Following a legal warning from cookie-maker Oreo’s parent company, the local J.P. Licks ice cream store is replacing the cookie’s name in its flavors in favor of “cookies ’n’ cream.”
J.P. Licks owner Vince Petryk ran a contest to find a replacement term for the cookie’s name. It ended late last month.
The winning suggestion, “cookies ’n’ cream,” was sent by 29 entrants out of about 2,500 entries, he said. The winners will all receive a quart of ice cream and a tour of the chain’s 659 Centre St. headquarters, the J.P. Licks Facebook page says.
“My employees and managers talked me out of anything clever or interesting,” Petryk said about the name. “What’s more important here, being clever and funny, or using something that, when spring rolls around and the line is out the door, everybody already knows?”
People have expressed their disappointment with the “traditional” choice on the Facebook page, with about 40 negative comments.
“I didn’t have it in me to make my employees; jobs any harder for the sake of a unique name,” Petryk wrote in reply to those comments.
As of Feb. 10, J.P. Licks’ website had not been updated and was still using “Oreo.”
Gazette calls to Mondelez International, Oreo’s parent company, were not returned. That company asked J.P. Licks to pay licensing fees to continue using the cookie’s trademarked name, so Petryk opted to rename the flavor, he said, saying the cost would have been prohibitive.