How It's Unmade - Oreo Cookies

March 12, 2014 9:20 AM

In this episode, we follow an assembly line as it processes bags of Oreo-style cookies into raw materials.
posted by anazgnos (55 comments total)

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
posted by theodolite at 9:26 AM on March 12, 2014 [84 favorites]

MuddDude and I got a huge kick out of this video yesterday. The last few minutes are worth waiting for.
posted by muddgirl at 9:30 AM on March 12, 2014

I was so hoping the link was this
posted by photoslob at 9:38 AM on March 12, 2014 [4 favorites]

Looks just like my kitchen.

BTW, Google now has a Tardis. The Vonnegut quote from theodolite apparently actually appeared 10 hours ago.
posted by maudlin at 9:44 AM on March 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

Earlier similar incident
posted by anazgnos at 9:45 AM on March 12, 2014

Cute.

I clearly remember seeing, on the Sonny and Cher show of all places, a similar reversed-video bit showing how bananas were assembled. Was quite funny, actually. The You-Tube search is nicht gewerken right now, or I'd try to find a link.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:48 AM on March 12, 2014

this was way funnier than i expected it to be. power slam ramps! wizards! for use in rivers!
posted by misskaz at 9:48 AM on March 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

An underrated quality of this video is how much the narrator sounds like Brooks T. Moore. Although I don't think I noticed whether or not he pronounces "water" like "what-er", or "robot" as "robut".
posted by norm at 9:51 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

"A turbo pump collects the creme from each Oreo, which will be recycled as milk."

Huh? The creme doesn't have any milk in it whatsoever. It's shortening and sugar.

(Everything else checks out.)
posted by Sys Rq at 9:55 AM on March 12, 2014

Mmmmm, delicious cookie slurry.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:56 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

This animated GIF from Futurama appears relevant at this juncture.
posted by Pfardentrott at 9:57 AM on March 12, 2014 [10 favorites]

I DO THIS! In my belly.
posted by srboisvert at 9:58 AM on March 12, 2014 [6 favorites]

I love how the narration is mostly a dry goof in the typical 'How it's Made' style, but throws in some odd language choices here and there. I lost it at "The leftover cookies are shoved up a series of tubes..."
posted by usonian at 10:00 AM on March 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

(Everything else checks out.)

There's coke and gunpowder in Newman's version of Oreos? Everywhere? Or does Toronto just get stuck with crack again?
posted by maudlin at 10:01 AM on March 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is this where we talk about the difference between Canadian and American Oreos?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:03 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

i particularly like that the cocoa powder is 'ebony royale'. That's some European class right there my friends.
posted by srboisvert at 10:04 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

This had me cracking up from start to finish. Fantastically funny. Wish I'd thought of it!
posted by Dr. Wu at 10:06 AM on March 12, 2014

This is awesome.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 10:07 AM on March 12, 2014

I found that very funny and shockingly unappetizing. Something about seeing your food on a steel conveyor belt robs it of its magic.
posted by to sir with millipedes at 10:10 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm a little disappointed... I thought this was going to be about turning bags of Oreos into the crushed Oreos they use in Blizzards and on sundaes.

Still, I LOL'd.
posted by BrashTech at 10:14 AM on March 12, 2014

Something about seeing your food on a steel conveyor belt robs it of its magic.

It was the conveyer belt that did it for you? Not the guy shoveling big sticky brown loads into/out of a vat?
posted by echo target at 10:15 AM on March 12, 2014

How can it rob it of magic, there were wizards.
posted by RobotHero at 10:15 AM on March 12, 2014 [15 favorites]

How long did it take everyone? I think I lasted about 17 seconds. I'd rather watch the forward video anyway! This like a Mr. Rogers episode in opposite land.
posted by ReeMonster at 10:40 AM on March 12, 2014

At first I thought this was Oreo Blue time because this is the second video on Oreos that have showed up today on my daily rounds of the internetz.

But after watching the Unmade video not only did Paul Newman steal the show but it's clear the Oreo company would never endorse full-scale deconstruction of their flagship product.
posted by jeremias at 10:40 AM on March 12, 2014

Based on the How It's Made program. This show is one of the just-the-facts-no-analysis programs on "Sci" channel, which is, alas, these days, a high compliment.
posted by lalochezia at 10:51 AM on March 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

How long did it take everyone? I think I lasted about 17 seconds. I'd rather watch the forward video anyway! This like a Mr. Rogers episode in opposite land.

What? No way, this is fascinating. It's a weird stimulating exercise for me, trying to think about what's coming next, and the physical machine that would actually be required to do the work, and what parts of the process are totally wrong*, and on and on. It's great fun!

I feel like I should mention I watched it with the sound off which A.) is probably what led me to this enjoyable state of critical scrutiny and B.) means I missed a lot of the fun of the narration, apparently.

* example being once the cookie lids are peeled off they're pushed upwards into a hopper, and obviously in the real world you'd let gravity do the work for you so you'd feed 'em down instead. That kind of thing.
posted by komara at 11:00 AM on March 12, 2014

I'd like to try this at home. Now how many wizards do I need, and do they come with their own smoke buckets?
posted by heyho at 11:09 AM on March 12, 2014

Yeah, the narration is 9/10 of the joke, although it may be less funny for people who haven't seen the best show on television How It's Made.
posted by muddgirl at 11:14 AM on March 12, 2014 [4 favorites]

Smoke bucket!
posted by njohnson23 at 11:18 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Smoke bucket!

Vacuum bag.
posted by anazgnos at 11:21 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think the only slight tweak I would make is that the outright comedy -- about gunpowder, the smoke bucket, etc. -- really doesn't kick in until the very end. Most of the first four minutes or so just are the concept repeating itself over and over again. Needed either (1) to be shorter to get there faster or (2) to put more jokes up front.

