Watermelon Oreos Look to Spark Summer Cookie Craze

By Myles Collier, Christian Post Contributor Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Nabisco announced that for the summer it is releasing a limited edition Watermelon flavored Oreo as the snack company looks to cash in on the summer season.

This is not the first new flavor the company has introduced as they have previously came out with banana split, coconut, chocolate berry burst, ice cream rainbow sherbet and strawberry milkshake varieties. The cookies have even meddled in the gay marriage debate by introducing a rainbow colored Oreo in support of LGBT awareness month.

While watermelon may not be the first thought for a cookie flavor, the company said that it is the perfect complement to its golden cookie on a warm summer day.

"We chose Watermelon because it is a fun, summer flavor that goes great with the Golden Oreo cookie," spokesperson Kimberly Fontes said in a statement.

There are no actual watermelons used in the ingredients, but the company uses a combination of food dyes, sugar, high fructose corn syrup and "artificial and natural flavors."

This is another attempt by Nabisco to create buzz around their iconic cookie since they took advantage of the Super Bowl power outage to promote the chocolate cookie with the cream filling.

Nabisco's Oreo cookie had already won a slot during the Super Bowl commercials. But that didn't stop the cookie maker from making a Twitter debut as well. During what turned into over a 30-minute blackout in the middle of the 2013 Super Bowl, advertisers were quick to jump on a window of opportunity.

Oreo was one of the first and most successful blackout ads to hit social media. The ad was a simple picture of an Oreo on a half lit screen with the caption "You can still dunk in the dark."

"They saw a real-time opportunity with the power outage and jumped it, doing so in a social voice true to the Oreo brand," Laurie Guzzinati, a spokeswoman for Mondelez, the new parent company of Oreo, wrote in an e-mail to The San Francisco Gate.