Short Stop!
I'm sitting here eating some leftover Christmas hell candy called Reindeer Corn, possibly consisting mostly of carnuba wax, and it is really taking me back to the golden era of questionable candy consumption.When I was a kid, there was this lame little convenience store located a few blocks away from my house, known as Short Stop. It changed names many a time over the years, but never stopped being called Short Stop around my house. On an ungodly hot summer day in the early 80's, one might have found me in my flip-flops, walking on the burning sidewalk by the Winding Way traffic, bound for the Short Stop candy aisle to buy one of the following 5 items:
LikMAid: Gross sugar powder with a sugar dip-stick. A horrifying blizzard of sucrose and food dye. Crunching on the spit-covered, petrified sugar stick after hoovering three full packets of sugar dust was the ultimate act of self-destruction. Not even kids really thought these Kool-Aid packets made for a delicious candy experience, but it was the overall delivery vehicle and sheer Everest-like challenge of the entire concept that kept me hooked. People joke about Lik M Aid. I actually ate it.
Flicks These apparently still exist, although I have not seen any evidence of them on this planet since 1979. Dusty, carob-like chocolate drops, disconcertingly oversized and cow-pattylike, were stacked like Pringles inside of foil-covered cardboard tubes. The main challenge with Flicks was how many to eat, and how many to save for later, since one could easily scrunch up the foil at the end of the tube to re-seal the container.
Giant Chewy Sweetarts The Giant Chewy Sweetart was a sort of hybrid between garden-variety hard candy of the compressed dust variety (see Smarties), and stringy, over-chewed gum, delivered in the form of a sour, oversized disc. The word disgusting comes to mind, and yet tearing one apart with your baby teeth on someone's front lawn in 100 degree heat was a strangely compelling activity in 1980.
Zots Horrifyingly foamy Alka-Seltzer-meets-Jolly Rancher lozenges, sold in linked, sausage-chainlike packaging. One didn't want to be distracted with idle chatter while savoring the fizzy, baking-soda center of a Zot, which was gone in a blink; it was the sole purpose for withstanding the otherwise entirely mediocre grandma's-candy-dish coating.
Bone candy Behold the glory that is bone candy. The concept is this: a plastic coffin containing your standard compressed-dust candy items, except that they are shaped like bones that form an entire candy skeleton. What's the catch? Sometimes they don't form the whole skeleton. Thus, you dispatch yourself directly back to Short Stop to buy more coffins. I am pretty sure I never actually formed a whole skeleton.
posted by Strikethru at
8:18 PM
7 Comments:
Shortstop! The Shangri-La of an otherwise barren suburban wasteland whose second best hangout was an overgrown empty lot only 50 yards away. To wash down the LikMAid, Flicks, etc. you had to have a finger-staining blue slurpy in a large flimsy tumbler with a faded Circle-K logo on it (why was it faded didn't they use new cups?) Studies have probably shown that the blinding bright blue dye used in slurpies during the 70's caused groin flippers. Some additional items include: Sixlets which were cheap small round knockoff's of M&M's with strangely chemically tasting waxy chocolate inside that never melted, Garbage Can Candy which was the same brand as bone-candy except it had fish bones, and other indescribable garbage shaped contents. It didn't seem to matter that we didn't know what the shapes were. Nobody even questioned it. You just had to have it. Giant Pixie Stix which was like a 1/4pound tube of sour sugar. There's nothing more you can say about that except why was everything giant then? Sugar must have been cheap. Wacky Wafers which were silver-dollar sized very hard candy disks that could be rolled down the street for hours, then eaten. Bottle Caps which were supposed to taste like soda but didn't but nobody called their bluff instead they just at them. "going to shortstop" eventually became a generic departing phrase that allowed all carmichael, california kids the freedom to leave the house at 8a.m never to return before 8:41pm without ever being asked where they went. Those were the days.
The vanilla flavored "dipping stick" of the LikMAid was the best part of the whole package!
Ahhh, bone candy... That was the first thing that my wife gave to me when we met (admittedly, this was a few weeks prior to Halloween [and she was a goth], so it made a certain sense). I still have the orange plastic spider ring that she also gave me around that time -- another Halloween novelty. Good memories!
LikMAid's were awesome. I didn't remember their name, but remember getting them from the ice cream truck because they lasted longer than most everything else (not because they tasted better certainly). You're right, it was all about the process. This post also reminded of that kind of gum that came in pouches like chewing tobacco. How many others tried chewing tobacco thinking it would taste like that gum and were sorely dissapointed?
Let us not forget the famous Pop Rocks and what about those Runts!!!
It is great many of these candies are still around for Iris and Jacob to enjoy.
Banana runts are kind of questionable. Clearly, strawberry runts are the best. I am neutral on lime.
Banan has to say that Banana Runts are the best! One can find them in their own container in those outrageously priced bulk candy stores...Haven't seen a bin of only strawberry runts yet, Coco!
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