Gruity!

My heart is racing,
My teeth aching from sweetness:
I bathe in candy.


Everyone has a favorite candy. It's a simple fact of life. In fact, some people have several favorite candies: a chocolate-based kind, a gummy kind, a hard kind, etc. For most of my life, I've always considered Good & Plenty to be my personal fave. I'd buy a pound of Good & Plenty from the local candy store and eat them whilst the other kids watched in disbelief. Something about the candy shell and the black licorice innards made sense to me and my tongue.

Of course, Good & Plenty had a sibling named Good & Fruity which replaced the black licorice innards with red licorice innards. That slight change made Good & Fruity the preferred Good & candy for the majority of the candy-eating populace. I enjoyed Good & Fruity, but not as much as the unique taste of the Good & Plenty.

Hershey's stopped making Good & Fruity in the mid-1990's. I didn't notice, as I spent the entirety of the 1990's shoving Good & Plenty into my mouth whenever my sweet-tooth called for it. However, that old maxim proved correct and, after a while, absence made my heart grow fonder. I wanted Good & Fruity. I missed Good & Fruity. I needed Good & Fruity. Sadly, I could not have Good & Fruity. It was little more than a faded memory, and faded memories are tough to eat.

Thus, when I saw a box of Good & Fruity sitting on the shelf in Target over the weekend, my eyes began to sparkle with delight. That faded memory was back, and this time, it brought hope.

I ripped into the box of flavored candy within moments of leaving the store. The well-known candy shell was there, but the red licorice that made Good & Fruity unique was gone. In its place was a core of sugary sugar. These were not Good & Fruity. These were mislabeled jelly beans. Worse than that: these were remembrances of childhood that had been taken out back, beaten to death, and replaced by impostor remembrances. Not that I'm bitter. I just wanted some red licorice in a hard candy shell. Is that too much to ask? If I wanted jelly beans, I would have gotten jelly beans. I wanted Good & Fruity. I did not get Good & Fruity. Instead, I got a mouth full of rage. That's not a happy treat.

What it all boils down to is this: if you have a box of Good & Fruity from 1992 or earlier sitting around, I'd be happy to take it off your hands.


Anywho, I should be off. That's enough candy-related ranting for today. Before I depart, here's Today's Joke:
A New Judge Joins ‘Idol’ Panel
“American Idol” is adding a fourth judge: Kara DioGuardi, a songwriter and producer. Ms. DioGuardi, 37, will join the current panelists — Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson — in the round that begins taping on Tuesday in New York and will be broadcast on Fox beginning in January. The addition of Ms. DioGuardi is part of an effort to revitalize the six-year-old show, whose ratings have been slipping slightly, especially among younger demographics.
“We are turning the heat up on ‘Idol’ this year,” the show’s creator and executive producer, Simon Fuller, said in a statement. "Simon is the mean one. Paula is the nice one. Randy is the supportive one. Kara will be the slutty one that sleeps with the contestants. We at 'American Idol' recognize that talent alone usually doesn't make you famous. It takes more than ability to make it in this business. It takes sex appeal. This season of the show will prove that, and Kara will be just the girl to fill that hole. I mean that both literally and figuratively."

Huzzah!


Tomorrow!


Psst! According to Wikipedia:
The pink Good & Plenty candies are colored with a red dye called K-Carmine that is produced from the bodies of the female Cochineal beetle. (Citation needed.)

Delicious!