We are in the salad days of post-Halloween parental candy
confiscation bliss. Actually, health-wise, it’s kind of the opposite of “salad”
days. What the hell does that term even mean, really? Who equates good times
with salad? Shouldn’t it be the “cheeseburgers and beer” days?
Anyway, back to the candy. Halloween candy confiscation day
is my favorite day of the year. This year being an election year, it’s even
better. That’s because every year on November 1st I teach my
children about taxes.
Ok, boys, bring those pillow cases full of loot in here and
pull up a chair. It’s time to pay the piper. Forty percent of your candy
earnings come right off the top to go into Dad’s General Fund. After that, we
need to discuss the highway taxes. You used our city streets to obtain this
candy, did you not? Well, then, you’re going to have to pay to maintain them.
Caramel-based candy is best for road taxes. And let’s not forget, we need to
talk about property taxes. You live here “rent free” for most of the year, but
today the bill comes due. A few 100 Grand bars ought to cover the base rate,
but don’t forget that we need to service our bond obligations. Yes, boys, the
voters approved massive bond expenditures last go-round, so I’m afraid the
chocolate needs to keep coming my way. That bullet train down to Bakersfield
isn’t going to pay for itself, you know.
What’s that? You don’t like it? Welcome to my world. I don’t
like it when people who don’t own property get to decide how to spend my
property taxes, either. The good news is, when you’re eighteen, you can vote me
out of office. Or more to the point, you can vote yourself out of my house.
Actually, there won’t be a vote. You’re required to leave when you’re eighteen,
but you can register to vote for other stuff.
Much like me after taxes, when the reaper is finished, my
boys are left with a shockingly smaller amount of candy. Then I hit them with
the hammer; just because you paid taxes doesn’t mean you get to ignore your
charitable obligations. We need to bag up over half of your remaining candy to
send to the troops overseas.
It’s a fun lesson for me to impart. They are less than enthusiastic,
but they have nothing to complain about. Unlike my bank account after taxes and
giving, they still have more candy than they can eat in a month.
Just in case you thought I wasn’t serious about my “dad is
the government” lesson, I also rigorously inspect and filter the candy
earmarked for the troops. I need to double-check that everything is safe and up
to our high standards, after all. I mean, we all know that Reese’s Peanut Butter
Cups cannot travel great distances without turning poisonous, or at least, very
gooey. And extensive studies have proven time and time again that coconut is
bad for your reflexes. I simply will not allow those dangers near our great
fighting men and women overseas. They get the Starbursts.
It was my coconut screening process the other day that led
me to a very unexpected discovery. I unwrapped a bite-size Almond Joy candy bar
that contained no almond…
An Open Letter to the Hershey Company
Dear Sirs,
What the actual hell? Your production and distribution
departments just succeeded in providing me with an Almond Joy candy bar with no
almond whatsoever. Is this some kind of sick joke?
This is analogous to Monday Night Football providing me with
a bowling tournament instead, or perhaps an actual football game, but on
Wednesday morning. There was an implied contract in the name, and you failed
miserably to hold up your end of the bargain.
Besides an implied contract, there was also a very specific
written one, right on the back of the little wrapper my nutless nut snack
arrived in. You printed an ingredients list, and the word “Almonds” (plural, no
less) is listed right there after coconut and sugar.
I am willing to overlook the pluralization of “almond” on
all the verbiage on your little wrappers, even though every one of the previous
twenty or so bite-size Almond Joys I have unwrapped have had exactly one
almond-size lump protruding from the top of the bar.
It’s cool. I get it. Times are tough. Costs are tight. It’s
a tiny little candy bar. One almond was sufficient. Do you know what was not
sufficient? No almonds.
Just to be sure, I looked up the word “ingredients” in the
dictionary, and sure enough, it means “what’s in this thing.” It does not mean,
“what we meant to put in this thing.”
Speaking of this thing, what should I even call what you
provided me? “Joy?” I think not. The joy was removed with the absence of the
almond. “Mounds?” No. While those may be similarly nutless, they are supposed
to be coated in dark chocolate, not the standard milk chocolate my castrated candy
catastrophe was wrapped in.
And speaking of Mounds vs. Almond Joy, what’s up with those
names? Almond Joys are the ones with mounds. Mounds bars are flat. Shouldn’t it
be Mounds and Coconut Joy?
Forget the naming issue; let’s get back to the real problem.
I realize these things are made in massive quantities by a machine, and are not
hand-made by Hershey’s candy elves. And I realize that things happen.
“Well, we get 99.9% of them right,” you might say.
Here’s the thing about that: I DON’T CARE! I just had a
mouthful of chocolate and coconut with no almond. If I’d wanted that, I would
have eaten a Mounds. Do you know why I didn’t eat a Mounds on purpose? Because
they suck, that’s why!
The almond is the thing that makes the Almond Joy so good.
It is also, as I pointed out earlier, right there in the name. IT SHOULD NOT BE
MISSING FROM THE CANDY BAR!
I assume you have some sort of automated inspection devices stationed
right after the almond inserting machine that does not insert almonds. They
need to wake the hell up! If you can’t find reliable inspection equipment - and
judging by my almondless Almond Joy, you can’t - then maybe it’s time to add
some people back to the assembly line.
Looking at the wrapper from this little candy abomination, I
see it says “Peter Paul” here above the falsely advertised “Almond Joy” with
the cute little coconut standing in for the “O” in Joy. Who the hell is Peter Paul? Or is that two
guys? Should I be contacting them about this mess? Maybe you could give them a
call on their private tropical island and have them take a break from their coconut
candy tycoon lifestyle long enough to come down to the plant and actually make
sure the candy that leaves the facility is ACTUALLY WHAT YOU SAY IT IS!
It shouldn’t be too hard. The almond is supposed to stick
up, so if the little candy bar is flat on top, DON’T PUT A WRAPPER ON IT AND
SEND IT TO PEOPLE WHO ARE EXPECTING AN ALMOND JOY!
Sincerely, without an almond or any joy,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen
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