I'm honestly not sure which issue to address first: the ominous use of the word "chocolatey" or the fact that this "Café W" is apparently Walgreens' new house brand.  

I had to make a late night unscheduled trip to Walgreens this week.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Walgreens in the next town over is the closest place to buy tampons at 11PM on a weekday.  It's open 24 hours, and you don't have to walk all over hell and gone just to get what you need and make it back to your car. 

(Safeway, I'm looking at you.  I love your giant aisles and vast wide open spaces, but if I only want one thing, it's like an expedition just getting there and back.)

On this trip I was feeling susceptible to snacks.  I'm sure you can relate.  Unless you're a guy, I guess.  Anyway: snacks.  I first cruised through the candy aisle, on the hunt for anything new.

This is where I found "W Brand Australian Style Licorice."  Confused by this new house brand (and why house brand licorice?  Is that not the strangest thing to offer in a house brand?) I continued on.  The next aisle held both W Brand Premium Ice Cream in quarts (a Haagen-Dasz lookalike) and these sad little cookies.

They also had Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream on sale.  I picked that up for immediate medicinal use, and bought this cookie as a potential booster shot for later in the week.  

And so I find myself staring at a house brand "chocolatey" chunk cookie wondering, why?  Why did they make it?  Why did Walgreens decided to create a house brand exclusively (as far as I can tell) for snack foods?  And how on god's green earth did they manage to get four grams of trans fat into a COOKIE for pity's sake?

Although it masquerades as a locally baked fresh item (note the plastic wrap which is meant to look like a local pastry case offering - but is really just shrink wrap held down by a sticker on the other side), these cookies are distributed by Prairie City Bakery in Libertyville, IL (which calls itself a "Food Service Bulk Bakery Solution").

I wonder how many chocolate chip cookies there are between my home on Puget Sound and the Prairie City Bakery in Illinois?  A lot, I bet.  

After picking futilely at the wrapper, I gave up and found a pair of scissors to cut the cookie free.  Upon opening the wrapper, the smell is distinctively chemical "fake cookie" scent.  It smells more like a cookie-scented candle than it does a cookie.

Bits of the edge flaked off in crumbs as I unwrapped it.  Combined with the "soft cookie" (no doubt aided by those trans fats) it gives the confusing impression that it's both stale AND fresh.

The taste is sickly sweet, and artificially flavored.  I haven't had one of those god-forsaken Keebler Soft Batch cookies in many years, but this brought back memories of those.  The after-taste is also chemical-y.  

I was prepared for a cookie that would be bland and not very good; I was wholly unprepared for a cookie that tasted like it was created in a chemistry lab.  The final verdict: quite possibly the worst cookie I've ever tried to eat.