Coming soon: Skinny Oreos for the 'sophisticated' cookie eater

'Oreo Thins' will be added to the Oreo cookie lineup in US stores starting next week. The new Oreos will have fewer calories, and be thinner. 

Oreos are getting a skinny new look, and its maker says the new cookie is a "sophisticated" snack for adults that isn't meant to be twisted or dunked.

Mondelez International Inc. says it will add "Oreo Thins" to its permanent lineup in the U.S. starting next week. The cookies look like regular Oreos and have a similar cookie-to-filling ratio, except that they're slimmer. That means four of the cookies contain 140 calories, compared with 160 calories for three regular Oreos.

And since they're for adults, Oreo says they weren't designed to be twisted open or dunked. That's even though about half of customers pull apart regular Oreos before eating them, according to the company.

In the summer of 2013, the company caused a stir when it stocked store shelves with "watermelon" Oreos, reported The Christian Science Monitor. 

“We chose Watermelon because it is a fun, summer flavor that goes great with the Golden OREO cookie,” Oreo spokesperson Kimberly Fontes told Time. 

While Ms. Fontes seems to be excited, Oreo's social media accounts, known for brilliant marketing stunts like the Super Bowl power outage ad released on Twitter, have been mum about the newest edition of their cookie, at least on the Internet. Rather than tweet, Instagram, or post a Facebook status about the limited edition product as they have in the past for other makeovers like the orange colored Halloween cookie, Oreo's social media managers have only recognized the existence of the new Watermelon Oreos in responses to comments originating from fans, which, by default, are not displayed front and center on social media pages. 

So what are Oreo eaters saying about the new Watermelon Oreos? On Twitter, responses range from, "These sound heavenly," to "i looked up 'abomination against nature' in the dictionary and there was a picture of watermelon oreos." In the one tweet that actually mentioned @Oreo, Twitter user Mark Hodgson said he highly recommended the summer edition Oreos, to which the official Oreo Twitter handle, three days later, replied: "@markasrx You're one smart cookie ;)"

How addictive are Oreos? Well, researchers at Connecticut College found that rats tend to behave toward the iconic cookies the same way they behave toward cocaine and morphine. 

The researchers – a team of four undergrads led by Conn College neuroscience professor Joseph Schroeder – placed rats in a maze with Oreo cookies on one side and rice cakes on the other, measuring the amount of time the rats spent on each side.

You can guess which one the rats preferred. "Just like humans, rats don’t seem to get much pleasure out of eating [rice cakes]," said Dr. Schroeder, in a press release.The study didn't indicate whether the rats were eating double-stuffed, watermelon, or simply the "regular" Oreos.