Dear Gossips,

About a week ago on Instagram, Oreo posted a curious little video about fan mail, using the number seven, when it’s not like the brand had been doing a countdown. The people who are attuned to this kind of thing caught on pretty quickly. Oreo is four letters, and to make seven from four, you just need three…

But three letters for millions of us also means seven.

Yesterday Oreo confirmed it – BTS x Oreo, the brand’s biggest global collaboration to celebrate BTS’s comeback and their 13th anniversary with ARMY: 13 wafer embossments with special messages and symbols, in purple and hotteok flavoured cream. Hotteok is a signature Korean street food, panfried pancakes stuffed with gooey sugar/syrup/nuts.

BTS's Oreos

So, once again, BTS is repping their culture, reimaging one of the most well-known American cookies in their own signature way.

The packages are being released during their anniversary month, also known as FESTA. So the timing is intentional too since so many of the personalised messages are specifically for ARMY. And of course this drop is not just for snacking, it’s for collection, it’s merch. Oreo has already said in their statements that they fully expect that there will be people buying packages to never open them. As is often the case with BTS, it’s the brands they partner with who benefit the most. The confirmation post announcing the special edition cookies is currently at 2.3 million likes – and they average about 1,500 at the most.

Back in 2021, during COVID, when McDonald’s partnered with BTS for the BTS Meal, the company reported that “same-store sales had jumped by 25.9% in [that]… [adding] that sales grew by 14.9% compared to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic hit”.

That is a massive increase and Oreo wants some of that action. Just like the cities around the world where BTS will be touring. Vegas, currently, is enjoying the BTS boost. They’ll perform there tonight and tomorrow before heading home to Korea for two shows in Busan for FESTA, followed by multiple stops in Europe and then back to North America in August. Interestingly, their last North American stop is in LA in early September. After which they have almost a month before they resume in South America. The MTV VMAs this year are on September 27. RM, Jin, Suga, j-hope, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook have never performed in person at the VMAs. They were live on the show from Korea in 2020 but in terms of being on stage at the actual ceremony, that has never happened. If MTV hasn’t already negotiated to make this happen, it’s only a matter of time.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Photo credits: BTS at the American Music Awards

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