Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America Read Online Free PDF
Author: Steve Almond
rattle of Jujyfruits and Good & Plenty and lollipop sticks all akimbo, the foil ends of mini LifeSavers packs twinkling like dimes, and a thick sugary perfume rising up from the pillowcase.
And more so, the pleasure of pouring out the contents onto the rug in the TV room, of cataloging the take according to a strict Freak Hierarchy, calling for all chocolate products to be immediately quarantined, sorted, and closely guarded, with higher-quality fruit chews and caramels next, then hard candies, and last of all anything organic (the loathsome raisins). A brief period of barter with my brothers might ensue. For the most part, I simply lay amid my trove and occasionally massed the candy into a pile which I could sort of dive into, à la Scrooge McDuck and his gold ducats.
Again: I realize I was sick.
For me, the crisis arose at about age fourteen, when it occurred to me that I was at least a foot taller than the other trick-or-treaters and that my elaborately polite pleas for candy were now being viewed as a kind of extortion.
MISTAKES WERE MADE
I hope I haven’t made my desires sound indiscriminate. They are not. When I disapprove of a candy, the sentiment often veers into wrath. A part of me wants to take the manufacturers by the short hairs and bitchslap some sense into them, though the real issue, obviously, is demand. It’s the consumers who are responsible, in the end, for the abominations of the Freak Kingdom.
The one candy whose success is most puzzling to me is Twizzlers. Twizzlers is basically an imitation of red licorice, which, itself, has no cognate in the natural world. The defenders of this candy will probably object at this point, arguing that the most popular Twizzlers flavor is actually strawberry. In fact, Twizzlers bears roughly the same chemical relationship to strawberry as the Vienna Sausage does to filet mignon. Which is to say: none. Its flavor is so completely artificial that I’ve often wondered if the production staff might not endeavor to make it just a little more artificial, thus crossing over an invisible flavor threshold and allowing the product to start tasting less artificial. This is to say nothing of the Twizzlers texture, which falls somewhere between chitin and rain poncho.
As a former Tangy Taffy user, I realize that I’m not exactly on solid ground as an arbiter of taste. But I can at least plead youthful indiscretion on that count, whereas I continue to encounter grown men and women (some of them otherwise desirable) who blithely chomp at their Twizzlers cud, breathing their plasticine reek onto the rest of us.
To me, Twizzlers belongs to the same loathsome genus as the Jujubes. The young and fortunate reader may not have heard of Jujubes, and this candy will be hard to describe in a fashion that makes it sound suitable for human consumption. They were basically hard pellets the size and shape of pencil erasers. Indeed, if one were to set Jujubes beside pencil erasers in a blind taste test, it would be tough to make a distinction, except that pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor.
These are two examples of candies I refer to as MWMs (Mistakes Were Made). Other would include:
Marshmallow Peeps : A candy that encourages the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring. Composed of marshmallow dyed piss yellow and sprinkled with sugar.
Circus Peanuts : Again, a marshmallow pretending to be something else, this time a legume. An affront to elephants everywhere.
Boston Baked Beans : If you are an actual peanut, why are you not covered in chocolate? Why are you covered, instead, in some kind of burnt-tasting brick red shell? Is the idea that you resemble a baked bean supposed to make you more alluring?
Jordan Almonds : Who chose the color scheme, Zsa Zsa Gabor?
Chuckles : A fruit jelly the consistency of cartilage. Explain.
Sixlets : Those of us over the age of, say, three can usually differentiate between chocolate and brown wax.
White jelly beans : I defy you to
And more so, the pleasure of pouring out the contents onto the rug in the TV room, of cataloging the take according to a strict Freak Hierarchy, calling for all chocolate products to be immediately quarantined, sorted, and closely guarded, with higher-quality fruit chews and caramels next, then hard candies, and last of all anything organic (the loathsome raisins). A brief period of barter with my brothers might ensue. For the most part, I simply lay amid my trove and occasionally massed the candy into a pile which I could sort of dive into, à la Scrooge McDuck and his gold ducats.
Again: I realize I was sick.
For me, the crisis arose at about age fourteen, when it occurred to me that I was at least a foot taller than the other trick-or-treaters and that my elaborately polite pleas for candy were now being viewed as a kind of extortion.
MISTAKES WERE MADE
I hope I haven’t made my desires sound indiscriminate. They are not. When I disapprove of a candy, the sentiment often veers into wrath. A part of me wants to take the manufacturers by the short hairs and bitchslap some sense into them, though the real issue, obviously, is demand. It’s the consumers who are responsible, in the end, for the abominations of the Freak Kingdom.
The one candy whose success is most puzzling to me is Twizzlers. Twizzlers is basically an imitation of red licorice, which, itself, has no cognate in the natural world. The defenders of this candy will probably object at this point, arguing that the most popular Twizzlers flavor is actually strawberry. In fact, Twizzlers bears roughly the same chemical relationship to strawberry as the Vienna Sausage does to filet mignon. Which is to say: none. Its flavor is so completely artificial that I’ve often wondered if the production staff might not endeavor to make it just a little more artificial, thus crossing over an invisible flavor threshold and allowing the product to start tasting less artificial. This is to say nothing of the Twizzlers texture, which falls somewhere between chitin and rain poncho.
As a former Tangy Taffy user, I realize that I’m not exactly on solid ground as an arbiter of taste. But I can at least plead youthful indiscretion on that count, whereas I continue to encounter grown men and women (some of them otherwise desirable) who blithely chomp at their Twizzlers cud, breathing their plasticine reek onto the rest of us.
To me, Twizzlers belongs to the same loathsome genus as the Jujubes. The young and fortunate reader may not have heard of Jujubes, and this candy will be hard to describe in a fashion that makes it sound suitable for human consumption. They were basically hard pellets the size and shape of pencil erasers. Indeed, if one were to set Jujubes beside pencil erasers in a blind taste test, it would be tough to make a distinction, except that pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor.
These are two examples of candies I refer to as MWMs (Mistakes Were Made). Other would include:
Marshmallow Peeps : A candy that encourages the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring. Composed of marshmallow dyed piss yellow and sprinkled with sugar.
Circus Peanuts : Again, a marshmallow pretending to be something else, this time a legume. An affront to elephants everywhere.
Boston Baked Beans : If you are an actual peanut, why are you not covered in chocolate? Why are you covered, instead, in some kind of burnt-tasting brick red shell? Is the idea that you resemble a baked bean supposed to make you more alluring?
Jordan Almonds : Who chose the color scheme, Zsa Zsa Gabor?
Chuckles : A fruit jelly the consistency of cartilage. Explain.
Sixlets : Those of us over the age of, say, three can usually differentiate between chocolate and brown wax.
White jelly beans : I defy you to
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