These are an issue of first impression for me. I found
them in my local Family Mart. (A nice chain of convenience stores in Thailand.
Local company. Business model and appearance identical to 7-11.) I haven’t tasted
them yet. Perhaps I should leave a comment after I’ve tasted them.
I almost never buy cookies, or donuts, or cake. Nobody
has to buy them, actually, because they are thrust upon one so frequently in
daily life. There’s always somebody handing you a piece of a birthday cake, or
a wedding cake, or there’s a holiday or something, or you show up somewhere and
there’s a box of donuts, girl scouts are selling their own cookies this month.
My sugary vice of choice is ice cream, and it would be wrong if I were to buy
any sweets beyond that. Well, maybe the odd piece of chocolate.
Part of the reason that I purchased a box was that I
liked the packaging. Isn’t it attractive?
I paid about a dollar for this box, and it was worth it just for the two
photographs of the package.
Can you get these in America? Oreo Thins, and Tiramisu,
yet. These are “Product of China,” “Manufactured Under License” from the
Mondelez International Corporation in the Philippines. The product and allergen
information is given in Thai and in English, and there are addresses for distributors
in Singapore, Hong Kong, Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines. All of that is printed
right on the box; there are no stickers covering different information. There
is no mention of Nabisco, or any other remotely American sounding entity.
What a wonderfully international new product! And slightly mysterious, too. Is it an ongoing case of trademark infringement? Because I’m pretty sure that the rights to a cookie named “Oreos” are firmly in hand somewhere in the United States. This is Asia, however, and trademark and copyright can be nebulous things over here. Some days I think that I should open a hamburger restaurant called, “MacDonald’s.” Excuse me while I go to the Seven-Elephants store on the corner to buy some milk to go with my Oreo Thins.
What a wonderfully international new product! And slightly mysterious, too. Is it an ongoing case of trademark infringement? Because I’m pretty sure that the rights to a cookie named “Oreos” are firmly in hand somewhere in the United States. This is Asia, however, and trademark and copyright can be nebulous things over here. Some days I think that I should open a hamburger restaurant called, “MacDonald’s.” Excuse me while I go to the Seven-Elephants store on the corner to buy some milk to go with my Oreo Thins.
1 comment:
Hold the presses! Nabisco is now a division of Mondelez International! They can do whatever they want to with Oreos. To be honest, there are a wild profusion of Oreo Cookies in Asia, and probably elsewhere. A particularly weird and weirdly successful temporary flavor was "Ice Cream Flavored Oreos." I don't know about "Ice Cream Flavor," but they were a smooth, sugary explosion of flavor, that's for sure.
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