Throw Into Can D

Five candy bags.
Two doorbell rings.
Three happy kids served.

If only I had known, we would have given each kid a pound of candy. Luckily, we have children in our lives. And an orthodontist who is buying back candy at $2 a pound. And there are always graduate students. They’ll eat anything.

But not everyone has easy access to starving students, so I shudder to think about the waste that holidays like Halloween produce.

Although, I’m not sure the candy is even fit for those toiling away in the halls of higher ed. Last night, I decided to sample some of the wares, and was horrified. Well, that might be too strong of a word, especially since there was an unexpected bit of good news.

Twix is no longer made with PGPR.

Of course, I probably should have realized that at the grocery store. Typically, I have a rule about reading the ingredients of the products I buy. But this year I found myself completely broken by the candy aisle.

Maybe the fights of the past had actually paid off? All of those years of complaining about the dreck that’s making it into our food may have resulted in some brands taking a little of the dreck out of their products.

Time to celebrate with a Twix bar…oh no. What have you done to Twix! You monsters!

My favorite part of this candy was the crunch of the cookie, and how the textures of the chewy caramel and the silky chocolate worked against each other. But the crunch is gone. Biting into the cookie today results in its quick disintegration into a pile of sandy crumbs.

To make sure it’s not just my imagination, I bring the young man of the house over to the candy bowl, and he confirms my findings.

Little Miss Fussy came home with a lot of Snickers bars. I didn’t buy any of those, because in the past they’ve been an awful temptation for Mrs. Fussy. In general, the missus is a mindful and healthful eater. But she can plow through a bag of Snickers bars like a wild boar.

It’s been a long time since I had a Snickers bar. Probably the last one I had was a year ago.

What the hell. What did they do to Snickers! The components are still the same. It’s chocolate, peanuts, nougat, and caramel. I can see them all in the cross section of the bite. But where did the flavor go? Where’s the crunch of the peanuts?

This just tastes like sweet. Gah!

Again, I have the young man of the house come over and confirm if this is just the false perception of an aging palate which didn’t have candy very often, or if this finding is legitimate. Again, he backs me up.

Kit-Kat, as expected, is still just waxy chocolate over crappy wafer cookies.

It’s all just so bad. But it couldn’t have always been this way. My goal isn’t to transform kids’ candy into a serious confection. However, the fun of the candy should come from the joy of the morsel, and not the printing of the packaging.

These aren’t treats. They are brands. Any pleasure the candy may have once brought, has been slowly stripped away. Now the only pleasure offered is that of a sugar delivery device. And that’s not what candy used to be.

It used to be delightful, dammit. From flavors, to textures, to unique combinations of ingredients. But when your Snickers bar that used to be packed with peanuts is lacking the assertive peanut flavor that defined it in the past, what’s the friggin point?

Screw it all. I think I may be moving over to team Butterfinger. It’s gross, sure. But it’s always been gross, and at least it’s still fun.