I don't have anything too profound to say this month, but I do have chocolate on on mind, so I'll briefly touch on some chocolate-related topics.
We spent the night before Easter at The Hotel Hershey. When we opened the door to our room on Easter morning, we found that the Easter Bunny had left us baskets of Hershey products. We still have some of that candy left. Between the candy we bought, made ( The photo at the top of this post was taken at the "Create your own Candy Bar" attraction ), and got for free ( They give you lots of free chocolate at the various attractions at Hershey - we were given 4 candy bars when we checked into the hotel ), we'll be eating Hershey's chocolate late into May.
I was looking over some of that Easter chocolate on our kitchen table, when I noticed a Krackel miniature bar. That got me thinking about how bad a job Hershey has done promoting the Krackel bar. For those who are not aware, a Krackel bar is Hershey's version of a Nestle Crunch Bar. I'm going to assume 99.9 % of people who grew up in the USA know what a Nestle Crunch is, but if you're not from the USA or grew up in the USA with health-nut parents who didn't let you watch TV, the old TV add below will tell you everything you need to know about Nestle Crunch.
There's really not much a difference between Nestle Crunch and Krackel, but Nestle Crunch was ubiquitous during my childhood ( and according to Time Magazine, is one of the 13 most influential candy bars of all time ) while Krackel was nowhere to be seen. Hershey has been the dominant chocolate brand in the USA for about a century, so I never understood why Hershey never made a real effort to go after the Nestle Crunch market share. My first thought was that Nestle Crunch was too well-established before Krackel came along, but Krackel was introduced only one year after Nestle Crunch ( 1938 vs. 1937 ).
Clearly some people prefer Nestle's milk chocolate to Hershey's milk chocolate, but considering how Hershey dominates the plain milk chocolate bar category, I'm surprised they didn't think it was worth the effort to promote Krackel more. In any case, Crunch-vs-Krackel really does show the power of marketing. If Hershey really wanted to sell the Krackel bar today, I think they'd be better off giving it the iconic brown wrapper and simply calling it "Heshey's Milk Chocolate with Puffed Rice".
Speaking of iconic things related to chocolate, I re-watched the 1971 Willy Wonka movie ( with my kids ) a few days ago. Seeing my kids watch it reminded me of what it was like to watch the movie as a child ( I must have been about 5 or 6 the first time I watched it on TV ). While my kids loved it, and I love it now, I was absolutely terrified by that movie the first time I watched it. I really though all those naughty kids were being killed each time they got eliminated from the competition.
Sucked under liquid chocolate and then fired like a cannon?
Getting the juiced squeezed out of your bloated body?
Falling down a chute that leads to an incinerator?
Being stretched like taffy?
Those Oompa Loompas scared me shitless. They were like tiny little Angles of Death. After watching that movie at the age of 5 or 6 six, I don't think I had the stomach to watch it again until I was about 13.
When I watched it a few days ago, I was struck by the traits that were considered to be signs of a poorly-raised child back in 1971 ( and back in 1964 when the book was written ). I'm not surprised that one of "bad" kids was a spoiled brat, and gluttony's certainly not an admirable trait, but gum-chewing and TV-watching? Really, Dahl couldn't think of anything worse than a kid who chews gum and a kid who watches TV? Was gum-chewing really a big concern around 1964? Sure, I guess it's bad manner's to chew gum with your mouth open, but if "she chews too much gum" is the worst thing somebody can say about your kid, then your kid is doing fine.
The "watches too much TV" kid is the most outdated reference in the movie. In the age of the Internet and video games, most kids of today wouldn't understand why anyone would want to watch lots of TV. Of course back in the 60s/70s, there were only a few stations, and the majority of shows on TV were mindless dreck. Of course there's plenty of stupid TV shows today, but in the age of cable TV, you could spend all day watching intelligent programming on TV. The age of the "boob tube" is over ( Hell, it's not even a tube anymore, though I must admit the HBO does show plenty of boobs ). Considering how many devices people can use to view video content, people generally think of the content before they even consider the medium that delivers the content.
Anyway, I think it's just interesting to consider how much the world has changed in the last 40 years or so. Interesting, but also a bit depressing it, because it makes me feel old. I certainly think we live in a better world than we did 40 years ago, but did I really need to age 40 years to get to that world?
Oh, to end this on a lighter note, if you love the Willy Wonka movie, then you've got to see this:
Rich
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