Trader Joe’s and the Astounding Multi-Flavor Joe-Joe’s

Ginger by JG

They assigned this one to me because my hair color is often described by pop-culture critics and Eastern European bureaucrats alike as “ginger.” First things first, a disclaimer: this cookie violates one of the primary rules of Oreo culture. It has a coating of frosting disguising the standard cookie that you, me and Doris Day are used to. This coating makes it into a cake-cookie hybrid that offers you 45 miles per gallon and has enough trunk space to accommodate your kid’s drum set when you FINALLY make the move to Napa. However, this cloak of supremacy it dons every morning before trimming its goatee does not cover up its significant shortcomings. Sure, this fake-ass pastry won’t make a scene at your fourth annual community potluck, but don’t expect it to score the role of Cosette in the upcoming off-Broadway revival of “Les Mis,” either. I do not recommend hosting a lighter fluid themed Christmas party this holiday season. Nor do I recommend welcoming this bastard into your home anytime soon.

Peanut Butter by AK

He’s your deep and profound love affair you have in the late fall, early winter. So rich, you can’t help but imagine your life with him in the warm sunlight which strikes your fifth estate on a beach in Provence with your purebread puppies biting at the coattails of your two sets of identical twins Felicity, Ranger, Henri and Jamaica. He’ll walk you to your classes, knock your books out of your hands just so he can pick them up, which is kind of weird and aggressive, but he makes you feel 22 and you aren’t, so that’s cool. His monolithic, strangely lengthy and large—but in a cool protective big brother kind of way—stature is so attractive to you because if he walks in front of you he blocks the wind. He fills all blank space with his acrostic poems that are a little too clichéd but you’re okay with it because, let’s face it, it’s been awhile, because boys only want love if it’s torture (am I right, Tay-Tay?).

Peppermint by JH

More like Pepperflint! Because this cookie tastes like a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz! No, it doesn’t actually. It tastes like Christmas made sweet salacious love to high-fructose corn syrup, and conceived your LIFE LONG DREAM, that your father and I have tried for years to get for you, you ungrateful brat. I didn’t move to the suburbs and buy you that new platinum-embossed lacrosse stick so you could lose in the final four seconds to Montgomery West, you 10th grade burnout. You’ll never get into the University of Columbia, Chicago with these credentials, Troy! Hehem. Hem. Anyway, this cookie has taught me how to better love my community and my body. It has created a new woman from the rubble of the Great War. Twenty dollars has never bought me a more revolutionary product since I bought four five-dollar footlongs to stack atop each other to pass the height test for the dragon wagon rollercoaster at the local carnival. Well worth the buy. If you love the commercialization of the Messiah’s birth as much as I do, America, cough it up.

Double Chocolate by KR

I have no words … just kidding. He is without doubt the youngest of your 20 cousins, the one you only see on New Year’s when you are chosen to take him to see the early fireworks. You have to skip seeing your friends and are feeling pretty down, but once you see this little guy’s face you can’t help but smile. His energy is contagious, literally, it is like you chugged five Red Bulls just by being around him. Every time you think he is about to calm down and hold your hand as you cross that busy road downtown, BOOM, he is running through the crowd to the stand full of flashing, inflatable swords. You chase after him but he is so nimble that he quickly disappears into the mob of intoxicated parents. Just as you are about to panic you see him climbing a lamp post … because why not. He is screaming and laughing as he waves a lit-up Spongebob wand over his head, his 2015 glasses blinking so. But then the fireworks start, and his eyes widen in excitment … good luck, friend. May the odds be ever in your favor.