With that said, those are minor nitpicks in the execution of a rad project. Bravo, Cookie Destroyers.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 11:24 AM on March 12, 2014

Capillary action got me giggling. Cookies sucking themselves, right up a tube!

Also, remember Picture Picture?
posted by carsonb at 11:31 AM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

His accent is Virgina? North Carolina maybe?
posted by humboldt32 at 11:53 AM on March 12, 2014

I think the only slight tweak I would make is that the outright comedy -- about gunpowder, the smoke bucket, etc. -- really doesn't kick in until the very end

Naw, it's distributed throughout. It's in the casual, offhand, unembellished explanations for impossible phenomena (capillary action, power-slam ramp, etc) It's similar to the humor vein found in Look Around You - the joy of hearing patent nonsense delivered in a dry, authoritative tone.
posted by anazgnos at 11:58 AM on March 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

It had me at "The wrappers are then stripped off by a tug-puller."
posted by muddgirl at 12:18 PM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

Given how often I see Newman-O's at the local surplus store Ocean State Job Lot, they are the perfect brand for this video.

Actually, Newman-O's are really good in homemade ice cream, so I am happy to see them for sale cheap. And the ginger ones are fantastic.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:23 PM on March 12, 2014

Watch it backwards. It becomes unspeakably awesome.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:33 PM on March 12, 2014

As a 9-months pregnant lady, I now feel the burning need to "power slam" some Oreos.
posted by medeine at 12:41 PM on March 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

Those AREN'T OREOS.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:52 PM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

I wish there wasn't that little outburst of swearing, because my kids would love this but they don't like curse words (really, it's them, not me; I don't give a fuck). It doesn't fit in with the rest of the video, and reminds the brief bit of violence or nudity you'll sometimes see in a movie, clearly put there just to bump it into a PG-13 rating.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:56 PM on March 12, 2014 [2 favorites]

Hey, it's just as accurate and scientific as other content on the Discovery Channel.
posted by zachlipton at 2:05 PM on March 12, 2014

This video wouldn't be nearly as fun if it was shot in the Oscar Meyer weiner factory.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:20 PM on March 12, 2014

Reminds me of this video.
posted by deezil at 2:56 PM on March 12, 2014

I would watch an entire series on people cleverly returning things to raw materials. Can we unstitch some leather jackets, fuse the pieces into sheets, and use them to keep reanimated cows warm?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:12 PM on March 12, 2014 [4 favorites]

This like a Mr. Rogers episode in opposite land.

There is a How It's Made about crayons, and it is interesting to watch them back to back to see how much automation there is now compared to then.

My wife and I like to play a game where we make up an episode, getting the ratio of vehicles, food, and decorations just right: "Sex swings, tandem bicycles, oregano, and nunchucks. Today, on How It's Made." *intro music*
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:17 PM on March 12, 2014 [3 favorites]

Ok. I have a confession to make. Up until the cream was getting sucked off the cookies, (yes, even after the cookies were separated into "leaded" and "unleaded") I thought this was a legitimate thing that happened somewhere in the States.

Even here in Australia, you often see warehouses full of pallets and crates of expired foodstuffs - like biscuits, chips, soft drink, etc. - that have, I assumed, already done the rounds at the super-cheap-dollar-store-supermarket-type places. Something like Newman-Os, I'm like, well, yeah, probably they aren't popular even at the cheapest price, I guess they taste like shit and have too many cancer-causing properties, like lead. And I was thinking, hey, this is a good idea, there's a lot of perfectly good material in these things that could be reused in a lot of inventive ways, I guess some rich genius out there has figured out how to recycle Oreos and make money off it, and good for him.

But all through the first minute or two I was like "Why? Why? How did they make this machine? I can't believe that somebody manufactures an apparatus to remove the top layer of a multi-layer cookie. Insulation? What kind of shit is in these cookies that magnets can lift them? How come lead isn't a banned ingredient in the US? What's wrong with these people? Who is drinking fucking out-of-date Oreo cream milk?"

Fuck yeah, slam that shit (my head).
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:39 PM on March 12, 2014 [13 favorites]

I'm just glad I caught on before the narrator announced: "Wizards collect the cookie extract."
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:50 PM on March 12, 2014 [11 favorites]

If you watch "Jaws" backwards, it's about a shark who throws up humans until they have to open a beach.
posted by rollbiz at 6:11 PM on March 12, 2014 [8 favorites]

If you watch Robocop sideways, it's Frankenstein.
posted by JHarris at 6:46 PM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

"How come the top layer of the cookie doesn't break apart? Amazing."
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:07 PM on March 12, 2014

If you watch La boheme sideways it's about a woman who swallows her gum.
posted by Pudhoho at 8:21 PM on March 12, 2014 [1 favorite]

My friends and I all thank you for posting this. It's hilarious.
posted by spiderskull at 12:42 AM on March 13, 2014

Something like Newman-Os, I'm like, well, yeah, probably they aren't popular even at the cheapest price, I guess they taste like shit and have too many cancer-causing properties, like lead.

The funny thing about this is that Newman-Os are like the fancy upscale versions of Oreos. They sell them at Whole Foods/organic co ops and they're more expensive than real Oreos.

By the way, it drove me kind of crazy that they were calling them Oreos.
posted by lunasol at 3:33 AM on March 13, 2014

It’s curious how much specialized equipment it takes to disassemble something as simple as a cookie, when there’s a far smaller general-purpose device that can assemble so many things…
posted by nicepersonality at 7:00 AM on March 13, 2014

'and to do it, you unscrew it'
posted by judson at 1:24 PM on March 13, 2014