Enter the Upside Down with Chips Ahoy! and ‘Stranger Things’

I’ve mentioned this in recent editions of Popculturology, but it’s wild to me that Stranger Things premiered almost a decade ago. It was back in the summer of 2016 when the world was first introduced to Eleven and her Hawkins buddies. They were children back then, and now as Netflix prepares to release the fifth and final season of Stranger Things, those characters are, um, somehow still children.

Which is fine, because you know what children love? Cookies.

(In fairness, I love cookies too. And I’m almost 40.)

To celebrate the upcoming final season of Stranger Things (with the first batch of episodes premiering on Thanksgiving), Netflix has teamed up with Chips Ahoy! to bring the world the Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things Limited-Edition Cookie.

How does one properly honor the final season of Stranger Things with a limited-edition cookie? Do you add bits of Eggo waffles for Eleven? Maybe make them coffee-flavored to heed Hopper’s wisdom that mornings are for coffee and contemplation? Or do you give them a nefarious twist in honor of the foreboding Upside Down … ?

What it cost

You can get your own package of Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things cookies for $5.79.

My thoughts

If I’m buying a package of chocolate chip cookies at the grocery store, it’s likely going to be a package of Chips Ahoy! I have fond memories of getting a package of the crunchy Chips Ahoy! Candy Blast cookies on family vacations. Like Vecna to Eleven, though, there’s an alternate version of classic crunch chocolate chip cookies: The chewy chocolate chip cookie.

The Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things cookies are the chewy kind of cookie, “inspired by the Upside Down, a dark alternate dimension that has played a key role throughout every season of Stranger Things. The cookies feature a new Chips Ahoy! chocolatey base, fudge chips and a red strawberry-flavored filling.”

Opening the package of the Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things cookies confirms that, yes, they are very chocolate … with a few tiny rifts of red peeking through. They’re a good-looking chewy cookie. They definitely smell chocolatey.

The packaging made me think that they would have red chips of some sort too, but I guess that’s not the case with the majority of the cookies I took a look at after opening them up.

You can’t miss the red filling inside each Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things cookies. It pops against the surrounding chocolate cookie.

The Chips Ahoy! folks note that this red-filling is actually the “brand’s first-ever fruit-flavored filling,” but I didn’t detect the alleged strawberry flavor. I’m not complaining about the filling — it just tasted like a generic filling, reminiscent of what we got with the Chips Ahoy! Chewy Ice Cream Sandwich-Inspired Chocolate Chip Cookies earlier this year.

Score

🍪🍪🍪 (3 out of 5 cookies)

If you’re hard at work planning your watch party for the final season of Stranger Things, you should stock up on Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things cookies. Your guests will probably want to eat something other than Eggo waffles.

There’s also an augmented-reality game featuring the Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things cookies that comes with a chance to win a guitar inspired by Eddie Munson’s guitar from the previous season of Stranger Things. (Hopefully the demobats aren’t included.)

The Chips Ahoy! x Stranger Things Limited-Edition Cookie was provided to Snackology for this independent review.