Details You Don't Know About Chips Ahoy

What details don't you know about Chips Ahoy? Take a wander down the cookie aisle at any grocery store and you're bound to be overwhelmed by options. Not only are there tons of different brands, but there are a plethora of different flavors and types of cookies as well. 

One of the most popular cookies across the country is indeed Chips Ahoy. According to Statista, of all the major cookie brands, Chips Ahoy was the second top-selling cookie in the United States behind Oreos as of 2017. Made by Nabisco — which also happens to be the producer of Oreos — Chips Ahoy have been famously satisfying Americans' sweet tooth since they first hit shelves in 1963 (via Insider).

There's a lot you may not know about the beloved chocolate chip cookie, which now comes in varieties like Reese's and double chocolate. So the next time you go to dunk a few in a cold glass of milk, here's what you should know about the snack that's won over so many people.

Have you ever wondered where the name "Chips Ahoy" even came from? Us too — but unfortunately, there's no clear answer. Most people believe that it's a fun take on the old nautical adage, "Ships ahoy!" which sailors would shout when they saw other vessels on the open waters. "When one takes a look at the cookies themselves, they kind of appear as these seas of cookie dough with the little chocolate chips representing ships stranded on the seas," Biscuit People explained.

However, Chips Ahoy may have not been the first to make the play on words. Mental Floss did some digging and found that the phrase "chips ahoy!" was first used in a Charles Dickens story all the way back in 1859. "Chips ahoy! Old boy! We've pretty well eat them too, and we'll drown the crew, and will eat them too," Dickens wrote in his book, The Uncommercial Traveller. 

Part of what makes Chips Ahoy so delicious is the abundance of chocolate chips in every cookie. One of its first tag lines back in the '60s was, "The 16-chip cookie," promising at least 16 chocolate chips in every Chips Ahoy cookie (via Mental Floss). Nabisco later increased that promise to 32 chips to keep up with other cookie companies, but then dropped that back to 24 in the '80s. Eventually, they decided to simply promise at least 1,000 chocolate chips per 18-ounce package of cookies.

That theory was contested by a group of third graders from North Carolina in 1996, as The Morning Call reports. The class, after counting the chocolate chips in their bag of Chips Ahoy, wrote to Nabisco claiming that there were only 680 chips. The company hosted a public recount and found that the kids had only counted the chips on the surface of the cookies — after counting every chip, they found there to be 1,181 chocolate chips in the bag. Phew.

At some point in your life, you've likely joked to your friends or family, "If you eat any of my cookies, I'll kill you!" Of course, you were joking — but apparently, some people have said that and meant it. In 2014, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that a woman was strangled by her 49-year-old roommate when she ate three of his Chips Ahoy cookies for breakfast. She told the paper that she thought he was joking when he threatened to kill her, and that if her landlord hadn't shown up, she believes he really would've followed through on the threat. Yikes.  

That's not the only crime associated with Chips Ahoy cookies. Two years later in 2016, in the town of Belleville, Illinois, there was a shooting that police say started with "$8 and a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies," the Belleville News-Democrat says. It seems that some people take their Chips Ahoy very, very seriously.

Frosted Flakes have Tony the Tiger. Keebler has Ernie the Elf. And Chips Ahoy currently has Chip, a walking, talking chocolate chip cookie. Described as an "animated, lovable optimist" in a press release, Chip returned as the face (or, as Nabisco calls him, the spokes-cookie) of Chips Ahoy in 2020 after a six-year hiatus. You might see him in ads lounging in a hot tub of melted chocolate or dressing up for Halloween.

But Chip wasn't always Chips Ahoy's mascot. Before the animated cookie appeared on the scene, there was the Cookie Man (via Biscuit People). Inspired by comic books, his real name was Mort Meek, but he transformed into a superhero when an evil villain would try to steal his Chips Ahoy cookies. The Cookie Man valiantly defeated the cookie thief to protect his sugary stash. He was replaced by the Cookie Guy in 2002 who later was replaced by Chip.

If you thought the debate between creamy and crunchy peanut butter was intense, just wait until you read the Reddit comments on the debate between original and chewy Chips Ahoy cookies. In the unpopular opinion subreddit, one person stated that the chewy cookies, which came out in 1983, are better than the crunchy (a.k.a. the original) ones. It's such a hot topic that it spurred nearly 600 comments — and it turns out it isn't such an unpopular opinion, after all. It seems that an even number of people are on both team chewy and team crunchy.

Common complaints against the chewy Chips Ahoy is that they have a "weird" aftertaste and that they don't soak up milk. However, fans of the chewy cookies argue that they're perfectly soft and delicious and that the original Chips Ahoy are too crumbly and messy.