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Chips Ahoy! is a brand of chocolate chip cookies, baked and marketed by Nabisco, a subsidiary of Mondelēz International, that debuted in 1963. They are widely sold in the United States, Latin America (where its name in some countries is "Choco Chips"), South Africa, Canada, Spain, Portugal, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, United Kingdom and many more. The Blue Bag type is also sold in the Stockmann store chain in Latvia and are marketed in large packages of 9, 18, 27, or in various smaller packages. It is the second-best-selling cookie in the United States after Oreo, also a Nabisco-branded cookie, with an average of $355 million in sales per year. By the 1980s, several different varieties of the cookie snack were being baked and shipped to grocery stores: chewy, sprinkled, and striped. In Indonesia, Chips Ahoy! was relaunched in September 2015 after the product was discontinued in that country in the early 2010s.
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Advertising campaigns
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Chips Ahoy bags featured comic strips of Cookie Man, a superhero character who subdued various cookie-devouring creatures, such as Fruit Fly or Big Wig. His alter-ego was Mort Meek, who was always seen "counting the 16 chips" in his Chips Ahoy cookie when he was attacked by one of the creatures, at which point he slipped into a phone booth, locker room, restroom, etc., to become Cookie Man and finish off the villain in a Bruce Wayne/Batman vein. These characters were also the subject of Chips Ahoy's concurrent TV commercial campaign, and were both played by the same actor.
For a time in the mid-1990s, advertising labeled Chips Ahoy as being "1,000 chips delicious!" The acquired theme song for most of Chips Ahoy! commercials during its most popular time in the 1990s was a portion of the song "Sing, Sing, Sing" by Benny Goodman's jazz band in the 1930s. From 2002 to 2010, Chips Ahoy's mascots were the animated "Cookie Guys." In 2010, the Cookie Guys were replaced by a live-action campaign on the theme of "joy," in which it is demonstrated that the simple act of opening a bag of Chips Ahoy! brand cookies induces feelings of delight and exultation to the degree that one is affected with "happy feet" and begins dancing. In 2014, Chips Ahoy made its appearance to the UK and Ireland in two flavors, Popcorn Candy Chip and Crispy Choco Caramel
The origin of the name
Nabisco says the name is "a reference to the nautical term, Ships Ahoy!". The words "Chips Ahoy!" also feature prominently in a story appearing in Chapter 15 of "The Uncommercial Traveller", by Charles Dickens. Dickens relays a childhood tale of a girlfriend, named Chipselle, who is taunted by a bully who tormented her endlessly with, "Chips ahoy"! There is also a 1956 American animated theatrical short titled Chips Ahoy.
Varieties
Nabisco 100 Calorie Snacks: