Why would a fifty-five-year-old man try such a thing as Skittles POP’d Freeze Dried Candy, you might ask.
I’ll tell you why. The grocery store was out of Nerds Very Berry Gummy Clusters, and a fiend needs his fix. We are in the midst of something like a golden age of candy technological advancement, and you never know when some new morsel capable of leaving your tongue scoured raw by repeated exposure to high-grade dextrose and food starch will hit the market.
But even that knowledge did not prepare me for this.
I have to assume these were discovered by accident, like X-rays, penicillin, and Marilyn Monroe.
As to where I would place the Skittles POP’d Freeze Dried Candy in a ranking of that American icon and two scientific discoveries that have together saved millions (if not billions) of lives, my answer is “above.” Well above.
Here’s my best guess: Some Wrigley Company candy scientist got high one weekend, and then watched Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory back-to-back with one of the Top Chef episodes where a hubristic contestant thinks they can actually get away with making ice cream but realizes the ice cream will never set in time and dumps the liquid mess in the freeze dry instant chiller thingy, and out comes a “Lemon Matcha Bomb” or whatever, which has some other poor sucker packing their knives and going.
Why not Skittles? This stoned genius thinks, and next thing you know, we have a perfect, airy artificial-flavor candy bomb that I have to believe RFK Jr. will ban any moment now alongside vaccines and curing cancer.
Some tips from an expert. Go with the Skittles classic flavor over the sour. The classic flavor has the perfect balance of sugar and artificial fruit essence, while the sour additives overpower the citrus notes of the original.
Also, give the bag a bit of a grope before purchasing to make sure the individual POPs have not congealed into a brick-like mass. It’s not that the brick-like mass is inedible, but an adult eating Skittles POP’d is undignified enough. Breaking off pieces of a brick-like mass to gnaw through like a cow with its cud is beneath even me.
Not really, but it should be.