Those Mounds are Mine, Kid
There’s nothing like a delightful sugar rush to make one feel like a kid again, especially if you already are a kid.
My three-and-a-half-year-old son Jacob is quite excited about Halloween, partially because he gets to dress up as a robot (Cyborg from “Teen Titans”) but mostly because of the CANDY. He’s looking forward to several rounds of acquisition, at Dad’s office, with his pre-school posse and then finally once around the neighborhood for good measure.
He’s no dilettante – he’ll take whatever he can get and sort it all out later. But that’s not to say he isn’t influenced by marketing.
Case in point: Jacob loves anything related to superheroes, so he was quite excited to receive a “Krypto” comic book. He studied the cover and happily shouted “Krypto! Superdog!” Then, he flipped it over and was even more excited to see an ad for M&M’s, which he proceeded to study for five minutes before I could convince him to read the Krypto story inside. Of course, once we were done, we had to study and discuss the M&M’s ad for another five minutes before moving onto “Goodnight Moon.”
While the Godiva catalog is a bit of chocolate porn, marketing doesn’t have a lot of influence on my own candy purchases, at least for Halloween. We typically need about four bags of candy to cover the neighborhood beggars, so of course we buy five for good measure.
Which five we buy is always a topic of intense scrutiny. I glance at the coupons in the Sunday paper and what’s on sale at the market, but the candy itself is more a deciding factor than the price. Tootsie Pops and the aforementioned M&M’s are always popular, so we get a bag of each, along with a wildcard choice or two. The final bag is always Mounds. Kids don’t tend to like them, but the husband and I do.
Of course, one of the sad things about growing up is realizing that you just can’t consume like you did in your youth. Just as you can’t imbibe as much alcohol as you did when you were in college, you can’t handle sugar like you could when you were a kid.
A few years ago, the husband and I attended a matinee of the stage version of “Schoolhouse Rock” in New York. In keeping with the spirit of the show, the lobby concessions eschewed white wine and Toblerones and offered childhood favorites like Sweet Tarts, Wax Lips, Pop Rocks and the like.
I was tempted by the giant Pixie Sticks, but decided I didn’t need to ingest half a pound of sugar then, since we were going out to dinner right after the play. Boy, did I make the right decision. We watched other adults gleefully chow on things like Lik-A-Stix, only to get fidgety and restless half way through the show.
Interestingly, the piece of sweet food marketing had the most influence on my youth wasn’t for candy at all, but rather for snack cakes. Dolly Madison Snack Cakes, to be specific.
The company sponsored every Charlie Brown animated special on television during the early 1970s. I was fascinated. Surely these must be the best cakes in the whole world if Snoopy endorses them!
Sadly, the product wasn’t sold in the northeast. And to this day, I’ve never seen an actual Dolly Madison item anywhere in the country.
Finding one has become a bit of a Holy Grail crusade for me. I searched online recently to try and determine where I could locate a cake or two, or even if the products were still being produced. They are being made, by the same company that makes Hostess products, which are distributed in my area.
So in theory, I’ve probably eaten many things which are similar to Dolly Madison cakes, just under a different name. But that isn’t good enough. I e-mailed the company and asked where in the U.S. I could get my paws on the elusive treats. They e-mailed me back, saying they weren’t available in my area (I know! ARRRRAGH!, as Charlie Brown would say), and provided me with the addresses of a few Web sites that might sell their wares.
But no luck. So, I’m still searching. If you know of where I can track them down, e-mail me at [email protected]. I’ll be here, hoarding my Mounds from hungry Power Rangers and Batmen.
