"Remember Hydrox? Kansas City created the original Oreo cookie" (article and audio) (https://www.kcur.org/history/2024-03-06/remember-hydrox-kansas-city-created-the-original-oreo-cookie)
Oreo is the best-selling cookie in the world today. But few people remember the product that Nabisco blatantly ripped off: Hydrox. A creation of Kansas City’s Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company, Hydrox was billed as the “aristocrat of cookies,” with a novel combo of chocolate and cream filling. So why, more than a century later, is Hydrox still mistaken as a cheap knockoff?

One has to be of the OLDer crowd to remember the Hydrox brand. I do and they were dryer and when Oreo came along probably a additive was added to moisten the cookies....or more fat/oils was added.

(note: one moment of profanity in the audio mentioned in the first message here)

I have never understood why Hydrox cookies became popular in the first place? But my mother disliked them because they had an aftertaste and when my grandmother would go shopping and bought cookies "if she couldn't find Oreos for my mom and my uncles and aunts to eat" She would get Hydrox cookies. But I myself used to eat Hydrox cookies during snacktime in preschool and to me Hydrox cookies were exactly the same as Oreo cookies. But when Sunshine Biscuits Company bought Hydrox I think Sunshine was trying to copy Nabisco by making their versions of Nabisco cookies and crackers in their style. Because if you look at Sunshine Biscuits their cookies and crackers are the same thing as Nabisco's. For example Nabisco has Premium saltine crackers and Sunshine has Krispy saltine crackers and just like Nabisco has Ritz Crackers Sunshine had Hiho Crackers so I think why Hydrox Cookies were made to compete with Oreo so Nabisco would have competition. But if you want great tasting chocolate sandwich cookies look for the Tru-Blu Chocolate Sandwich Cookies and you'll be surprised that these cookies are better than Hydrox Cookies