Even More Stuff From Slatington

The Slatington Marketplace
Route 873 - Slatington, PA

We paid another visit to our new favorite antiques mall a couple of weeks ago.  The place is massive, so we only got through about half of it.  Here are some of the more interesting oddities that I came across.

Well this will haunt my nightmares for the foreseeable future.

This corner was like a miniaturized version of an independent bookstore. It's the kind of place that I'd want to bring a beanbag chair and a thermos of coffee to chill out for a few hours.

 

Haunted houses are probably my least favorite subgenre of horror fiction, but for some reason, they're my favorite type of Halloween decoration.  The plastic popcorn wall hangings are awesome regardless of the holiday.

The Lime Pine drink on this sign got my attention.  It sounds more like a hardwood floor cleaner than a beverage, but I'd still try it.  I did a little research and found the recipe in an old newspaper ad.

Lime Pine

First, pre-chill a bottle of King-size Coke.  Then dip rim of glass in lime juice and then in granulated sugar, coating heavily.  Let sugar dry and fill glass with ice-cold Coca-Cola.  Garnish rim of glass with cartwheel slice of lime.  A "punch" in a glass.  A novel idea.  Ideal for a party of 2-3.

Here are the other recipes if you're curious, along with a recipe for the Lemon Log which isn't represented on this sign.  Click to enlarge:

Santa Cruz Sentinel (December 19, 1962)

The Candy Cane Jingle with peppermint ice cream looks especially good to me.

The Ben Revere garden gnome will cover a lot of ground in your back yard, but don't expect him to hit for power.

 

Fun Fact: In the 1950's, Hasbro sold a line of Mr. Potato Head's friends.  In addition to Oscar the Orange, the toy company also produced Katie the Carrot, Kooky the Cucumber, and Pete the Pepper.  In those days, the package only included the plastic eyes, nose, ears, and other features, and you were meant to plug them into an actual vegetable or piece of fruit from your kitchen.  It didn't come with a plastic potato until 1964.

Procter & Gamble produced a series of three Star Wars promotional posters, with original artwork by Ken Goldammer, as a giveaway in the year after the release of the first film.  You can usually find these on eBay for less than ten dollars, with some going for as little as three bucks.

This metal wall hanging was in my bedroom when I lived with my mother and stepfather in Nuremberg when I was a kid.  I never really cared too much about cars, but I guess it fit into whatever decorating scheme they had in mind.

This is a Videosphere television.  JVC produced these from the early 70's to the early 80's.  You can find them in the background of a few scenes in Soylent Green, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes, and The Matrix.  I've been on the lookout for an inexpensive one since I first learned of their existence to use as a monitor for an Atari 2600, but they usually sell for far more than I'm willing to pay.  This one was priced at $795.

 

Even at 40% off, this 1964 Beatles poster cost almost as much as my first car.

This sign caught my eye because my grandfather worked at Spaulding Bakery in Hazleton for many years until it closed the year after I was born.

When I see old packaging at antique stores, I wonder how much money the contents of an average trash bag would go for after a few decades.

 

And that's a wrap on our latest trip to Slatington.

What's In Your Halloween Bucket?

The Halloween season will soon be over and the only seasonal goodies that I've written about so far are the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Werewolf Tracks and the annual Mountain Dew Voo Dew soda.  Instead of dragging this out into the Christmas season, I've decided to lump together all of the spooky things that I've had the opportunity to try over the past few weeks.

Glowberry
Prime (2024)

I'm not sure how to describe the flavor.  I've read reviews where it was described as tasting like green apple, berries, or Jolly Rancher candy.  I'm tempted to say that it tastes a little bit like honeydew, but I'm not sure how accurate that is either.  One thing I can tell you for sure is that it's very good and it doesn't taste like any other beverage I've ever had.

Pumpkin Spice Caramel Creams
Goetze's Candy Company (2024)
I love Goetze's Cow Tails and Caramel Creams, and I put any white girl to shame with my love of pumpkin spice, so the combination of the two is a match made in heaven.  These would have been better if the pumpkin flavor was turned up a bit, but they're still delicious!

