Certain species of bugs have developed a really bad taste so predators won't eat them (at least, that's what I've read. I haven't personally done insect taste tests).
Did they actually evolve in that direction? What is the evidence?
Let's look in Dr. Grumpy's break room:
Post Halloween day #1: Everyone brings their leftover candy to the office. We put it in a big bowl in the break room. We are too damn sick of candy to touch it.
Post Halloween days #2-3: Predators (okay, me, Pissy, and the staff) arrive. The choicest (i.e., chocolate) items disappear first. Reese's PB cups, M&Ms, Milky Way, Snickers, Kit-Kats, Twixt, Butterfingers, Three Musketeers.
Post Halloween days #4-5: Other stuff starts to go. Skittles, Laffy Taffy, Smarties, Runts, Starbursts.
Post Halloween days #6 and on: This is when we find the survivors. Just like the unpalatable bugs, some candy types will sit there for quite a while. Candy Corn, Tootsie Rolls, Circus Peanuts, and those horrible taffy things in black and orange wrappers (the latter, I suspect, were only made once in the 1960's and have since just been re-gifted. I think people who got them as kids now give them out as adults, and the cycle continues).
Granted, I have no evidence to suggest that Darwin's staff dumped leftover candy at the office. If they did, however I'd suspect that's more likely to have led him to the theory of evolution than a trip to the Galapagos.
For more background on truly horrible Halloween candies, read this.
16 comments:
We always find a stash of rejected candy after a month or two, dum-dums that have gone soft and gummy with moisture, fossilized tootsie-rolls, etc. Even my normally sugar deprived off spring balk at consuming those.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BVPOEn6_oY
Funny how everyone has different preferences. Skittles, starbursts, and candy corn go first around here.
It's a little-known fact that humans are actually descended from candy corn. This is why we find the idea of cannibalism so horrifying.
I love the peanut butter taffy! I'm eating one right now in fact.
Classic Grumpy post! :) Mmm, I love those weird peanut butter taffy things so much. I wish there was trick-or-treating in college but I guess it's better for methat there isn't!
Of course there's trick or treating in college! Or is that only in DC? We would dress up & go to the embassies (pre-9/11) or around Georgetown (post 9/11) So much fun!
Now I just raid my kids' buckets. We don't eat dairy, so we hand all the chocolate candies off to friends before the night is over, but there's still a pile of Laffy Taffys Nerds, and Skittles to gorge on :)
Peanut butter taffy - the orange and black wrappers. Blech. We call that "Grandma" candy around here. nasty, but oddly enough it reminds me of my own grandmother who passed on.
But I really like Smartees and Neccos!
I love candy corn and I especially love the little fun-size packages they sell this time of year. Because like ten individual kernels is enough for the diabetic coma to set in, so having them pre-portioned to avoid accidental overdose is handy.
Dum-Dums are nice for when you're leaving the pancake house, they shut the kids up for ten minutes and provide sticks for thoughtful chewing the rest of the way home, but other than that? Not so much.
My daughter's candy stash is dwindling to the weird one-offs like Dots and the cheap wrapped candies from Winco. Clearly I need to find a new dealer.
PS I'll take your weird orange and black wrapped taffies. Yum!
In a larger office, the 'good' candy disappears as if it were a field set upon by locusts, within an hour of its appearance. Hungry office workers have developed advanced neural communication systems that allow them to know - without e-mail, without discussion, without announcement - WHEN good candy has shown up in the candy bowl.
'Bad' candy lingers longer, but never long.
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And I adore tootsie rolls. I do not even - the little ones, not the big fat ones. I also like the fruit-flavored ones.
Reeses peanut butter cups, the number one candy around here. Then kit-kats. If I can get some $100,000 bars, I love those also, Mr chick puts M&M's on his ice cream..But the fact remains. I try to hand out every piece of candy on halloween. I really dont want to eat the left overs...
Nobody around here gives out those taffy candies anymore. When I used to trick or treat though my mom and I found out if you microwaved them (I can't remember how long, you would have to experiment 5sec? 10sec?) they actually weren't that bad
We usually find that the Charlie's Whipplescrumptious is the first to disappear.....and not by magic!
The orange and black toffees, at least here in British Columbia, are molasses flavoured and certainly pre-date 1960. I am the only person I have ever heard of who likes them.
:-D
Where did ur blog go?
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