New podcast investigates the Oreo’s little-known origins

The Oreo is the best-selling cookie in the world. But it was originally a knock-off of another cookie: the Hydrox. A new podcast investigates.

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

A hundred twelve years ago this month, the Oreo was born. Today, it is the best-selling cookie in the world, but few people remember the product that Nabisco, the company behind Oreo, blatantly ripped off. We are talking about Hydrox. Mackenzie Martin of member station KCUR says Hydrox was the original chocolate sandwich cookie. She sets the record straight on the podcast “A People’s History Of Kansas City.”

(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, “A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF KANSAS CITY”)

MACKENZIE MARTIN, BYLINE: When Andrea Broomfield was a little kid, she loved Oreos and hated Hydrox.

ANDREA BROOMFIELD: Hydrox cookies seemed boring.

MARTIN: Andrea is the distinguished author of several books about Kansas City’s food history. But back in the day, she didn’t know or care that Hydrox was created by a company in her hometown.

BROOMFIELD: The name seemed stupid to us. Hydrox looked like something that my grandmother would eat.

MARTIN: This is, sadly, the way many people remember Hydrox. Hydrox have become the edible embodiment of what it means to be second-best in America, the cheap, certifiably uncool Xerox of an Oreo. Except there’s a problem – Hydrox aren’t a knockoff. They came first.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yeah. Did you know that Hydrox is the original – the original – cream-filled chocolate cookie?

MARTIN: And both of these cookies, Hydrox and Oreo, can be traced back to one man – Jacob Loose. In Kansas City, you’d recognize that name from an iconic park named after him. But long before he became a major philanthropist, Jacob Loose was just an entrepreneur in the dry goods business.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

MARTIN: Manufactured cookies and crackers started to pop up in America in the late 1800s. That’s according to Stella Parks, a food writer and…