IN PRAISE OF #1: GOURMET LOLLIPOPS

Believe it or not, quite a few things have happened on a personal level since I last blogged (I got a minor case of the gout, had my wing-fest, we passed our home inspection for our new foster care provider, etc.) but I will address none of them here.

Instead, I will christen the first of (maybe) many whereby I will closely examine a random person, place, thing, animal, vegetable, mineral and offer you reasons why I think it is awesome. (I may or not include musical offering, more than likely... something like that I'll probably leave to my ongoing last.fm journal log, as I'm sure me geeking out about music bores many to tears.) My first offering is a flashback of sorts, as the younger version of me enjoyed the heck out of them and I had one today for the first time in at least 5 years. It's weird how certain things can burrow in the mind, gradually buried under the constant steaming of new data and new situations. Yet, when they are again brought to the forefront, your recall becomes eerily focused. This comes to mind both from the subject at hand and from renting a CD from the library which I owned on cassette and hadn't listened to since before 1990 (Falco 3, which featured both kitsch classic "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Vienna Calling.")

Anyhow, yeah, GOURMET LOLLIPOPS. For some reason, gourmet lollipops seem to bring Door County to mind as a knee-jerk word association way. I am pretty sure they are not made in Door County and certainly not exclusive to that area (the one I bought today was at a ShopKo in Appleton, WI.) But there was a mini-tradition I'm sure that revolved around me getting gourmet lollipops when we traversed up Wisconsin's "thumb." Basically, gourmet lollipops differ greatly from the plain-jane Spangler Dum-Dum pops, the (IMO grossly overrated) Charms Blow-Pops or even the Tootsie Pops. Let us break down why the gourmet lollipop reigns atop the suckable hard candy on a stick mountain.

1) Gourmet = more expensive. You could probably get one of those Tootsie Pop/Spangler "bunches" for the same price as a single one gourmet dealie (I paid $.59 for mine today... when I was a kid I want to say they were $.49 or 3 for $1.00, something like that.) Conventional candy logic, in comparing the two options, might lead towards the quantity over quality, but only if you had never enjoyed the gourmet stylee.

2) Exotic, "adult" flavors. Even though lollipops are invariably kid-orientated, the preponderance of the big brands did not address one concern all kids shared: variety. Sure, Tootsie Pops had orange and chocolate, raspberry, grape and strawberry, and the Dum-Dums had ten or so myriad flavors including the dreaded "mystery flavor" with the question mark wrapper (which I almost always seemed to get Root Beer Barrel, my least fave.) But the gourmet had crazy, out of this world flavor offerings. I seemed to remember always wanting Strawberry Daquari and my mother always cautioning me against it ("you won't like that, dear. Trust me.") I think I would end up with either Cotton Candy or one that was very vivid blue -- blue moon, maybe? Today I enjoyed German Chocolate Cake. It was as though the makers wanted to ensure the money you spent on your candy concoction would be remembered, and so they splurged on stuff like Key Lime Pie and New York Cheesecake, knowing the Spanglers and Charms wouldn't have the cojones to follow suit.

3) More Suck For Your Buck. (Yes, that sounds bad. Deal.) For my money, gourmet lollipops were the utmost in long-term lollipop enjoyment. Now I can already hear some of you thinking about this subject and retorting "Oh, but Adam! If we're talking about lollipop/suckers on a strict size scale, surely you're not saying these gourmet lollipops can offer as carnival suckers?" Now if we're talking strictly square footage or inchage or whatever, yes, those circular suckers that are about half an inch thick and big enough to hide your face behind beat the gourmets hand down. But there are two HUGE drawbacks to the carny pops that ultimately put them at a disadvantage: first, you never never EVER finished a carnival sucker. It would break off the flimsy stick, you would set it down for a second and an army of ants would find it and inhabit faster than toothless people at the local flea market, any number of things, most of which nicely dovetail into drawback #2. Basically, carny suckers taste OK for about 3 minutes and then begin resembling the probable taste of sugar-spun asshole. So while you get a lot, you don't take advantage of it. With gourmet lollis, you suck that candy treat until only the stick is left. Along the way, you notice a few things the gourmet style do that other suckers cannot.
For one, they are deceptively big. You can take your run-of-the-mill grocery store pop and do what you like with it the second you prise the wrapper off. It can go straight in above the tounge, below the tounge, on the side of either cheek (the Popeye as I like to call it.) The gourmets, not so much. You try the Popeye with a fresh gourmet pop in your mouth and you will stretch your cheek to painful dimensions. So the first few minutes of a gourmet pop you have to suck at it like a pacifer, creating a small lake of sugar, flavor and saliva in your mouth that will become so large it will cascade over the side of your bottom lip if not careful. After a while, you can finally set it in a cheek and enjoy it from there. Gourmet pops also tend to wind down a bit differently than their more common brethren. I find that the top of the stick will protrude out, leaving the final 1/4th of the process with the customer tasting both the pop flavor and a hint of that cloudy paper taste. While this isn't ideally the taste sensation one shoots for, I would imagine the sheer weight of the pop forces it to be placed lower on the pop in order to remain firmly on the stick until it ceases to be a choking hazard. (This would be the point where, had I paid attention in high school science class, I could cite some fancy theory and provide an equation as to why. Yet, all I remember from science class was my Chem teacher asking bizarre questions to the class and uttering all sorts of weird non-sequiters. But that's a blog for the future. Thanks, Mr. Kaiser!) The other after-effect of your gourmet stick is another result of its mass: the poor thing will likely be hanging by a thread of rolled up paper by the time the pop has completely dissolved. Granted, this happens to every pop, but with the gourmets it seems so much more drastic.

Now, the same thing that makes gourmet pops great also work against it. Where I could enjoy a Tootsie Pop every day for a week, I can't conceive of having gourmet pops on a regular rotation, even with the wide flavor assortments. It's almost a delicacy, maybe like a fine wine or a cuban cigar. (I can only speculate on that front, as I have never had the latter and only had the former once. But I definitely feel as though I'm at least two tax brackets higher when I've got a gourmet pop tucked in the jaw.)

So that's my spiel on gourmet lollipops. Stay tuned for more installments of "In Praise Of" which hopefully concern more mature subjects....