I’m a candy junkie. Oddly enough, however, my habit did not form until I was well into my 20’s. I’m almost convinced that it’s related to my body’s craving for alcohol, but I can’t prove anything.
Anyway, I loves me some candy, and, therefore, I can motor through a crapload of the stuff if given the opportunity. On several occasions I have easily polished off a pound bag of Runts and once even got through three gigantic boxes of Hot Tamales before I lost all feeling in my tongue. Yes, I do almost everything to excess.
The one way I have found to curb my excesses is jawbreakers. Even most dime-sized jawbreakers are resilient under the power of my chompers, so I usually take my time and actually pace myself when it comes to the damn little thing.
Unfortunately, unless it’s Halloween or if I’m near one of those creepy candy stores that all malls seem to have, jawbreakers just aren’t in abundance in retail environments. Sure, there are those wacky quarter machines near the front door of most grocery stores, but, after hearing about a news story here in Dallas when I was a kid where a man used one of those machines to get a handful of peanuts and ended up with a couple of newborn baby rats, I’m pretty much out on those clockwork deathtraps for anything other than Homiesand those sticky jelly hands that you can whip out and grab things with. That pretty much leaves me with Wonka Everlasting Gobstoppers as an option at most retail outlets.
This isn’t a bad thing. I grew up on the long yellow box of color changing Gobstoppers, and really have a sense of nostalgia for the indescribable flavor the little monsters have.
Sleeves of three Gobstoppers are a Halloween mainstay, so I’ve been pretty good for the past couple of months. Yesterday, however, I had me a huge craving and none in sight, so I bounced down to the local grocery and picked up a couple “movie sized” boxes (what does that even mean?) of the little boulders to get me through the next couple of weeks.
The invective that came out of my mouth after opening up the box I choose not to repeat here, but I was irate. Gone were the dime-sized, multi-layer balls of sugar; replaced by a smaller ball about the diameter of a plain M&M. Worse, the candy was not scaled in kind, but rather, reduced to merely two color layers before hitting the packed candy powder center. Bottom line, I can crunch through these things like a rat baby’s skull.
Damn you Wonka, damn you straight to hell. I know it’s all really Nestle’s fault, but, just for this slight, I’m going to avoid both Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp movies for the next month or so.
What? Did Gobstoppers last too long and you weren’t able to sell enough boxes to keep your candy-coated yachts afloat? Are children’s bones getting so brittle from modern living that jawbreakers are becoming contraband? Why, Willy, why?
That’s it, I’m headed out to buy me a 5lb tub of Atomic Fireballs.