Saturday, November 1, 2008

Hey Mister Owl...

Remember when we were kids and there were only a few kinds of tootsie roll pops?
  • Chocolate
  • Orange
  • Cherry
  • Grape
  • Raspberry.

There was a bowl of them at work this morning and I did not recognize any of them. The label colors were bright and neon, certainly different from the dull, solid colors of my youth. The new roster of flavors includes:

  • Strawberry
  • Lemon-Lime
  • Blue-Raspberry
  • Watermelon
  • Pomegranate

The idea of the tootsie pop is that the middle chocolate section goes well with one of the exterior fruit flavors. I can understand the strawberry choice, those suckers have been working with chocolate for a long time. I don't understand the rest. Lemon-Lime + Chocolate? Watermelon + Chocolate? Pomegranate?? Really? I didn't even know what a pomegranate was during my peak trick-or-treating years, and now it's popular enough to gain Tootsie pop status? Which brings me to my rant of the day: Blue Raspberry.

Not that Blue Raspberry is bad, but I guess I refuse to believe we are living in a day and age where this made up "blue" version of raspberry is more popular than the original. I know the main reason kids want this unnatural blue candy is to make their mouths match the shade, but there must be another way. Raspberry is a good enough flavor on its own, it doesn't need to be taken down a peg by this blue, bastard cousin. My thought: make up a flavor for the blue, like powerade did. "Mountain Blast" is surely nothing more than food coloring, water and sodium, but it works for them. It's a color not found in nature, so don't make kids grow up thinking that they can scamper through the woods and find the ever elusive blue-raspberry bush, it's not happening.

1 comment:

mykill said...

There is no Chocolate tootsie roll pops and no Orange tootsie roll pops. There is no Cherry tootsie roll pops or Grape tootsie roll pops or Raspberry tootsie roll pops.

No Stawberry or Lemon-Lime or Blue-Raspberry tootsie roll pops. Or not liberal or conservatirve tootsie roll pops. There is only the United States of Tootsie Roll Pops