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I’m So Glad I Found This Place!
I can’t tell you how sick I am of trying to relax with a glass of merlot that I have to chew like a piece of overcooked calamari.
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Delightfully Anachronistic Packaging! Halloween Edition!
ON HALLOWEEN when I was seven, I went trick-or-treating as, of course, Bennett Cerf.
I’d hoped to dress as Mr. Cerf the year before, but the five and ten had quickly sold out of his costume and the closest thing available was his “What’s My Line?” co-panelist Dorothy Kilgallen (with inexplicable day-glo yellow molded “hair”).
Mother – not an artist! – tried to transform her into Bennett by drawing eyeglasses on the mask with a laundry marker. Everyone whose doorbell I rang asked me where Yoko was.
That next year I made sure to get to the store the first day of October to buy my Cerf costume. Unfortunately, Woolworth’s buyer only ordered the large size, for the big boys, but I was bound and determined to go as my favorite television personality.
Grandmother pitched in and hemmed the legs of the costume so I wouldn’t trip, but the mask was a different story – it really couldn’t be trimmed down without rendering unrecognizable the likeness of America’s leading publisher and compilator of puns. The plastic mask was much too big and sat awkwardly on my face. Instead of looking out both of the eyeholes, I was struggling to peer through one nostril, or if it shifted, the bowl of his signature pipe.
When the big night finally arrived, it was particularly chilly. But I ditched my coat as soon as I got away from home so that the costume could be appreciated, unfettered by children’s clothes, by all whose doorbells I rang. (Did the real Bennett Cerf wear a green Sears Toughskins jean jacket over his suit and tie? It seemed unlikely. Although to be fair, I never saw him in a one-piece flame-retardant vinyl outfit that tied in the back and featured his own name in playful, toggled letters and a two-color caricature of himself in the middle of his chest, either.)
I guess I couldn’t see where I was going when, giddy on SweeTarts and Mary Janes, I darted out between two parked cars on Gate Field Drive. Some jackass in a Plymouth Duster plowed right into me, literally knocking me out of my PRO-Keds (which was fine, really – Bennett Cerf didn’t wear those either).
Doctors said the ensuing concussion plus some viral thing I developed from my walking pneumonia (no jacket, remember?) short circuited something in my brain and accounted for my sudden obsession with delightfully anachronistic packaging – which lucky for all of us continues to this day.
Boy, that was a long trip to get here, wasn’t it? But as usual, it was worth it! So I was at Ralphs the other day and they had these:
Above: Mayfair brand candy corn. Oh boy, two ounces – can they spare it?
But look at the hang tag (industry term). It totally has a 1970s look to it, right?
Look! Look!
Check out the typefaces, the style of illustration, and the colors! It’s like it’s all right out of the glorious 1970s, right? And yet you can buy this, right now, today, in October, 2012, at the store.
It’s not as though they tried to make it look old – you and me, we can always spot those guys a mile away, can’t we? Such packaging just rings hollow and insincere. But not Mayfair Candies candy corn. This is the real deal. I reckon this is how they’ve been selling their candy corn since the Ford administration – back when tragedy, and a car, struck a young boy, shattering his hopes and dreams and pelvis.
Worst of all, by the time I came out of the coma, my sister had eaten all my candy.
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Delightfully Anachronistic Package Design: Virginia Edition! Part II!
YEARS AGO I cut in front of a hideous old hag in the express lane at Pathmark. This ancient hump-backed crone was all ratty black shawls and hairy purple warts. She stunk of unwashed hair and kielbasa, and carried in her shopping basket a single tube of Preparation-H, as she evidently had hemorrhoids. Which I reckon were painful for her because she moved so goddamn slow. Jeez!
I, on the other hand, was an active seventeen-year-old, too busy for hemorrhoids, with a cart full of six cases of Foster’s Lager, a package of Drake’s Devil Dogs (it’s an East Coast thing), a pound or so of Voortman cookies (back when you could buy them loose!), a box of Kudos (remember them?), a few bags of Wise potato chips (Sorry! East Coast, again!), a couple dozen other odds and ends, and a newly-minted fake ID (for the Foster’s).
This was in Port Chester, New York — just across the border from Greenwich, Connecticut. (But I’m telling you, economically and culturally, the two places were worlds apart! Worlds apart!) In Port Chester, privileged Greenwich kids like myself were allowed, neé encouraged, to illegally purchase alcohol. There existed a tacit understanding between the municipal governments of both towns that if Greenwich would send their teenagers to Port Chester to spend their underage drinking money, Port Chester would not send their teenagers, or God forbid, any of their other residents, to Greenwich beaches.
