, ____, ( 21/07/01 anada397 , / \ ,_____ (--|_\_,,_, _ _| _ __________ ,-.______ _,---._ __ _/ \ / \+------ _| ) | |(_|(_|(_|_ .net------/ )----.-' `./-/ \ / / ( |__, ( ( ,' `/ /| \ / \ `-" \'\ / | \ / "Crappy Candy" `. , \ \ / | Y-------- ----------/`. ,'-`----Y | / by Gloomchen ( ; mEoW!@/| ' i________________________________________________| ,-. ,-'_______/ | / | | | ( * | / |____________________ Anada is cat-friendly! __) |__\ `.___________|/ `--' `--' My mother trudged in the door from her long day slaving away at your favorite corporate discount store and mine, Wal-Mart. She waved the bag in her hand, taunting me and my brother, saying sweetly, "I bought you some CANDY!" "OOOOOOOOH!" I instantly shouted. Sugar=good. I like candy. She reaches in her bag and pulls out... EVERLASTING GOBSTOPPERS! "Oh," my brother and I dejectedly whine as we take the giant box of the biggest gyp candy in the whole world. See, folks, candy is awesome. Nothing beats a sugar rush when you really need it most. And this blessed country of the United States of America sure has turned itself absolutely bloomin' nuts with the variety of candies one sugar-fiending child could ever imagine, not to mention the contributions of the rest of the world. But at the same time, these companies TRICK US into thinking something is good, when really, it's not. It is crappy candy in disguise. And it's time someone spoke out. 1. Everlasting Gobstoppers Gee. Let's take a kid's dream, the candy that NEVER GOES AWAY from a movie designed to do nothing short of scare children into being good, and make it REAL! Except, you know, let's not make it the size of a golf ball and spiky all over. Oh, and let's LIE and call it EVERLASTING even though it is NOT. What do we get with Everlasting Gobstoppers? We get the dumbest candy ever -- JAWBREAKERS -- with an eensy weensy bit of flavor goodness hidden way at the end. Oh, great. Suck on a flavorless ball of annoyance for three hours to find a Tart N Tiny inside. You know what? Fuck you, Willy Wonka, if I want Tart N Tinys, I'll go buy them. I'll spill them all over the place and be miserable, but I'll buy them. 2. Slo-Pokes Why, look, kiddies! It's a giant chunk of chocolate flavored carmely taffy something or another on a stick! You can suck on it for the rest of your life! Or, you can get impatient, try chewing on it, and get your jaw stuck together for the next four hours (or risk yanking your teeth apart and losing half of your chompers in the process)! Gee, that sounds like FUN! Fucking Slo-Pokes. I never willingly bought one. You always seem to get them on Halloween, or your mom buys them on sale, or someone gives you one as a gesture of friendship. And you eat it, because it's sugary and therefore good, right? Oh god no. If you're not sick of the flavor after the first HOUR of sucking on the damn thing, well, you can set it down and get it stuck to something, or you can bite it. And we've all made that mistake. Then you try to slooooowly wiggle your teeth free until you realize it's no use and the SLO-POKE HAS DEFEATED YOU! Slo-Pokes are just 100%, grade A WRONG. Period. 3. Fruit Stripe Gum Okay, I'll give Fruit Stripe Gum it's due... it's good for the first thirty seconds that you chew it. Then, the flavor turns to grey. It's the only thing I can think of that after thirty seconds literally tastes like GREY. Not even sugary grey. Just kinda this rubbery gum that has no flavor whatsoever. For the record, I hate most fruity gums -- I prefer cinnamon. But if you really wanted a fruity gum, why not invest and get some Bubble Yum or some shit? You know, something where the flavor lasts more than the time it took to unwrap it? Maybe it was the commercials that suckered people in, cuz you know, those cute animated animals all striped and rainbow are the kind of motivation that makes ME want to buy gum. Forget it, it makes no sense. None. 4. SKOR bars My great grandmother used to buy Skor candy bars on clearance or some shit, because she had a whole box of them in her dresser drawer. For those who haven't had the pleasure, it's a candy bar made of a thin plate of icky, icky, ICKY toffee from hell, covered in a thin layer of bland chocolate. There is nothing delicious about a Skor bar. I always wondered if I wasn't missing some taste buds or something, because my great grandmother LOVED those things. She ate them like... well, like candy. But she also loved my perennial "favorite"... 5. Werther's Original Ooooh, bright shiny wrappers! What could it be? Hmmm, it looks like a Barbie tissue box. I will put it in my mouth. MMMM, tastes like sugary butter! I never understood Werther's at all. The more you suck on them, the greasier your mouth becomes, and the more you know you've made the biggest mistake of all time. But by the time you're done, you WANT ANOTHER ONE. What the fuck? Why does this happen? They're NOT good. But presented with one, it's like, you can't resist. I swear, it's a secret plot by the Dutch to take over America by making them confused as to why they keep eating this inherently icky candy, then BOOM they sneak in and blow up the government. YOU'LL NEVER DEFEAT ME, WOODEN SHOE WINDMILL PEOPLE! I'M ON TO YOU! 6. Swedish Fish So many people are gonna kick my ass for this one, but it has to be said, especially as long as I'm already dissing Europeans. Here is the big plan: we make some cute little red gel-like candy shaped like little fish. And they will taste... like gel? What the fuck are they supposed to taste like, anyway? Glue? Rubber? If that's the case, a job well done to the creators of Swedish Fish. The biggest problem with swedish fish is that I keep thinking I'm missing something. I know too many people that like them, so I keep trying them, and my god, they're still gross. People, they taste like... a gooey candle. I don't know. I don't get swedish fish. They're just nasty. 