Soak it in the sun and make a groovy lemon pie

[austin_dern]

I was in Target and for a really rare change of pace didn't buy a peanut butter cup and a Diet Coke from them. Not even a Coke Zero. (I'd needed to get soap, and I got some liquid soap to use by the bathroom sink, now that I've finally found one that has a reasonably pleasant hand feel and scent.) While getting in line for check-out, I looked over the candy at point-of-purchase and saw a brand I'd never seen before. I haven't had that experience since, of course, leaving Singapore where there would regularly be strange British- or Japanese-language candies to disrupt the normal day. Very attractive wrapper, with a name running prominently on the upper right side, some odd composition of the display elements, and an all-lowercase name that grew as the word progressed. And what a name, too: ``spunow''.

Spunow! What a perfect candy name. It doesn't sound like anything else, but if you wanted to assemble letters so that they sounded intriguing without losing ease of pronunciation what better could you do? You can hear right away the cheery commercials of kids shouting out ``Spunow!'' like they had won a game. How do you not begin to smile at thinking of the sounds? With that uplifting hint of ``wow'' at the end ... this has to either be a fantastic candy and one poised for grand international success, or else it's an utter disaster being saved from a massive write-off by the fortune of a good marketing guy making up the name. I went to get a bar -- or bag -- or whatever it was inside.

It turns out someone had put in a Mounds bar package upside-down.

And I don't even like Mounds bars. But oh, what a time not to be a candy maker, since if there were ever a name poised for sugary greatness, there it is. I suppose it might be used for that million-dollar idea for an Internet gadget to sell to Google, and it has almost got the right ring for a meaningless but popular Internet waste of time, but ... no, the name is almost wrapped in chocolate. It must be candy.

Trivia: The Mounds candy bar, created by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company of New Haven, Connecticut, was named in 1920 by Peter Paul Halajian and five Armenian associates. Source: Sweets: A History of Temptation, Tim Richardson.

Currently Reading: Designing the Molecular World: Chemistry at the Frontier, Philip Ball.

Comments

[patchoblack.livejournal.com]

Personally, I prefer the version from Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory: Soak it in the sun & make strawberry lemon pie...

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Hey! They put the tab on the wrong side of my "dnL"!

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You can snark if you like, but I'm gratified to see that this mistake's been made quite a few other times, according to Google, although the only practical use for it seems to have been for a garage band.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

*grin* I wasn't trying to be snarky. There was a drink named "dnL":

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

yeeeeeek! do not like Mounds bar, Sam I am.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It and Almond Joy are all right, it's just extremely rare that I've got to have a candy bar and there isn't something better available.

[rcoony.livejournal.com]

Perry's Ice Cream has a "Spumoni" flavour. I have no clue what that is, and I've only ever seen it in three-gallon tubs. I may be adventurous, but not so much that I'd get three gallons of mystery flavour.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Probably Chocolate, Vanilla, and Pistachio with cherry bits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spumoni

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You know, that might work in a candy bar too. Chocolate and vanilla candies are common enough, but cherry seems to be a rarer twist outside of Twizlers and Jolly Ranchers.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Oh, Cherry's in Life Savers, as well, and makes frequent appearance in anything with Sufficiently Many Fruit Flavors as the red. And Chocolate-covered Cherries are well-known, of course. But beyond the bite-size and into the bar category, I can't think of any. I *think* 3 Musketeers used to be Chocolate, Vanilla, and Cherry as three bars, and then consolidated to Chocolate.

I'd rather enjoy something 3 Musketeersesque with cherry, at that.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hm. If Wikipedia is to be believed, Three Musketeers started out as chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry (of course), although they gave that up in 1945, no doubt the result of wartime shortages.

Oddly, I don't see an obvious chocolate-and-cherry candy bar once you get outside of gift box-type candy -- that is, not in the ordinary common bars you get at the register at Wawa. There may be an unexplored niche here.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Have you tried ice cream stands? I could swear I've seen it turn up there sometimes. Or liquid ice stands, too.