Anyway, Baba Yaga there was taking for-frickin’-ever, rooting through her dingy little coin purse – so I just took the initiative, pushed my cart ahead of her (“ahead of,” “into” – whatever) and started piling my groceries onto the belt. It’s okay – remember, I’m from Greenwich.
The old hook-nosed, bekerchiefed witch squinted at me with one milky white eye, reached into her sleeve and pulled out a packet of Beemans gum, shook it at me and intoned something – I can’t quite remember what exactly, it’s been years – but something like,
“Vei deveni obsedat de fermecător vechi cu aspect alimente…!”
Something like that.
Ever since that moment I’ve been obsessed to the point of being practically crippled by an admittedly bizarre fixation with delightfully anachronistic packaging design. Christ almighty these stupid setups just keep getting longer each time!
Anyway, last week, in the very same store in Hill, Virginia where I found Mrs. Sullivan’s pies, I came across these amazing creatures:
Prairie Belt Smoked Sausage!
Holy cow – this package could be Mrs. Sullivan’s pies’ nephew! Yellow background, brand name in red script, the whole nine yards!
And by “the whole nine yards” I mean, of course, the main anachronicity (a word I first coined here) of this package: a tenth-generation photo of a bowl of smoked sausage coupled with artwork of a cute little fella in the foreground comprising a label designed when canned food label lithography was still in its infancy! Probably!
Given the juxtaposition of sausage and small boy we must therefore assume that Prairie Belt Smoked Sausage are made from small bo– Oh, look, my attorney just popped one of his blood pressure pills.
I’m joking! My only point is that the image of the prepubescent Mathersesque young man looks like it was painted over six decades ago! The subject of the painting, if he’s even still alive at this point, is well into retirement, dealing with the horrors of those infamous Obamacare Death Panels, or being pushed off a cliff by Paul Ryan, depending on your political persuasion. (Remember, we are not a political blog! I’m Ted Parsnips and I approved this parenthetical aside.)
Actually, comparing the Prairie Belt boy to Jerry Mathers would be inaccurate. Perhaps a better descriptor would be Boothesque.
Indeed, he bears a stronger resemblance to little Billy Booth – you know, Dennis’ pal Tommy on the 1959-63 series “Dennis the Menace.”
Look! Look!
He kinda looks like him, right? Little bit? Sure.
So after discovering these anachronistic delights, I did exactly what you’d have done: I bought like thirty cans.
I mean, when am I going to find this stuff again? Besides, Christmas is right around the corner. (This year, give the gift of good taste, mechanically-separated chicken and pork spleens. Give Prairie Belt. Clearly I should have gone into advertising.)
Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking when I was getting ready to come home – I packed them all in my carry-on bag. As the 5-ounce Prairie Belt Smoked Sausage cans were over the 3-ounce TSA limit and resembled, in size and shape, containers of Sterno, I was required to throw them away there at the gate or consume them before boarding. As you would, I chose the latter.
I’m not a greedy man, so when I started slowing down by can 17, I offered some to the others in line at 75¢ a can, exact change only (a potential 24¢ per can hit I’d be absorbing), but there were surprisingly no takers. I managed to get down one more can but then cursed my small, trim abdomen as well as the TSA bastards who would be feasting like kings that night on the dozen cans I surrendered to the trash. (In retrospect I should have opened them all and dumped the contents directly into the garbage to prevent this.)
And here’s the thing: Turns out the Sterno comparison was rather apt: Six gin and tonics into the flight we hit some turbulence and everything came back up, burning the hell out of my throat. What I wouldn’t have given to be sitting next to that wicked old gypsy woman who could have conned me out of my first generation iPod Mini for a stick of Beemans to get the taste out of my mouth! I bet the two passengers on either side of me would have appreciated this as well.
Tomorrow: Something shorter.
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Delightfully Anachronistic Package Design: Virginia Edition!
AS YOU KNOW, due to a chemical imbalance in my brain that’s been traced to my childhood habit of sneaking into the attic, tearing off swaths of insulation and eating it like it was cotton candy, when I see a package of something – usually food (but not always), usually at a dollar store (though there are exceptions) – and it has the look of something that has existed just as it is now for the past twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, even sixty years, I get all tingly – as though the tiny Fiberglas shards permanently impaled throughout my organs have suddenly become electrified.
That is to say, it’s neat-o when you find stuff where they probably haven’t changed the design of the package for decades.
