Crumbl X Little Debbie Review: Try The Oatmeal Cream Pie But Skip The Rest Of This Way Too Sweet Cookie Lineup

The McKee family started selling homemade snack cakes in the height of the Great Depression, and decades later had a thriving business that they named after their "little" granddaughter Debbie. Little Debbie remains a familiar face adorning long boxes of beloved snack cakes such as Star Crunches and Zebra Cakes, to the snack that started it all and remains a favorite: Oatmeal Creme Pies. Crumbl hasn't been in the snack game that long, but has made a name for itself since 2017 when its founders Jason McGowan and Sawyer Hemsley embarked on a culinary mission to create a perfect chocolate chip cookie.

Their hard work seems to have paid off, as Crumbl still garners long lines and bakes social media-friendly cookies to both admire and gobble up. There have been many collaborations in the ensuing years, including a recent collab with Minecraft that was so good even Creepers dug it. If you couldn't tell where this article was heading, Crumbl is teaming up with Little Debbie and using some of its treats for an inspired sextet of cookies. Might we interest you in Crumbl-ed takes on the Chocolate Cupcake Cookie, Cosmic Brownie Cookie, Oatmeal Creme Pie Cookie, Strawberry Shortcake Roll Cookie, Unicorn Cake Cookie, or Zebra Cake?

On paper, these sound like home run cookies. Luckily, cookies aren't made of paper, but sometimes are baked on parchment paper. These Crumbl x Little Debbie cookies are in stores now, and you deserve to know now if they are a dream creamy teaming, or have us teeming with way too much sweetness? The Takeout took out a six-pack, and I'm now ready to unpack it all in this chew & review.

I braved the lines and ventured over to my local Manhattan branch of Crumbl to pick up a box of six large treats, featuring one of each of the items in this collaboration with Little Debbie: Chocolate Cupcake Cookie, Cosmic Brownie Cookie, Oatmeal Creme Pie Cookie, Strawberry Shortcake Roll Cookie, Unicorn Cake Cookie, and Zebra Cake. The cookies were stored at room temperature and eaten in a room at the same temperature. Each cookie was sampled in alphabetical order, and then subsequent bites were taken to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each item, and to figure out which were the best, and which ones perhaps weren't.

This chew & review is a summation of my own personal tastes and thoughts. I also factored in my previous experiences with Crumbl cookies, Little Debbie snacks, and my overall impressions of this collaboration. The criteria considered for this review were flavor, presentation, texture, value, familiarity, originality, uniqueness, and, ultimately, whether this collaboration, or at least any part of it, is something worth your time and dime.

The fanciest and most dainty looking of all the cookies was the Chocolate Cupcake Cookie, which is trying to mimic a Little Debbie Chocolate Cupcake, which itself seems to be aping Hostess' original cupcake. The base of this cookie is chocolate cake flavoring, and the white icing swirl taking up the central real estate looked like an endless stream of cursive lowercase e's, surrounded by a big circle of marshmallow whipped cream.

This one had quite the heft to it, and yet was super-soft to the touch and to taste. It was also completely messy, no matter how I sliced it or tried to deliver it to my mouth. The chocolate cake flavoring in the cookie was very rich and dense, almost dominating the entire thing. The whipped marshmallow had a nice taste to it, but barely had any room to breathe. This was almost like a whoopie pie, but definitely needed more cream and less dense of a cookie for me to yell "whoopie" about it.

Going from one chocolate cookie to another is almost a tall task on its own, but I was hoping the Cosmic Brownie Cookie would land better than the Chocolate Cupcake Cookie did. If you aren't well acquainted with Cosmic Brownies, they are brownies made cosmic by the inclusion of a rainbow of candy-coated chips. They make something dark and dreary a little bit cheerier. This cookie does a really good job of visually representing the genuine Little Debbie article, but in round form as opposed to one that looks like a trippy domino piece.

From the get go, this one met with my approval in a way the Chocolate Cupcake Cookie just wasn't able to do. I was a big fan of the cookie base itself, which was more brownie-like than cookie. It's topped with a fudge glaze that reinforced the cookie's goodness, and the item accomplished its overall goal of tasting like a brownie. The rainbow chips on my cookie were spread about in a scattershot manner. The treat didn't exactly hit the visual mark, and in general didn't really add anything to the taste either. However, I get it, any bit of the rainbow is better than no rainbow at all.

Is there anything more classic than two oatmeal cookies as breaded bookends, sandwiching a healthy amount of creme? And is there any widespread version that does it better than the one Little Debbie has been selling for eons? The answer is no. The Crumbl cookie that's attempting this adaptation had a lot to answer for. From outward appearance, the creme part of the creme pie was nowhere to be found. I chose to ignore this oversight, and pressed ahead.

