It takes a big man to admit when he is wrong.

Then again, if he says “it takes a big man to admit when he is wrong” when he admits that he is wrong, it sort of diminishes the whole impact of what he is doing.

I worked late the other night; I think I was the last person in the newsroom. I was stressing a bit over the story I was writing, and besides it is a little creepy in the newsroom all alone. So I decided to soothe my mildly frazzled nerves with a cookie.

The generous folks in our marketing department keep a selection of Oreos out on a table at all times. I assume it’s sort of a public cookie jar, or at least I hope it is, because on this particular night I helped myself to one.

It was a new, limited-edition flavor, chicken & waffles. There is no way this could possibly be good, I said to myself, and yet I decided to try it.

Also on the table were another limited-edition flavor, apple pie á la mode, and a glow-in-the-dark package with six spooky Halloween designs that I inattentively thought had glow-in-the-dark orange creme filling.

I like chicken and waffles, though to be honest I always think the chicken part is unnecessary. The good part of chicken and waffles is the waffles, and the chicken is just there as a savory counterpoint and a good way to get protein while eating waffles.

To my surprise, the Chicken & Waffles Oreo was quite good. It tasted like syrup-covered waffles. The creme filling didn’t exactly taste like fried chicken — or anything else, for that matter. It just tasted vaguely savory, a savory counterpoint to the sweet cookies though probably not much of a source of protein.

I just checked. A serving of two of them contains less than 1 gram of protein. Also, who only eats two Oreos at a time? One serving of regular Oreos consists of three cookies. But chicken & waffle Oreos, like ordinary chicken and waffles, are high in calories, 140 for two. The regular Oreos give you 160 calories for three.

So I was wrong. And not only did I like the chicken & waffle flavored Oreo, I would eat it again. But maybe not too many of them, because 70 calories for an Oreo seems like a lot.

The good folks at Mondeléz (they bought Nabisco) have been promoting Oreos like this for years, offering a few new flavors to stir up interest in an aging, (but kind of perfect) cookie franchise. Several years ago, they even brought out a mystery flavor, dividing up $100,000 among six people who correctly guessed what it was.

It was Fruity Pebbles, which apparently was pretty easy to determine. I thought it tasted like New Jersey.

Along with the chicken & waffles, the current new flavors are banana pudding and deep-fried dough-flavored Oreos. Those must be more popular than the chicken & waffles, because the marketing department’s table was out of them.

Over the years, the flavor-bending team at Mondeléz has created several winning flavors to go along with lesser ideas such as fruit punch-flavored Oreos, cotton candy, candy corn and watermelon-flavored Oreos.

The Milka Oreo Big Crunch bar was basically amazing, combining my vote for the best milk chocolate in the world, Milka, with Oreos. The Dunkin’ Donuts Mocha Chocolate Sandwich Cookies were excellent too, though it was long enough ago that Dunkin’ was still called Dunkin’ Donuts. And you could never go wrong with Fudge-Dipped Thin Bites, which had the additional advantage of a higher chocolate-to-cookie ratio because the cookies were thin.

My mother always told me that you’ll never know if something is good unless you try it. It’s not a bad philosophy for living your life.

Try it. You may like it.

Unless it is the Fruity Pebbles mystery Oreo flavor. Don’t try that. That stuff is nasty.

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