Hydrox today seems a rather unappetizing name for a yummy
cookie. It sounds more like a fuel for your
Scout-class starship in
Traveller. Hydrox was introduced in 1908 by a company called
Sunshine Biscuits. Sunshine wanted a cookie that synched with the name as well as capture a sense of purity. What was more pure than sun and water? Water was, of course, made up of
hydrogen and
oxygen, so Hydrox seemed a pretty sweet name.
In 1912,
Nabisco released the look-alike
Oreo. Nabisco, even then, was a large company. It dwarfed Sunshine Biscuits in terms of distribution channels and advertising budgets. It wasn't long before people came to think of Oreo as the original vanilla-goop-surrounded-by-two-chocolate-wafers cookies and Hydrox as some cheap knock-off brand that the
downstairs help and
French Canadians ate.
Similar in appearance, there was a chief, early difference between Hydrox and Oreo cookies. Hydrox was made from
vegetable oil while Oreo cookies, for a long time, used
lard. Although Oreo sales dwarfed Hydrox by about 300 to 1, Hydrox attracted an earnest cult following. Chief among Hydrox's followers were Jews who couldn't eat lard-based Oreos but could eat Hydrox and keep
kosher. Later Hydrox attracted
vegetarians.
In 1996 Keebler, those bastard elves, bought Sunshine Biscuits and retired the brand. A few years later they changed the recipe and released a wafers-goop-surrounded-by-two-chocolate-wafers cookie called "
Droxies". Though the name seemed more whimsical and in keeping with the company notion that
obese stunted tree elves bake their products, the Droxies name only managed to confuse most consumers. Where as many thought Hydrox was a cheap
knock off of Oreo, many today believe Droxies to be a cheap knock off of Hydrox.