The following is a Neatorama Shop Story, a narrative starring the products carried in this blog’s very own online store.

Stardate: the future as conceived in September, 1962. Cars fly, robots do chores, and meals are reduced to a delicious and fully satisfying caplet, like Xanax in party colors.

Stardate: the future as I am living it. My Smart can’t fly, my Roomba refuses to do stairs, and that automat in Manhattan has disappeared like a coin in a vending machine slot made sticky by teriyaki sauce. But all is not lost, for now we have Cupcake Mints. My cryogenically suspended childhood faith in futuristic fare has unfrozen faster than Austin Powers catching a glimpse of Judy Jetson. With a tin the shape of a cupcake’s silhouette and a flavor that is clearly meant to be evocative of something, these candies deliver. The cupcake tin even has cute sprinkles in low relief (that may say “Paul is dead” in Braille…backwards, naturally.)

My supersensitive palate notes that each color carries its own distinct taste when consumed with my eyes open, due to complex neuropsychological triggers in the food dye of my youth, present in all colors of candy-shelled chocolates other than the light brown ones. Ah, Oompa Loompas, you tried to warn me! The white are vanilla frosting flavored, as advertised. Depending on the consumer’s age, the blue ones taste either like “blue raspberry” or a certain spooky breakfast cereal. Boo! Somehow the pink ones distinguish themselves from the other two by tasting like strawberry-banana even if my eyes are closed. Also, keep in mind that the term “mints” is applied loosely here to decidedly un-minty pastel pellets with the consistency of that candy classic, Stick-U-Lick. That being said, the tiny tin contains a generous 130 candies per pack, so you can be confident that you have brought enough to share with the entire class, unless, of course, you attend public school.

I must dash, for I have to go decant and marinate a Spam before the moving sidewalk deposits dinner guests Mark Hamill and Billy Dee Williams at my doorstep.

______

The story above is written by the dynamic duo Drs. Ernest and Convalescence Bidet-Wellville (hey, I didn’t name ‘em) of the University of Self-Conscious Consumerism in Olde Busytowne, Connecticut. I suspect they write cover stories for the CIA, so if I’m inexplicably missing the next few days, you know what happened.

Available from the Neatorama Shop: Cupcake Mints | See also our vast selection of other Offbeat Mints and Candies

Sweet Nothings

Zurich, 1916. A foggy and bleak afternoon. Gazing upon an empty absinthe-scented glass, Jacques postulated…was the glass like the universe? Is there ever any there there?

Jacques makes mountains of nothing and would have droned on until dawn had not the vacant-eyed Swiss barmaid draped over my left knee roused herself and interjected with an uncharacteristic swell of a work ethic, “Will zair be anysing else tonight?”

Predictably, Jacques replied, “Nothing.”

Said the waitress, “When I desire nothing, I have one of zese.”

From the pocket of her dingy fondue-smeared apron, she produced a diminutive, elegant tin and held it before us. It was a befitting black, the absence of color. She sensuously slid back the lid to reveal “Nihilist Flavorless Mints.” Insubstantiality distilled to its essence, suspended in a delicate cocktail of maltodextrine and corn syrup, they tasted like nothing, and left us wanting more. They were the concrete manifestation of our nonexistence, with a hint of the sweet aftertaste of oblivion. Did these mints exist at all? If a mint that tastes like nothing is sucked in the forest…

What a paradox, so Seinfeldian, though we knew it not by that name at that time. It would have been the perfect gift for all of our friends, had we any other than ourselves. The unsettlingly uncharacteristic look of completion in Jacques’ eyes said it all: no longer would we exchange empty boxes at Christmas.

______

The story above is written by the dynamic duo Drs. Ernest and Convalescence Bidet-Wellville (hey, I didn’t name ‘em) of the University of Self-Conscious Consumerism in Olde Busytowne, Connecticut. I suspect they write cover stories for the CIA, so if I’m inexplicably missing the next few days, you know what happened.

Available from the Neatorama Shop: Nihilist Flavorless Mint | See also our vast selection of other Offbeat Mints and Candies