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Photo credit: Suzanna - tweaked by DeadRooster

I was shocked to discover, after years of trying to forget about them, that Good & Plenty candies are not only still being manufactured, but that it would not even be illegal for any knucklehead off-the-street to purchase a box and offer them to some poor shlub as a treat.

This candy is so awful it should only be sold in joke-shops. When I was a kid, if I had somehow got hold of some, I would only chew off the Kaopectate flavored coating—while being extra careful not to disturb the horrible tasting tobacco center—then spit out the rest.

Older kids in my neighborhood would buy Good & Plenty’s and pretend they were drugs. Of course, they would never actually eat them; they would instead force us younger kids to “take” them and tell us we were hallucinating.

How is it that these wretched little pellets are not yet extinct? Back in the 1960’s, it was probably their diabolical marketing campaign that kept them afloat. They would put a magic trick on the back of the box, get some snotty kid (oh, how I loathed him) to perform it in a TV commercial, and then force you to buy a box in order to learn the secret (which was revealed on the inside flap). I never did learn how to make a quarter cry—I think they purposely let that creepy TV kid be the only one to know how it was done.

I also remember a deceptively benign cartoon ad featuring a menacing little engineer by the name of Choo Choo Charlie who—immediately after tasting them, I bet—decided to fuel his engine with Good & Plenty candies. I cheered when he burned them, but was totally unprepared for the catchy background jingle that was obviously a subliminal hack designed to permanently embed itself into the brains of innocent children. Here is an early version of the commercial:

Trust me: you don’t ever want to get that stuck in your head—not unless you’re planning a killing spree or want to start doing needle drugs.

After a bit of research, I learned that Good & Plenty’s are the oldest branded candy in the United States (true). They were first produced in 1893 by the Quaker City Confectionary Company of Philadelphia (also true) and were fiendishly invented a few years earlier by an irritable pharmacist with an intense hatred of the human race (probably not true).

Seriously, does anybody like these things?

Note: I know there’s a chance that Kaopectate (a remedy for diarrhea) and tobacco (a remedy for health) may not be the precise ingredients, so please don’t email me.

Photo credit: Jacob Bøtter

WARNING: People are going to die in this blog post. But, it’s OK because they are virtual people and you probably don’t know them personally.

I am not normally a cranky person. What happens though—sometimes—is that I get frustrated when I can’t seem to do something so simple that even a monkey of random intelligence should be able to do: like find a decent place on my blog to put my tiny Humor-Blogs banner. I spent two hours today placing it in different places until I just decided to leave it right where it started from: down at the bottom right sidebar as part of a widget (clicking it will give me a mild electric shock…you will also be transported to a great directory of funny web sites).

Having wasted two-hours of my day which could’ve been spent writing about Hitler’s secret dream of becoming a Disney Sketch Artist, I was plenty upset with myself. Then I found something that made me feel much better.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 Platinum Edition is a sim game in which you can design and build your very own amusement park featuring extremely dangerous roller coasters. I don’t have the time or patience to do this myself, but I tracked down this video showcasing what would happen if you deliberately and sadistically aimed a speeding roller coaster directly at a long line of waiting amusement park visitors.

The screams and fiery explosion at the end is very satisfying. I have no idea why something so gruesome should relieve stress–and it makes me wonder about my own mental health–but it sure seems to do the trick.

Notice that I have linked to the Platinum Edition of Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. This is because the Platinum Edition comes bundled with the Soaked! and Wild! expansion packs. Soaked! adds water park features and the Wild! expansion pack adds–and this is where roller coaster disasters could get very interesting–six different zoological-style animals! Imagine the enormous amounts of stress you could relieve with a hippopotamus on the track!

I would probably not be accused of understatement if I compared this potential scene to a furious water balloon explosion.

If you’re ever stressing really hard just remember the above video and give it another viewing. See if you don’t feel better (if that doesn’t work, you could try clicking my Humor-Blogs banner and find a site that really makes you laugh).

Photo credit: jek_in_the_box

Sunday Scribblings is a blog with the purpose of inspiring and motivating writers. They do this by posting a weekly “prompt” which serious writers can use as a topic to craft deep-thinking and skillfully written blog posts. The links to these posts are then added to the site’s link list as inspiration to other writers. This week, the prompt is “Passion.”

Last night, yours truly, having never been there before, and somehow not realizing the nature of the blog, added DeadRooster.com to the list. Soon after, Dead Rooter became flooded with people of a serious writer-like mentality expecting to see inspirational musings about passion. Instead, and without warning, they were treated to my last blog post entitled, The Scientific Murder of an Innocent Gummi Bear.

To these people I sincerely apologize and I swear it was an honest mistake. I guess I should be embarrassed, but to be honest, I find the whole thing way too funny.