On my recent trip to Hill, Virginia, I found not one, not four, but three such items! Today we’ll look at the first one!
Mrs. Sullivan’s pies!
Since we’re in the country, I felt it appropriate to ask the pie box to pose atop a fence post in a field.
The checkerboard element on the sides, the cropped pie photo, the thick, red script of “Mrs. Sullivan’s” – it all adds up to just one thing: This package looks like something you’d find on a shelf back in oh, say, 1937. As though they haven’t changed their packaging for seventy-five years. And, Land O’ Goshen!, when you go to their website, you’ll find that that’s precisely how long they’ve been in business!
Oh, sure, they’ve added stuff – “No Trans Fat,” a website address, hats you can buy, and a heartpie shaped logo with the unfortunately spelled “I Luv Pie” motto – but the core of the pie box, the pie box core, if you will, looks like it’s three-quarters of a century old. And by Godfrey, that’s why we love it! Or, eugh, “luv” it.
I sampled the coconut pie and the pecan pie. They were both magnificent. Don’t believe me? Want to try some of Mrs. Sullivan’s pies for yourself? Perhaps you want to buy some related pie-ma’bilia? Or download the free track “Haulin’ Pies”? Go to their website and poke around. And don’t worry about your personal information being compromised – according to carefully worded verbiage thereon, “Mrs Sullivan’s ® first priority is your online security that is why we protect you with the best secured site Certificate the web has to offer.”
I made sure to bring home a few pies, too. They don’t have Mrs. Sullivan’s pies here. I told you Los Angeles is a filthy toilet!
Whoa, Evalina, stop-a ringin’ my cellular phone! ‘Cause I’m a-haulin’ pies in Memphis, and I don’t think I’m ever comin’ back home!
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¿What’s Bueno? E-Z Eats Country Fried Beef Fingers!
VERY little time here, folks – I’ve made a wager with some fellows at the club and am now on a race around the world with my trusted valet/irritating Filipino houseboy Kenji.
Thankfully I’ve taken the precaution of scheduling in advance a bunch of these insipid What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store posts that are nonetheless the lifeblood of this blog. Well, what do you know – here comes one now!
E-Z Eats! Country Fried Beef Fingers
Man, if you’ve got a hankerin’ for some good old-fashioned country fried beef fingers – deeelicious breaded strips of beef in a handy carrying cup – look no further than E-Z Eats Country Fried Beef Fingers! They microwave up just as quick as you please and—
…Okay, okay, I can’t go through with it; I just can’t do it. These things were atrocious. Now I’m going to have to win the bet, if only to be able to return all that money to the country fried beef finger industry.
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¿What’s Bueno? Toblerone!
Turns out I’m having another one of my “episodes” where I suddenly seem to disappear off the face of the earth and friends, relatives and local law enforcement all turn out to take part in a massive search for me and then I wake up four states away in a cheap motel wearing German Mennonite women’s clothing, with no idea how I got there.
Thankfully I somehow had the foresight to schedule, in advance, a bunch of these What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store posts to keep interest in my blog at an all-time low while I’m gone!
Toblerone Chocolate Bar
Toblerone?! At the 99¢ Only Store!? No way!
When I was a kid, Toblerone bars were among the imported stuff that all the rich kids I went to school with got for Christmas. Toblerones, Paddington Bears, “Ant and Bee” books and those little blue cylinders of Pustefix bubbles. Oh how the mighty have fallen! Not the rich kids I went to school with; I’m sure they’re all just richer. Bastards. No, I’m talking about Toblerone! They’re selling them at the 99¢ Only store now! Finally, they’re within the reach of good, plain people like you and me.
Those wealthy a-holes I went to school with can piss their money away paying twice as much for these at their precious Trader Joe’s! No, I’m serious – they can and they will.
Look! Look!
But this year I can at long last have the Christmas that Mother and Dad were tragically unable to provide for me as a child, despite how I longed for and deserved it. That is, so long as Ant & Bee, Paddington, and Pustefix all start showing up at the 99¢ Only Store, too. But if not, I can deal with it. After all, what kind of spoiled brat man-child really needs fancy bubble solution imported from Europe? Doesn’t regular dish soap work just as well?
Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from the austere simplicity of my plain white prayer bonnet.
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¿What’s Bueno? Indulgence Dark Chocolate Cream Cheese!
