Mother's Cookies Update UPDATE

Okay, here we go - Kellogg's HAS released Mother's Cookies at Safeway's in the Bay Area and they are in fact Mother's!!! No Flaky Flix (sigh) but plenty of the true classic favorites. If anyone out there would like to send me a package of Circus Animal cookies (because I know how you all love me) email me at hcstockham@msn.com. Please let me know how these new Mother's Cookies stand up to the original.

Now go grab some milk and start snackin'!

Mother's Cookies UPDATE

Just when all hope was lost:

Earlier this week I posted a blog entry regarding the demise of Mother's Cookies, an Oakland institution for almost 100 years. I scoured through pages of comments on various sites left by heartbroken cookie connosieurs that were determined NOT to open that LAST bag of Circus Animal Cookies hidden in the pantry for fear that it may be their last. Well, I have some wonderful news for you all:

Circus Animals are back. Really. I think.

According to one of my readers, somewhere in all this hostile corporate hijacking and bankruptcy filing, Nabisco has just come out with what they call Nabisco Classics which, as far as either one of us can tell, are Mother's cookies. I don't see Flaky Flix in that assortment, but I do see circus animals, and that's just fine. I am still rubbing my eyes in amazement.

The only thing that really concerns me is that I have read time and time again how so many of these products are bought up by other companies,the recipe is changed, they are re-released, and long time fans run out to buy them up, only to be sadly disappointed that they are nothing like they used to be. As I read more about these new circus animals, I am seeing it seems to be the case. Big thumbs down. But I am still hopeful - I have to be!

This happened to me recently when I bought a few tubes of Flicks. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Ghirardelli had these delicious chocolate candies called Flicks. They looked like flat oversized chocolate chips and they came in colored cardboard tubes. They vanished for years, then resurfaced not too long ago on one of those "candy from your childhood" websites. I couldn't resist, but to my dismay, these things were disgusting; nothing like the original.

Tomorrow is grocery day. I know what I'll be looking for.

Mother's Cookies RIP 1914-2008

Old news for some, a shocking realization for others

As many of you are well aware by now, or if some of you are wondering why you haven't been able to find a package of iced oatmeal cookies on local Safeway shelves, Mother's Cookies of Oakland, CA bought the farm last October when bankruptcy swept them up and away, along all of our favorite treats as kids, like Circus Animals, Taffy, and the almighty most delicious Flaky Flix.

According to cookie legend, Mother's was founded in 1914 by a newspaper vendor named N.M. Wheatley, as a one-man shop. It expanded and moved to the 81st Avenue location in 1949.

Throughout the 1990s, up until their abrupt closure in 2008 Mother's had been handed of to many different owners and from what I have heard is currently owned by Kelloggs but whether or not these timeless treats will be put back into production is still in question.

I don't know how I can live in a world without Flaky Flix! It was pure genius - crispy wafers with chocolate creme in between , covered in milk chocolate, and THEN rolled in some sort of Corn Flake mixture. Sheer bliss.

Doesn't Kellogg's make Corn Flakes? Hmmmm.....