Harvest Chews
Tootsie Roll (2024)
I'm not a big fan of chocolate Tootsie Rolls, but I tend to really like their other flavors and this seasonal mix is no exception.

 

There are four flavors in the Harvest Chews variety bag: Pumpkin Spice, Candy Corn, Caramel Apple, and Sweet Cinnamon.  If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the Caramel Apple ones, but they're all very good... even the Candy Corn one.

Kit Kat: Ghost Toast
Hershey (2024)
These were the Halloween candy that I was looking forward to trying the most this season.

They're getting pretty good at making Kit Kat bars taste like just about anything because these things taste exactly like buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon, and they're outstanding.  Out of all of the products in this list, this is the one that I think would be a hit if they were available all year long.

Kit Kat: Breaking Bones
Hershey (2024)
They've really got vanilla flavored candy down to a science at Hershey.

Breaking Bones have a very pleasant and creamy vanilla flavor that goes well with the crunchy texture of a Kit Kat bar.  This is the kind of candy that I'd want to have with my morning coffee.

Mini Friends
Kinder Chocolate (2024)
I didn't find these little chocolate vampires to be crispy at all, but they were good.  There wasn't really anything special about the flavor other than the fact that it was a good quality chocolate.  The seasonal attraction here is limited to the cute little vampire wrapper.  The chocolate inside looks less like a vampire and more like a Minion who has had its facial features sandblasted off.

Kit Kat Spooky Break
Nestle Canada (2024)
Our friend Carrie bought these to the drive-in during Monster Mash Weekend and I instantly fell in love with them!

 

Seriously, how could you not love these!  They come in five different shapes: Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster holding a trick-or-treat pumpkin, a witch behind a bubbling cauldron, The Mummy, and a spooky bat hanging upside down.  I didn't get a picture of the bat before all of them were gobbled up, but this is what the other four look like.

There is one thing about this candy that will cause folks to complain, and I can say this from personal experience.  I worked for a number of years for Nestle consumer services.  I began my time there handling inbound calls and emails before moving up to the social media team and eventually to the trainer of the Confections, Baking, and Ice Cream team.

We didn't handle this product, or any other Kit Kat branded products for that matter, because Kit Kat is licensed to Hershey for production and distribution in the United States.  However, in every other country in the world, including Canada where these were produced, Kit Kat is a Nestle product.  Although we didn't have this product stateside, we had something like it.

One of the first things you learn when you work in consumer services for a candy company is that people don't read the package.  One of the lesser known products in Nestle USA's Butterfinger portfolio was a giant candy bar called Butterfinger Pieces In Milk Chocolate.  It's not like a traditional Butterfinger bar.  It's more like a Nestle Crunch bar, but with little bits of the orange Butterfinger center mixed into the chocolate instead of crisped rice.  The overwhelming majority of the consumer contacts that we received on this product were complaints from consumers who were expecting a product with a traditional Butterfinger center.  These complaints ramped up around the holidays because a lot of the more widely distributed Butterfinger seasonal products, such as these Nest Eggs that were sold for Easter, were based on the Butterfinger Pieces In Milk Chocolate recipe.  You can kind of see why people would complain.  If you're just glancing at the bag and not reading the small blue print, it certainly looks like you're buying a Butterfinger, but although the product was pretty tasty, it didn't taste anything like a Butterfinger bar.

These Kit Kat Scary Breaks have the same thing going on.  Their taste and texture is absolutely nothing like a Kit Kat bar.  It has a little bit of a crisp to it, but if you were blindfolded and ate a few of these and I asked you to guess what kind of chocolate candy you were eating, I highly doubt that anyone would say Kit Kat.  If you live in Canada and you still have these in your local stores, try it for yourself and see.  I'd be willing to bet that you could give your subject a dozen guesses in a blind taste test and they wouldn't say Kit Kat.  They're still a very tasty product, and the designs are freaking adorable, but I'll bet that the folks who are working on the consumer services team for Nestle Canada have had more than a few complaints about these.