GUESS what! You’re in for a treat! Because I’ve been called out of town suddenly, to take care of my sick aunt, eh, Aunt Martha, sure, even though I’ve never mentioned her before and the tabloids are saying that I’m actually on strike and am trying to get them, whoever they are, to renegotiate my contract. Anyway, what was going to be one of those interminably long posts where I list a whole bunch of things that are bueno at the 99¢ Only Store has now become a week’s worth of short posts with one or two items per entry!
As my blogging mentor, or blogntor, Sylvia Haynes-Darden often says in her continuing education classes How To Not Lose Your Shirt Blogging and Lost Your Shirt? Unclutter Your Closet NOW, “If you have a bunch of stuff, spread it out over as many separate posts as possible, and if you haven’t worn it in a year, throw it out!”
(They had a two-for-one deal at the Learning Barn, and I have two hours to kill on Tuesday nights when Kim is in that Tantric Massage class that she and her Zumba instructor, Mauricio, signed up for together.)
Anyway, let’s get this thing started.
Indulgence Dark Chocolate Chocolate Cream Cheese Spread by Kraft
What is it with Kraft lately and their attempts to cram cream cheese down our throats – a cheese we already accept so willingly? Previously they tried to get us to accept their laughable “cooking creme”…
…which, by the way, is also available in large quantities at the 99¢ Only Store. Aren’t we as a nation fat enough as it is without having to eat all these cream cheese by-products? Answer: No, so they introduced this “Indulgence” nonsense which is now taking up valuable real estate in the refrigerated cases of the 99¢ Only Store. I did my part to unclog the case and clog up my arteries by buying a bucket of the stuff.
I opted for the dark chocolate variety, but you might like the milk chocolate variety. Anyway, here’s what happens: It’s like a sort of cross between Nutella and chocolate frosting and pudding. You can spread it on a toasted sandwich “flat” (also sold at the 99¢ Only Store) and it looks like this:
Eh, it’s pretty good. It’s not overwhelmingly bueno. Just sort of mediocrely bueno.
It doesn’t taste anything like cream cheese, so I’m not sure what the damn point is. Since I only have two more of those stupid “sandwich rounds” left but nearly a full container of this Indulgence stuff, I have a feeling I’m going to end up laying on the couch in the living room eating this with a spoon while I watch a week’s worth of “The Price Is Right” saved on the DVR this Saturday night. Alone.
(This weekend poor Kim agreed to help that hapless Mauricio rearrange his bedroom to optimize the positive energy – she took a Feng Shui class this past spring. Oh, I warned her. “Learn Feng Shui,” I quipped, “and you’ll end up moving more furniture than if you’re the only one of your friends with a pickup truck.” Heh – I need to send that one in to Bennett Cerf.)
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First Day of School!
IS there anything worse than vomiting in school?
Yes! Vomiting on the first day of school, just two short minutes before the end of the day – after you almost made it without vomiting!
It happened to yours truly, waaay back in fourth grade, and now you are there!
Like you, I’ve never done well in extreme heat. Add intense humidity to the mix and it’s only a matter of time before that telltale headache starts developing, I turn white and clammy, and I start looking for a toilet, wastepaper basket, or girl with long, elaborately-braided hair.
Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday: The entire class was sitting with our new teacher Mrs. Anderson on the carpeted floor of her classroom. In the waning minutes of the school day she was reviewing with us, her new charges, what we’d be covering that year.
I’d been feeling increasingly ill since about one p.m. But you know me – I’m not exactly the sort to raise my hand and speak in class if I don’t have to. I was going to run out the clock. I could do this! Steady, stomach – just a few moments left!
Two minutes to three p.m. and I couldn’t hold it back anymore. With a sudden and mighty blurrrrp the contents of my stomach gushed forth from my mouth, onto my lap and the carpet. I still remember what they served in the cafeteria for lunch that day – hot dogs, pineapple chunks and chocolate milk.
I remember because they made a striking visual contrast, half-digested as they were, on the deep orange carpet and my light blue corduroys.
The tight little knot of students exploded back. You remember the old kindergarten science experiment where you sprinkle black pepper on a bowl of water and then add a drop of dishwashing soap and the pepper immediate pushes back to the farthest reaches of the bowl?
Well, think of my classmates as the pepper and me and my vomit as the soap, Tropical Chocolate Frankfurter Gastric Juice scented.
Since I’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor, when I stood up, my legs were striped: Puke, corduroy, puke, corduroy.
As Mrs. Anderson walked me down the hall towards the nurse’s office she asked me with equal amounts of compassion and frustration, “Why didn’t you say something?!”
“I thought I could make it!” I whined.
