A factory made cookies. Of different colors and different designs at one of the early stage process. And they had many different cookie cutters, ingredients to make those cookies, cut and bake them. Once they were done and dried, they were then pushed to the next stage where all that cookie-cutting, baking and drying was going to contribute.
The next stage was when several different machines smashed these cookies repeatedly until they were just cookie crumbs. Not entirely pulverised. But small crumbs. With little bits of colors setting the crumbs apart that identifies their previous configuration. But the designs were gone, and shapes were no longer meaningful.
In yet another stage, the crumbs were mixed with some kind of oil, and stirred until everything was a thick paste. Now the mixture was a mishmash of colors that it lost any previous identity. The pasty mixture, like a speculoos spread is then thinly spread out on a surface, and left to dry.
That was the end of the factory production line. That was deemed the highest contribution of the cookies so painstakingly prepared in the beginning and whose little personalities and identities cultivated and distinguished.