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1963 was a good year for cookie lovers, thanks to the introduction of Chips Ahoy! to grocery stores everywhere. Though maybe not as good as the homemade version, Chips Ahoy! were certainly a fine and addictive substitute. Paired with a generous glass of ice-cold milk (like a glass of wine, expertly paired with a gourmet meal,) it was entirely possibly to devour the whole bag in one sitting, leaving you pawing your way through cookie fragments hiding at the bottom.
Chock full of chocolate, the claim to fame for Chips Ahoy! was that they bet you, the cookie eater, that you couldn’t bite into one of their cookies without biting into the chip. The only tactic with a remote chance of success was to nibble slowly and with pinpoint accuracy – Chips Ahoy! definitely didn’t skimp on the chips. Never before was a challenge so satisfying and worthy of repeated attempts.
By the time the 1980s rolled around, Chips Ahoy! had branched into different cookie styles, such as chewy, sprinkled (a party in every bite!) and striped (making it much more difficult to avoid the chocolate – not that any of us were trying very hard, truth be told.) During the 90s, perhaps at a height of popularity for the famous cookie, their slogan got a facelift and promised one thousand chips in every bag. To emphasize this point, the company launched the “Chips Ahoy! 1,000 Chips Challenge” in 1999, asking the public to try and devise the most creative way to confirm there are a least 1,000 chocolate chips in each bag of their delicious cookies. Interestingly enough, the United States Air Force took them up on their challenge and a group of cadets studying statistics were able to confirm, through a detailed scientific analysis, that at least 93 percent of all bags contain over 1000 chips. Who knew that chocolate chip cookies were doing their part to help train the boys in blue?
Of course, the Air Force admitted one other little tidbit: of the hundreds of bags of cookies that were donated to them, only a small portion were actually used for testing purposes. The rest were used to “fuel the study” so to speak. In other words, these dedicated servicemen were just as addicted to these tasty snacks as the public at large. It would seem that Chips Ahoy! cookies possess the same addictive quality as their fellow junk food entity, the potato chip. Once you have opened the bag, you cannot eat just one.