The custodians did a good job of cleaning up the mess. There wasn’t a trace on the carpet the next morning. That didn’t stop all my fellow students from walking over there and inspecting it, though – whispering as they looked at me. Sure, there were a few half-hearted offerings of “glad you feel better” but I was largely a pariah for the next few days.
Of course this incident followed me throughout the rest of that school year, to the end of elementary school, through junior high, and onto high school. “I remember you!” I’d hear at least once a year from someone who’d been in my class that fateful year but I hadn’t seen in some time. “You threw up on the first day of school!” After I graduated I thought – I hoped – that would be the end of it.
But it’s my own fault: I made the mistake of telling Devon, hopefully imparting the lesson I’d missed – to never be afraid to speak up. And of course, little Devon missed the point completely, loved the story and thinks it’s the funniest thing ever – especially the part about the striped puke-y corduroy legs.
Today he starts fourth grade, he does. Little sickly Devon with his many allergies and his sensitive, sensitive stomach.
Fourth grade already! They grow up so fast, don’t they?
…Anyway, look what I’ve secretly replaced the Fruit Roll-Up in his lunch with.
Yeah, we’ll see who’s laughing this afternoon, little smart-mouthed so-and-so.
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Important Pizzal Update!
PIZZAL? Pizzial…? Whatever, you know what I mean. Of, or relating to, pizza of course!
Anyway, remember, when I first got my blogging license – oh, gosh, what was it, like twelve years ago…?
…I wrote about this place…?
Well, look! They’re back in the news! And by “the news,” I mean on my door knob!
Boy, she’s still enjoying that pizza, huh?
Since I first blogged about Pizza Ptus, that “little girl” has grown up, gone to college, gotten married, gone back to college, earned her degree in Outer Space Sciences and is now the first lady astronaut living on Mars! To paraphrase Sir Paul McCartney, what an amazing world in which we live in, right?
There’s other changes, too. They added the clever tagline (industry term) “slice of heaven.” I like it!
Wait, can door hangers (industry term, different industry) have taglines? Hey, I’m going to say they can! Why the hell not, right? After all, we are the music makers. And we are the dreamers of dreams.
Also of note:
• They’ve switched from a horseshoe-shaped cut to allow for the ingress of a doorknob to a asteriskal aperture-type multi-cut. Very progressive. Bold move. Bold move!
• While they no longer offer a cary out special, they’re now featuring something called a “carry out special.” Whatever that is!
• They’ve adjusted the color! The photo of the calzone no longer looks like a cigarette butt someone ground out under their shoe on the sidewalk!
• Goofs – Continuity: The little girl is seen gnawing on a slice of pepperoni pizza, but the pizza in the foreground obviously has at least three additional different toppings on it.
• I didn’t notice this last time but behind the bottle of Coke…? Yes – swirly design things!
• Oh and most of the prices have gone up since last time.Anyway, the thing to take away from this is – aside from the fact, as my attorney helpfully points out, that this place still has delicious food – is that without obvious last minute, throw-anything-the-hell-up-on-the-blog posts like this, you really wouldn’t appreciate the good posts, like, oh, I don’t know – what was a good one? – the one about the, oh let’s say the one about the animal crackers. Sure, why not?
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The Jet-Puffed Explosion!
OVER THE LAST YEAR, I’ve noticed something clogging the candy and cookie aisle at my local 99¢ Only Store, and I don’t mean fat, swarthy men in sweatpants and stained white t-shirts, loudly talking on cell phones, and stinking of cigarettes and cheap cologne. (I don’t get to the 99¢ Only Store in Glendale often enough for this to be a problem. Ha! You get it, right?)
Nuh-no, I’m talking about these things:
Marshmallows!
I don’t understand it!
What’s with all the marshmallows? What is the deal with the marshmallows? Who are these marshmallows?!
As you know, marshmallows are good for precisely two things:
1. Regular-sized marshmallow are excellent for toasting on a campfire (and/or making s’mores, a Slovak delicacy).
2. Mini-marshmallows are wonderful for making Nana Parsnips’ famous ambrosia salad with cat hair.
That’s it! Okay, and like you, about every eight years, I’ll buy some Fluff and make me a Fluffernutter sandwich, enjoy it immensely, forget about the rest of the jar, and throw it away eight months later once it’s liquefied, but that’s marshmallow in a jar, not marshmallows in a bag. And I guess mini-marshmallows are nice in hot cocoa, too. And the dried, desiccated ones are just the thing in cereal, like Lucky Charms, but they already come in Lucky Charms. And I suppose the case could be made that marshmallows are good for making yams at Thanksgiving, but as I never eat yams, I wouldn’t know – though here I’ll allow it.
