While many think of the Oreo as the de facto creme-filled sandwich cookie, the Hydrox cookie was created four years earlier in 1908, but its sales couldn’t keep up.

Oreos outpaced its rival with superior marketing, and by the 1950s, the creme-filled upstart had become one of the most popular cookies in the U.S.

Sunshine Biscuits created Hydrox, a name combining hydrogen and oxygen. While a clever name, it had nothing to do with cookies and sounds too chemical for most people.

In 1999, the name changed to Droxies, but Hydrox cookies returned in 2015 with the original name and new packaging that pointed out the differences from Oreos on its packaging.

Hydrox lodged complaints with the Federal Trade Commission in 2018 and 2021, alleging that Oreo is trying to make its products more difficult to find on supermarket shelves.

Mondelēz, Oreo’s parent company, dismissed the claims as baseless. The brands are still competing over 100 years after Hydrox and Oreo premiered their similar-looking cookies.