7. Popcorn-flavor Jelly Bellys Oh my god. I SO have logic on my side on this one. When I eat popcorn, it is good. It tastes like popcorn, it crunches like popcorn. All is right with the world. However, when I eat a popcorn flavored Jelly Belly jelly bean, it tastes like popcorn, but... it's the texture of a JELLYBEAN! Do you not have access to this culinary delight, but want to know what it tastes like? Here. Take a bowl of delicious popcorn. Now soak it in a bucket of water for three hours. Drain it off, add butter and salt, and there you go. THERE YOU FUCKING GO. ENJOY. 8. Chocolate filled Cadbury Creme Eggs Now, I am one of the rare sort that actually likes regular Cadbury Creme Eggs. It makes Easter completely worthwhile for me. It has only been in recent years that Cadbury has started screwing with the formula, coming out with such (delicious) abominations as Snickers Cadbury Eggs. Sure, it spoils the enigma, but at least it's yummy. Then, there are the chocolate filled Cadbury eggs. I can't really put my finger on exactly what the hell is in the middle of those damn things but I know it's not quite chocolate, but it's not quite anything else, either. It's just sludgey god knows what. To attest to how horrid these things are, a couple of pals of mine bought a 24 pack of them a few years back. They kept offering them to people, carrying on about how gross they were. I asked why they bought them if they were so disgusting. Their response is that they ate one every day to remind themselves how horrible they were and how much they appreciate everything else. Well, at least someone out there found a practical use for them. 9. Those weird little square and rectangular candies that are pretty colors with stripes and stuff on them that are shiny and every grandma has them in their candy dishes on Christmas that come in bags and if you let them sit for more than 3 minutes they all mysteriously stick together I don't know what the hell those things are, but chances are you've been fooled by them at least once. Some are long and rectangular and red with thin white stripes, and those are kinda cinnamony; some look like green throw pillows and taste spearminty... I don't know. I give up. They have no name, not one that you or I would know, but they're present in candy dishes every yuletide season. And we've all popped a couple in our mouths, hoping for candy, for flavor, for ANYTHING, and instead you get something that if you suck on for too long gets as sharp as a razor blade and pokes your tongue and mouth all to shreds, or you can bite them and choke them down. They're generic. They're creepy. I don't want to talk about them anymore because they are scaring me. 10. Peanut Butter M&M's Mmmm, M&M's rule. I am particularly fond of peanut M&M's. I like a small amount of plain ones. I rather do NOT like the crispy ones, but they did not incur my full disgust like the peanut butter ones did. Hey, M&M guys, I know you're probably still bitter over ET eating Reese's Pieces and all, but just give it up. Peanut butter M&M's are not good. The chocolate balance is off and your peanut butter tastes like it fermented in the crack of my ass. And because I just can't let it go, please learn that crunchy outside + uncrunchy chocolate + miscellaneous extranneous crunchy things is just too much crunchiness. 100 Grand is a candy that does crunchy RIGHT. Learn it and live it. 11. Velamints I don't think I've ever had a Velamint that wasn't at the bottom of some old lady's purse. And I don't even know if they still make them. I think the last time I had one was when I was a screaming 6 year old sugar fiend. After that, even my nonstop desire for sucrose wouldn't let me eat another one of those friggin' things. For those who haven't indulged, a Velamint is a very strange sort of Certs-like breathmint. It doesn't taste right. Sure, it's minty, but... there's something else in there that I can't put my finger on. Dish soap? Yeah, somthing like soap. Mint with this nagging soapy flavor. And when you chew them, they kinda stick in your teeth all weird. No minty flavor of Life Savers sticks in your teeth. I think it's the soap. 12. PAL Bubble Gum Nothing but NOTHING will ever top the most disappointing thing to hit Halloween bags in the history of mankind. It's bubble gum, kinda, if you eat about 10 pieces to have a large enough mass to blow a bubble. And it tastes like 110% pure sugar cane in gum form. It's the model for bubble gum flavored earache medicine you had to choke down as a child. It was often as hard as a marble by the time some old lady bought it off the shelf and tossed it in your goodie bag. Of course, it's PAL bubble gum, one of the signs that there is a satan and he's manufacturing candy. When I was little, you could buy two pieces for a penny. It was, of course, grossly overpriced, but TWO for ONE was always a great marketing tactic. And I chewed that shit my entire kindergarten life, I'm sure. It was never GOOD, it was just that it was two for one. Eventually, I got smarter, and I started using my pennies to buy Tootsie Rolls, even though you only got one for one cent. Sometimes, it pays to pay extra. I'm not quite sure why I am 24 years old, yet still so irritated by horrible candy I haven't endured since I was less than half the age I am now. I'm also not quite sure why my brother, upon turning 16 and getting a job, used to spend huge chunks of his paychecks on gigantic bags of all kinds of candy (and still does every so often, two years later). And I really, REALLY can't figure out why after all of these years of my brother and I bitching about this crappy candy that my mom STILL chooses the lamest shit to buy us for a treat. I've got three words for you, mom: SOUR PATCH KIDS. Not Raisinettes, not black licorice, not chocolate coins. Get it right, or we'll make you eat it. /\___/\ ____________________________________________________________ /\___/\ \ -.- / \ -.- / `-.^.-' (c) 2001 Anada e'zine by Gloomchen `-.^.-' /"\ ________________________________________________________________ /"\