Oreo cookies are the world’s best-selling cookies. BTS is one of the world’s most beloved K-pop groups. Now, the two are joining forces for this limited-edition cookie collaboration dropping June 1.
The BTS Rise to Fame
As Food & Wine reports, the South Korean boy band BTS debuted in 2013, but they rocketed to international acclaim after winning Top Social Artist at The Billboard Music Awards in 2017, unseating Justin Bieber and ending his six-year winning streak. The group’s latest album, “Arirang,” debuted on March 20 this year, selling nearly four million copies on its first day and taking the top spot on Billboard’s Top 200 list that week.
BTS is also well known for its powerhouse fan community, known as ARMY (Adorable Representative M.C. for Youth), with more than 80 million Instagram followers.
While Oreo has collaborated with a number of celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez, and Post Malone, to create custom-flavored cookies, this marks BTS’ first global snack brand collaboration. “It’s a huge honor,” BTS said in a statement. “We ate them as kids, we eat them in the studio, and now Oreo is helping us share a taste of home with the world.”
What do the OREO x BTS Cookies look and taste like?
The boy band played a major role in creating the new Oreo, adding several nods to both Korean culture and to ARMY.
The cookie wafers are deep purple, a color with deep ties to the band. In 2016, BTS member V told fans, “I purple you,” and since then it’s been a mainstay in the brand’s visual identity. Tour stops are often lit in purple, purple heart emojis are synonymous with ARMY, and there is often purple merch.
The wafers are sandwiched between a brown-sugar–pancake-flavored cream, a nod to the hotteok, a stuffed pancake popular in Korean street-food markets that’s traditionally filled with brown sugar and cinnamon and served warm, a treat BTS grew up eating.
“We explained to Oreo what that flavor tastes like and wanted to share with everyone the kinds of dessert flavors Koreans enjoy,” BTS member Jin said in a press release. “[The cookies] really taste a lot like hotteok.”
“Translating a culturally complex flavor like hotteok into our iconic OREO cookie was a technical challenge in and of itself,” Norberto Chaclin, EVP and chief research and development officer at Mondelez International, told Food & Wine. “But ultimately, [BTS’] rigorous creative vision pushed our R&D teams to ‘color outside the box,’ resulting in a unique new OREO cookie flavor that fans globally will love.”
To mark their 13th anniversary, there are 13 embossed designs on the purple wafers, including the BTS light stick, band member names, and the group’s popular finger heart symbol. There are also three cookies that spell out a special message for fans. The embossments vary by pack, so fans may need to collect multiple packages to find all 13 designs.
“At its core, this partnership is about shared passion,” said Matt Foley, vice president of marketing, in a statement. “We’re uniting BTS’ incredibly dedicated fanbase with our own loyal Oreo fans to create something genuinely new and exciting.”
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Photo Credit: Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com
