The Tragic Story of Hydrox: The Cookie Oreo Copied and America Forgot

In 1908, a bakery in Kansas City made the first chocolate sandwich cookie in America. Four years later, a competitor released the same cookie under a name that means nothing at all. Today that competitor sells sixty billion cookies a year in more than a hundred countries. The original is made in one factory in California, for about a thousand stores, and most of America is convinced it was the fake. This is the story of Hydrox, Sunshine Biscuits, and Jacob Loose, the man who built the second largest bakery company in the United States twice, because the first one was taken from him while he was too ill to stop it. It is also the story of how a brand can lose without ever being beaten. Hydrox never lost a taste test. It was never beaten on quality. For eighty nine years it held an advantage its rival could not match at any price. Then, in a single December, that advantage disappeared, and nobody had done anything wrong. 00:00 The best selling cookie on Earth is a copy 00:47 No lawsuit. No scandal. Nothing stolen. 01:29 Jacob Loose and the company taken from him 06:34 Sunshine, the Thousand Window Bakery, and Hydrox 15:29 1912: Nabisco answers 21:35 The one advantage Oreo could not buy 22:41 How the original became the fake 30:30 The numbers 31:55 Hydrox today 33:19 It did not lose a taste test Sources and further reading in the pinned comment. Fallen Flavors tells the stories of the factories, chains, and empires that built America's golden age of food, and the scandals, buyouts, and betrayals that killed them. The recipes were legendary. The brands went to the grave.