I started with a nibble of just the edge of this concoction, where the top and bottom oatmeal cookies met. The cookie itself was beyond super-soft, with no backbone whatsoever. It was kind of limp and flimsy, but I saw that as a strength and was happy to munch away at it no matter how the form. It was rightfully very oaty, super-sugary, and had a nice pinch of cinnamon to tie it altogether. As I quickly hit the innards, my patience was rewarded when the dam broke and the marshmallow cream cheese filling came forward, lining my mouth with joy.

Out of the six treats in this collaboration, the Strawberry Shortcake Roll Cookie was perhaps the plainest of the lot. It's a simple looking cookie that was mildly accented by the sight of two parallel swirls. One was a swirl of whipped cream, and the other strawberry jam. I started by sampling both the swirls, which were equally yummy. They worked wonders individually, as well as when taken together.

The cookie itself turned out to be about as bland tasting as it was blah looking. Imagine a sandy cookie with no real sweetness or appeal. To make matters worse, I'm not sure if it was supposed to be this way or it was just my bad luck, but the center of the cookie didn't appear to be fully baked. Perhaps it would be hard to pass full judgment on this one, but I felt like the whip-smart cream and fruity fan of strawberry jam deserved a better cookie placeholder. Overall, this treat feels like it was a last minute replacement for another cookie idea that was perhaps half-baked.

I had never encountered a Unicorn Cake by Little Debbie before, but it was a little obvious which of the remaining two cookies it was. The purple sugar sprinkles were a good first clue. Aqua stripes are something I don't usually associate with unicorns, but it looked kind of cool among the sea of white icing. Taken as a complete picture, it sort of looks like an odd baseball. Hidden from my eyesight were the base strawberry cake cookie, and the purple vanilla mousse within.

While I normally like to pick apart the individual elements of a treat, for this one I made an exception and tasted it as a whole. This isn't really a valid description, but it tasted like purple. So, is purple something that you want to taste? Then this is probably tailor-made for you. It actually tasted like five kinds of different sickly sweet forms of sugar, in various softened forms. It also didn't help that my cookie appeared to be under-baked as well. Maybe it's supposed to be cookie dough-like, but whatever it was, I didn't like it.

Ah, the zebra, always stuck at the end of the alphabet, and for this taste test, Crumbl took on the stripy Little Debbie cake. It was the last long step in this journey of what seemed like one treat too many. While the jagged brown stripes added a little pop to this treat, its top was practically a whiteout, coated in pleasing melted white drops. If you notice in its name, the word "cookie" doesn't appear, and true to the original, this is purely a cake piece. And as a piece of cake, it's a lovely looking one.

This one was super-easy to munch on, where its texture felt very moist and pillowy. The double stack of vanilla cake was intersected by a layer of fluffy marshmallow cream cheese frosting. As a whole, it tasted like a slice cut right out of a sheet cake served at a kid's birthday. That makes it a perfect option for the young set, and maybe a bit too much for the adults. I really liked this one, but the literal icing on the cake turned out to be a bridge too far in this netherworld of sweetness. It probably would have been better served with a second helping of that marshmallow cream cheese frosting on top, and with a touch more chocolate, which seemed to get lost in the make-up.

There were definitely highlights within this Crumbl x Little Debbie venture. The Oatmeal Creme Pie one hit all the right nostalgic and tasty notes one would expect, and is certainly worth seeking out. The Cosmic Brownie is another crowd pleaser, as it's essentially a good brownie, but I wouldn't say it's out of this world. I really dug the cake body of the Zebra, but its striped coat encapsulated what was perhaps off-putting about the entire collection — it's just all too much.

Trying six cookies in one sitting is a tall order for any human being to endure, but this is the life I happily chose. Oftentimes, the sugary monotony can add up rather quickly, and sometimes turns rather sickly. This happens when I try a new batch of Krispy Kreme flavors, and yet I often walk away from it with a mostly happy eating experience. While this Little Debbie Crumbl collection is perfectly inspired and well designed, it ultimately proved to be way too much of everything. By the end, I literally felt ill.

My kid loves chocolate chip cookies, and I got her a Crumbl one to munch on while I took on this daunting task. I took a break to try hers, and it proved that Crumbl can make a darn fine cookie. But I guess a plain old cookie just doesn't cut it anymore for the cameras and the likes. And before we go, I'd like to deduct 10 points for Crumbl not even bothering to attempt to make a Star Crunch.

The Crumbl x Little Debbie treats collaboration is available at participating Crumbl locations nationwide for a limited time only, from September 7 through 12, 2026. They are available to order anytime Crumbl is open for business, while supplies last. They can be ordered in-store using the kiosk or in advance in the Crumbl app, for pickup in store or curbside, or delivery where available.

The treats come in two sizes: Mini or Large. The Minis are sold in packs, with the minimum order being a three-pack. The large treats can be purchased à la carte, and in a variety of packs, which include a six-pack which will cover all the treats in this collab. Prices may vary by location, but at my local Crumbl a mini six-pack ran $16.99, and a large six-pack retailed for $25.99. Each large snack sold for $5.29 a piece. Prices may also be higher when placed for delivery or through third-party apps or websites.