In celebration of Oreo’s 110th birthday, Mondelez has released Limited Edition Chocolate Confetti Cake cookies. Oreo is the world’s most successful cookie, sold in over 100 countries with sales of more than $500 billion. Isn’t it a bit gauche for a rich and famous cookie to ask us to buy something for its 110th birthday? I’m getting “Bilbo celebrating his eleventy-first birthday” vibes from this. But, like a good little hobbit, I can’t help but attend and see how the food is.

The cookie contains two crème layers: standard chocolate and a buttercream-flavored white crème with confetti mixed in. They’re sandwiched between classic chocolate Oreo wafers sprinkled with even more confetti.

Birthday cake flavor can be tricky to get right, and it takes a special kind of alchemy to distill the essence of birthday cake and infuse it into a snack. I felt regular Birthday Cake Oreo were a rare misfire from the brand. They tasted too artificial, less like alchemical magic, and more like a laboratory accident.

These are much better. The confetti is eye-catching and stands out from the dark cookie. The buttercream filling has a creamier flavor than the standard white crème, though it’s also a little artificial tasting. However, the chocolate crème and cookies manage to overpower that defect. The result is a creamy chocolate cake flavor that evokes a real cake. They’re maybe even better with milk than regular Oreo.

You may ask how I figured out the white crème tastes bad by itself if the two layers are smushed together. You see, like a hobbit, my social life revolves around food. I have a Cookie Friend. My friend and I sample every new Oreo, carefully assess, and then rank them. We’re methodical in our process, so we pried the two fillings apart to critique them independently. He pointed out these cookies seemed grittier than regular Oreo, and perhaps it’s due to the confetti. I don’t know if I agree, but you don’t disregard the opinion of your Cookie Friend, so I’m reporting it here. Then again, he also thinks that Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie Oreo are good dunked in Screwball peanut butter whiskey, so can you really trust his judgment?

Chocolate Confetti Cake is an excellent addition. I think they’re a natural addition to Oreo’s growing collection of flavors, and Mondelez should consider making them permanent. These are a limited edition, so I recommend grabbing them when you see them.

Purchased Price: $4.50
Size: 12.2 oz (345g)
Purchased at: Oreo.com
Rating: 9 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (Two cookies) 140 calories, 6 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 95 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 13 grams of sugar including 13 grams added sugar, and 1 gram of protein.

So, I feel like I have limited experience with toffee. I’ve had a couple of Heath Bars, and maybe even a Skor or two, but I’m generally not one to just sit around gobbling fistfuls of the brittle English… candy? Confection? Building material?

But it pairs well with chocolate, I think — as evidenced by the aforementioned bars. So it only makes sense that it’s now an Oreo filling. After all, everything is an Oreo filling, right? Swedish Fish? Oreo filling. Cherry cola? Oreo filling. Your mom’s meatloaf? Probably going to be an Oreo filling.

But like Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Was he talking about Oreo flavors? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie, so I don’t remember. Maybe? But I guess what I’m getting at is, just because the Oreo scientists can stuff their cookies with whatever fillings their demented minds can dream up, should they? Well, no, not always. (Looking at you, Kettle Corn, Pina Colada, Cotton Candy, and Root Beer Float, to name but a few.)

But in this case? It’s fine.

The toffee creme has a noticeable buttery flavor, but it’s very mild. To replicate toffee’s crunch, “sugar crystals” have been added to the proceeding. They crunch, and they’re fine, but they do nothing to enhance or detract from the overall affair. Because the toffee punch is so subtle, I was left wishing that there would have been more, you know, Double Strength or whatever they call it. I’m not sure they do that with these one-off flavors, though, so I was left with nothing more than a dream.

One mildly interesting side note: about 3/4ths of the pack had half of the cookie inside-out. So like, the decorative side was pressed into the creme and the smooth side was facing out. Do I think this affected my eating experience? Uncertain, but I’m leaning toward “no.” Was it mildly interesting? Sure. But not, you know, enough to make me want to buy them again. Because I feel like that would be a really peculiar reason to buy another package of Oreo cookies, right?

In the end, these were acceptably okay but absolutely nothing special. If you’re a completist, you’ll want to try them, and I feel like, as long as you’re tolerant of toffee, you’ll enjoy them just fine. If you’re just an “Oreo-a-few-times-per-year” person, you might want to stick to your known commodities lest you end up with a sad stomach.

Purchased Price: $3.67
Size: 17 oz package
Purchased at: Walmart
Rating: 6 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2 cookies) 140 calories, 6 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 90 milligrams of sodium, 21 grams of carbohydrates, 13 grams of sugar, 13 grams of added sugar, and less than 1 gram of protein.

While we may be many years removed from the peak experimentation that delivered divisive flavors like Swedish Fish and Cotton Candy, Nabisco has yet to miss releasing a new Limited Edition Oreo during the first week of January for as long as I can remember. This year’s theme seems to be, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, with the introduction of the Ultimate Chocolate Oreo.

Following in the tradition of last January’s Brookie-O Oreo, Ultimate Chocolate ups the ante of Oreo’s iconic creme filling via a triple stack that pushes it beyond the density of Double Stuf. The layers have three distinct colors, although the actual cookie has much less separation between the tones than the packaging implies. The stack goes from light-ish brown to brown to black.

When thinking of chocolate types, my brain goes to milk, dark, and white, which Nabisco claims these flavors to be, despite the clear absence of a white creme. I also don’t really get a directly sweet white chocolate taste, but rather chocolate with varying bitterness levels. The package proudly boasts a massive chocolate cake slice, and as someone who just had a birthday and ate four cupcakes for breakfast, I think that’s spot on. The layers remind me of a cake with three types of chocolate – a standard chocolate sponge, a lighter chocolate buttercream, and a richer darker chocolate ganache topping.

There’s not nearly as much nuance in an Oreo cookie as there is in an actual slice of layer cake, but the beefed up creme filling sandwiched between two bittersweet wafers draws a fairly accurate comparison for a five-dollar bag of cookies. All the cremes become one concentrated flavor, and if I had to guess, I would say the stack is Oreo’s regular chocolate creme paired with the excellent dark chocolate creme and one we haven’t had before.

The squishy filling oozing out against the firm and crumbly cookie conjures memories of diving my fork into the end of a cake slice with the perfect concentration of rich frosting. It’s delicious. Even better yet, take the top wafter off and you’re talking a legit 2-1 creme-to-cookie ratio, heading into double dark chocolate Dunkaroo territory (Betty Crocker…let’s work!)

What these cookies lack in originality or newness, they make up for with their decadent satisfaction. No matter how hard companies try to experiment with new flavors, and don’t get me wrong, I LOVE creativity, there’s nothing quite like chocolate, and this cookie proves sometimes it pays off to simply play the hits.

Purchased Price: $4.49
Size: 13.2 oz
Purchased at: Safeway
Rating: 8 out of 10
Nutrition Facts: (2 cookies) 180 calories, 9 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 95 milligrams of sodium, 25 grams of carbohydrates, less than 1 gram of fiber, 17 grams of sugar, and 1 gram of protein.