, it brings up painful memories of when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo) came into my life, showed me that true love is possible, then disappeared forever in barely a month. I’m still reeling.

Edit: boo, hiss!

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> when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo) came into my life

Sometimes I think Americans are completely lost to the rest of us, residing in a haze of consumerism and political divide as they do. Then sometimes I read something like this and I cannot deny a certain curiosity as regards the finer differences between Oreo Coke and Coke Oreo.

We have coke in my country (of both the Coca Cola and cocaine varieties, and even the pure carbon variety used for steel smelting) and also Oreos are readily available in most supermarkets. Can any of the US based HN visitors enlighten us about the exact mixture required to produce Oreo Coke (but not, preferably, Coke Oreo)?

Oreo Coke = Oreo-flavored Coca-Cola

Coke Oreo = Coca-Cola-flavored Oreo cookies

welcome to hell

WRT to Oreo Coke, the best description is Vanilla Coke with a dark chocolate flavor, but somehow not like the chocolate a European might imagine.

I found out recently that Oreo is in fact made with real cocoa; I find this surprising and still somewhat hard to believe.

The drink’s unique combination of flavors somehow made the whole experience less cloying than a typical zero sugar coke. And also, mysteriously, it was quite satiating, almost like I had eaten actual cookies. Except not, because any American can tell you that Oreo has negative satiation - you can eat an Oreo from a state of not being hungry at all, then discover you have eaten a whole Family Size pack.

Pretty simple. You buy coke from your regular coke dealer, and put it in an Oreo cookie.

There is a premise in the "selling out" scenario that assumes the artist is accepting money from a company so that company can sell more of the same -- or even a WORSE -- product using the artist to market the product. This CAN be true, and humans have a cogitative bias to remember negativity over positives. So we remember the times when the artists screwed over their fans... and hence we boo them.

When marketing collaborations are used to inform people of something actually good, then they can actually be great for everyone. The best example is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream collaborations. It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it. And, what do you know, those collaborations have been wildly successful. It's hard to convince people that "putting ice cream cone in the ice cream" is surprisingly good, but if you just put Stephen Colbert on the label with a big thumbs up, most people will give it a try.

Marketing can be manipulative, but it can also be very, very helpful to customers who don't have perfect information. This is exactly the point of Rory Sutherland's book Alchemy: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26210508-alchemy

> It's hard to communicate "no, it's hard to understand, but this blend of candies is especially worth trying," so the best way to do that is to have a celebrity vouch for it.

Your view is very optimistic, you're trying to see the mega-brands in the best possible light. I would almost call it euphemistic. Celebrities don't vouch for a product, they're not reviewers (although they can be paid to pretend to be one), they can't provide neutral or negative feedback. They're advertisers. The ice cream brand could pay them to promote ice cream blended with shredded cardboard for all they care, and because of the celebrity's face on it there would be an uptick in sales regardless of the quality.

If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it. Of course, some good ideas that deserved the light of day may not get appropriately rewarded, especially if the product is good but revolutionary. But I would take that possibility over having our singular, sellout, corporate mass of sludge of a culture dominate everything.

> If your product is that good, it'll spread the same way products became popular in the past - through word of mouth, people recommending it to one another, getting their friends to try it.

Most products fail. All the products you see in the stores are the result of a massive war that’s constantly being waged by companies fighting to the death.

Anyone serious about selling something either needs to bootstrap the crap out of it on tiny margins forever, or they need to launch their product.

Again, most products fail which often means bankruptcy for their creators. Having someone put their reputation on the line for something good-but-unintuitive is a great way to have consumers become more willing to take a chance on something they might otherwise be skeptical of. The George Forman grill is the perfect example of a bizarre product that benefited from a celebrity endorsement. I seriously doubt a “two sided griddle” is successful at all unless you give people a reason to listen to the sales pitch, and even then to give it a shot.

In the capitalist Utopia that would be true, but that is not the case in any country on this planet. The war being waged is not based on customer choice, its based on backroom dealing, who you know and invester interrests.

The products used by many are the products their investors have an interest boosting. One example look at what SaaS startups seeded on this site use, other SaaS from same network and investors.

Nothing about it based on war of pricing, quality or experience.

I’ve been investing in the VC space since about 2019. I can assure you that you are just wrong. Venture capital is alive and well well in America and it represents large swaths of products. These startups take on giants everyday and win.

I really liked Selena Gomez's Oreos, but I would prefer that Oreo brought them back as "horchata flavored" or "cinnamon cream flavored" so I didn't have awkward conversations every time I accidentally said, "I like Selena Gomez flavor" and people would ask how I knew what Selena Gomez tasted like.

I would also like to know the flavour of Selena Gomez (Oreos), those sound tasty.

Yea, that's a little awkward, but what is life for if not the awkward enjoyment of a musician's flavour.

It's basically a cinnamon flavoring added to regular oreos. They were aiming for the taste of horchata.

"it brings up painful memories of when Oreo Coke (actually good, unlike Coke Oreo)"

Epic

You should try Nerd Clusters!

This post was great satire! Respect!

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