Time for belated Oreo reviews! Cinnamon Bun Oreos:
This was a wonderful idea, but it did suffer from wimpy execution. The name simply wrote a check that the flavor couldn't cash.
The package did give off an aroma of cinnamon when opened, but not of cinnamon BUN, and there is a difference. The latter promises the irresistible pull of a fresh baked good - which should mean tantalizing wafts of butter and yeast dough in addition to the obvious sugar and cinnamon. But, no.
The package claims these are cinnamon cookies with cinnamon bun flavored creme. What you get instead are blond Oreo wafers that contain a hint of cinnamon flavor in the form of microscopic specks. (They remind me of the "flavor crystals" in the chewing gum I loved in the '90s.) The creme tastes like... well, just sugar. So I guess it suggests icing in that sense?
Bottom line, these are perfectly pleasant cookies, and I could eat any number of them, but the cinnamon flavor is muted, and they contain no suggestion of the decadence of an actual cinnamon bun, and thus are disappointing. The issue is simply that I set my standards too high for this one, perhaps.
Filled Cupcake Oreos:
As the package makes clear, this is an Oreo designed to taste like a Hostess Cupcake. (In fact, I'm shocked they didn't just go ahead and put the squiggle into the illustration - I'm guessing this was a trademark issue.)
Now, I obviously have a soft spot for a stupid food concept stunt, but this is brazenly insane: taking a fake chocolate-flavored thing and flavoring it like a different fake chocolate-flavored thing. Think about that for a second.
That said, the execution here was decent. The cookie was your regular chocolate Oreo wafer. The gimmick was the creme - twist it open (as you must in order to get the visual reference), and you see the smaller disc of white creme nestled inside a larger disc of chocolate creme, thus visually invoking the filled Hostess Cupcake. It's cute. Just to make sure you don't miss it, please note that this package includes a helpful arrow pointing to the illustration of the novel creme construction, with the firm instruction to "Twist & Lick!" You can't make this stuff up, people.
As for flavor, the Filled Cupcake Oreo is a pitch-perfect replica of the plasticky fake chocolate that we all know and love from our elementary school Hostess Cupcakes. This is nostalgia wrapped in nostalgia!
The only problem is, although the mimicry of the Hostess Cupcake flavor is spot-on, the truth is that the flavor of a Hostess Cupcake, if we're being brutally honest, was never actually all that good. These flavors are to chocolate what "cherry" flavor is to actual cherries.
Please note, however: I am not hating on Hostess Cupcakes. I loved them as a kid - but I realize now that the pleasure stemmed from texture more than flavor. That thick, chewy blanket of faux-fudge topping, set off by the delightfully rubbery squiggle - I always deconstructed my Hostess Cupcakes into their core elements, isolating the squiggle whole to eat last - so perhaps I liked them more as a toy than as a snack? It was not about flavor, I can tell you that.
For both of the Oreo flavors in this post, Nabisco used the useful resealable package design, which I appreciate since it takes me a good long time to get through these, so I like that they can stay fresher. But when the upside of a product is the packaging, you're doing something wrong, my friends.