The 100 Year Cookie Fued

Early Family History

Joseph Loose, born January 16, 1843, and Jacob Loose born June 17, 1850, were two brothers that attended high school in Decatur, Illinois. Jacob was a drop-out at the age of 16. At the age of 20 moved to Kansas, where he opened a dry goods store with his brother in Chetopa. Joseph Loose has no known school record and had limited info about himself. In 1878, Jacob married Ella Clark from Carthage, Missouri. The couple moved to in 1882 and entered the cracker business.

Loose started the Children's Mercy's endowment fund in 1913. He partially retired after an illness in 1919, and died at the couple's summer home in Gloucester, Massachusetts on September 18, 1923. His funeral in Kansas City was attended by 700 friends and employees. His body was interred in a mausoleum in Elmwood Cemetery. His will established the Million Dollar Charity Fund.

Hydrox

In the 1890s, brothers: Jacob Loose, And Joseph Loose, opened a bakery in Kansas Missouri. This was due to the major stoppage of Biscuits due to major wars ending. One day, Jacob fell Ill and went to Europe to get treated, leaving only Joseph taking care of the bakery by himself. However, Joseph didn't like the way things were going, and silently sabotaged Jacob while he was being treated up in Europe. Creating the "National Biscuit Company" (known as Nabisco now) while Jacob was being treated. Jacob was furious, and coming back down to Kansas, he created what is known as the "Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company" (later to be renamed Sunshine Biscuits in earlier years) and started production in the 1900s, later on creating what is known as "Hydrox", ultimately being stolen by Nabisco, and distributed into stores in later 1910s era, leaving Jacob deprived and mad, at his brother who started an entire biscuit company with him, and later turned on his back. Oreo started becoming more and more popular over the next few years, leaving people to think Hydrox was a straight up rip-off of Oreo, some claiming to protest about it out near Jacobs company. Jacob in later years died in a good way, earning a few million dollars.

Oreo being left in the dust decided to hide Hydrox behind their product to make them more easy to find. Hydrox's shipping was being overtaken by a competitor, a stealer. The idea of Oreo in which made them into what they are today is really smart. They had non-manual processes of putting Oreo in stores and had people do it instead to understand how to hide Hydrox. Oreo did not want to make Hydrox a thing anymore and put several dead ends in its journey throughout time.

However Joseph losing a brother didn't stop him from the massive amounts of money he was making from Oreo. However a year later after Jacob died, along did Joseph, leaving the company he managed to be in memorial for him and leaving them in a dead end. What could they do? In earlier years of the early 20s they decided to create a genius idea that would sure give them more money. In the later years of Joseph's death, the National Biscuit Company released a new flavor named "Oreo lemon crème". This blew up the markets money making, skyrocketing them further then Jacobs company. 

Followed by altered versions, Oreo was spitting out new flavors every so often making it become what they're known for. Flavors in the layers 1900s consisted of the now popular: Golden Oreo, Mega Stuf Oreo, Mint Oreo, and many more flavors. As Hydrox heard, they were furious and never gave up. It was like a maze fulled to the brim with death traps set up by a friend of yours, taking risks of your life, like taking risks for your company popularity and money making. Hydrox decided to join in on the fun with the flavor making rampage with creating their first known flavor in 1973 which predated "New Coke" called "New Hydrox". This wasn't something that was crazy like New Cokes story on replacing, restoring, and re-manufacturing. Although its history is interesting. New Hydrox offered a deal to the buyer.

Hydrox's Money Rampage

New Hydrox was made with double the ingredients and better tasting ingredients. At the time in 1973, ingredients were made by putting a really good tasting ingredient into a food and calling it a day. This cookie was considered non-kosher, non-vegan, and non-halal. This new flavor ruined Hydrox's reputation, but didn't fail. A deal was printed onto an only existing ad on a newspaper explaining: "Try New Hydrox and save 7¢". at the time the deal was good due to Hydrox's extreme pricing due to Oreos takeover, and would get them more money. In a way, Hydrox's reputation was ruined and saved in the matter of a few months. For now, the rest of the info about this topic remains lost media and not much is known about it except for one eBay listing.