Okay, so that’s it, precisely those two things.
So why is there now about eight shelval feet dedicated to them in my local 99¢ Only Store? Not only that, but they’re getting these things by the palletful, sure, and so there’s always boxes of them stacked up in the aisles too, in addition to those on the shelves.
Who in hell is eating so many of these things?
Now, you know me – I’ll eat practically anything. And yet it would never occur to me to buy marshmallows so I could just sit there on my fat ass and cram them into my mouth right out of the bag. Frankly, the thought disgusts me – almost as much as it disgusts you. (I’m in those dingy threadbare underpants of mine in the above scenario. See, I told you you’d be disgusted.) And yet, many of these packages of marshmallows are telling consumers to do just that! To just sit their on their fat asses and cram them into their mouths right out of the bag – as a snack! …Yes, yes, in their underpants!
And the 99¢ Only store isn’t just selling your standard regular size and mini-marshmallows, oh no! They come in different flavors now!
Those “Jet-Puffed Strawberry Mallows”…? Great for snacking, apparently, and brother, they’re just the tip of the marshburg:
There’s chocolate & vanilla-flavored marshmallows!
Caramel & vanilla-flavored marshmallows!
Gingerbread-flavored marshmallows!
Toasted coconut-flavored marshmallows! [Please note: These are great for munchin’ as opposed to snacking.]
Piña Colada-flavored marshmallows!
German chocolate cake-flavored marshmallows!
Carbon monoxide-flavored marsh– You know, my attorney has advised me to correct that before I even finish typing it and instead note that these are vanilla-flavored, car-shaped, Daytona 500-themed marshmallows! And they’re probably quite delicious!
And it’s not just Kraft, it’s also these…
Plain ol’ generic-flavored marshmallows!
Mexican marshmallows!
Mini-Mexican Marshmallows!
More mini-Mexican marshmallows!
So many Mexican marshmallows I’ve run out of m-words!
And these things! Not in standard marshmallow form, but sold blatantly as a candy. [Note the execrable 1994 Flintstones movie typeface used for the name.]
More Mexican Marshmallows, Part Dos!
Marshmallow skewers?! Whaaaaaah…? And no, these aren’t leftovers from Easter, believe it or not. They’re available alla time! Alla time, I tells ya!
And now Mallow Bits! Those in the cereal blog game technically refer to these as “marbits.” My question: These things are “Jet Puffed” like all the other marshmallows from Kraft…
…so how come they’re crunchy and not soft? Or can things be jet-puffed yet not be soft? I mean, I don’t know. I’m confused by this whole marshmallow thing. I’m looking for answers here.
So while you ponder that, please also be aware that they come in peppermint flavor, too.
Anyway, any ideas, gang? Why the influx of marshmallows to our precious 99¢ Only stores? I’d have thought it was maybe a summer thing, but this started last year, it hasn’t let up, and it keeps getting bigger.
Perhaps it’s just one of the growing number of products that manufacturers can produce cheaply and unload at the dollar stores to make up for lost revenue in this tough economy since it’s not just dirty poor people but good people, people like you and me, who are shopping there now too. See, your standard bag of marshmallows, regular or mini-sized, unflavored, cost about twice this at a regular supermarket.
Or is it that poor people just eat a lot of marshmallows? It’s okay if they do; it’s not like I’m judging them.
Perhaps the answer lies down the street, at another of my favorite discount retailers…
…and I use the term “discount” here very loosely.
…Because can you see the price on the upper right corner of the package? Thirteen bucks! And it doesn’t even come with any marshmallow ammo! You have to go back to the dollar store to buy that! So my guess is the Big Lots people have an arrangement with the 99¢ Only store folks who hammered out a deal with Big Marshmallow. Everyone wins – including you, if you like getting popped in the eye with a miniature German Chocolate Cake and then going to the emergency room to have an overtired intern poke around your cornea in attempt to remove toasted coconut.
Coincidentally, this toy brings back a lot of memories. No, I never owned such a gun, but I did appear in a few special interest films under the stage name “Marshmallow Stryker” in the mid-1990s. I quit after I had to go to the emergency room with an altogether different, though no less embarrassing, injury.
Oh, don’t you judge me like a dirty poor person! I had rent to pay and this was before I was raking in money hand over fist from this blog!
Ted Parsnips
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