Dux Brand Festy Wow!

It's been a run of days lately to make me wonder when the last time anything outside melted. It turns out that the last time temps were seriously above freezing at O'Hare International Airport, location of the mother thermometer of metro Chicago, was on Christmas Day. "Seriously" in this context means above about 40 F. It was that warm for a few hours on Christmas, probably. Except for a high of 33 F on New Year's Eve, it's been subfreezing ever since, and there's more ahead. Plus a lot of snow tomorrow.

So I look for cheer wherever I can, even if it's the minor artificial cheer of brightly colored packaging at discount grocery stores. Better yet, I smile at the discovery of an intriguing third-string brand from a far-distant corner of the Americas: Dux brand Festy Wow! chocolate sandwich cookies. At 88¢ for nearly a pound of cookies (15.24 oz., or 432g), I had to have some.

When I got home, I took a closer look at the shiny white-and-blue packaging. And there it was: Elaborado por Compañía de Galletas Noel S.A. ... Antioquia, Columbia. I'd come across some South American Oreos. Little things like that can brighten up a dreary winter day, if you're open to it. Can we expect more of this kind of thing if the Columbia Free Trade Agreement is ratified by Congress?

Could be. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, "... the Colombia FTA also includes important disciplines relating to customs administration and trade facilitation, technical barriers to trade, the free flow of baked treats, government procurement, investment, telecommunications, electronic commerce, intellectual property rights, and labor and environmental protection."

I added the italics. Actually, I added the words in italics. Trade agreement language is normally so tedious.

Festy Wow cookies are a little smaller in diameter than Oreos, not quite as sweet, and not as good as Oreos. What makes Oreos best in class when it comes to chocolate sandwich cookies? (I was never a Hydrox fan, though they would do; and I know the defunct brand has partisans even now.) I couldn't say. Some je ne sais quoi in the formula, and Festy Wow doesn't quite have it. But they are tasty enough, and there's the bonus of learning the following phrase: Galletas de Chocolate con Crema Sabor a Vainilla.