A Donut With No Hole Is A Danish

Heavy On Chevy: Three Amigos / Caddyshack
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

Friday night at the Mahoning was a double feature of two of the greatest comedies of all time, both of which feature the great Chevy Chase in a starring role.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Both of the Heavy On Chevy movies were comedies from the 80's: Three Amigos (1986) and Caddyshack (1980).  I've watched both of these movies countless times before, but this was my first opportunity to see them screened from a 35mm print on the big screen.

Three Amigos premiered in theaters during the 1986 holiday season.  I didn't discover it until about ten years later when I rented it on VHS and watched it in the living room of my grandparents house with my grandfather.  The two of us laughed our heads off like a couple of maniacs for pretty much its entire runtime.  It's not a movie that I've seen too many times over the years, so a lot of the jokes still land with me as hard as they did the first time, and judging by the laughs that echoed around the lot, I am not alone.

 

The 35mm print that the Mahoning received for Three Amigos had Spanish subtitles.  This sort of thing doesn't happen too often.  The last time it happened at a screening that I was in attendance for was three years ago when the Death Race 2000 print that was shown during Drive-In Apocalypse Weekend had Swedish subtitles.

Whereas I've only watched Three Amigos maybe a half dozen times before, it would be impossible to count the number of times that I've watched Caddyshack.  It's got to be in the hundreds at this point.  Caddyshack is not only among my favorite comedy films of all time, but it's become kind of a lullaby that helps me get to sleep.  We have a recording from when it was broadcast as the CBS Tuesday Night Movie on February 8th, 1983 (with the commercials), and there have been many nights over the years when we'll throw it on the television when we just kind of want to lay back and zone out, but we're not quite tired enough to fall asleep right away.

The lines from this movie are burned into my brain so deeply that some of them have just become a part of my speech.  I made so many references to it when I trained my first new hire class at Nestle that a few of them chipped in and gave me this t-shirt as a present when the training was over.  I've put on some weight since then so it doesn't fit as well as it once did, but I still have it, and damn it, I'll fit into it again one day!

Needless to say, I was incredibly happy to have had the opportunity to see a 35mm print of Caddyshack on the big screen at my favorite place in the world to watch movies.  Despite the fact that I've seen this movie a frankly unbelievable number of times, I saw things happening in the background of certain shots that I've never noticed before.  I don't care how big your television is or how much you spent on your surround sound speakers, there is no substitute for seeing a movie in a theatrical setting.  It's a difference on par with listening to your favorite band in the car to seeing them live in concert.  I can't even begin to quantify how much joy this drive-in has brought into my life for giving us the opportunity to see these movies in a way that I never thought that I'd get to experience them.

You Put The Lime In The Coconut And Pour It In The Pepper

Coffee-mate Coconut Lime
Nestle (2024)

My first job after college was with Nestle.  I started off as a customer service representative handling consumer phone calls and emails before first moving on to work with the social media team, then as a "consumer engagement specialist", which is a fancy way of saying that I monitored other people's work, and then finally as a trainer.  For most of my six and a half years, I worked for the Nestle CBI team which handled confections, baking, and ice cream products.  However there was a shakeup shortly after I was promoted to trainer.  The baking products were taken off of my team and assigned to the new "Nestle East" team while the beverage and foreign import products were assigned to my team, which would now be called "Nestle West".  Coffee-mate was one of the beverage products that now handled by our team.

The marketing team for Coffee-mate had a knack for making things interesting, from creating a line of Star Wars packaging for their liquid creamer, to holding a special dinner for a woman who was responsible for 1,519 phone calls, 2,337 Facebook posts, 1,868 emails, and 17 letters asking for the company to bring back the discontinued Amaretto flavor.  This consumer was surprised with a bottle of Coffee-mate Amaretto and told that it was being brought back for a limited time.  It has since been discontinued again, which caused this consumer to go right back on her campaign that is apparently still active to this day.

My favorite Coffee-mate marketing stunt from my time with Nestle was when they opened a pop-up coffee house called the All Natural Bliss Cafe.  This coffee house was operated by baristas who worked in the nude (well, in body paint) to promote the fact that the new Coffee-mate Natural Bliss creamer was made with all natural ingredients.  It wasn't quite Clerks 2, but hey... we were handing questions, comments, and concerns about coffee creamer... we'd take whatever excitement around the office that we could get.

As bizarre of a campaign as that was, it pales in comparison to their current product promotion.

Coffee-mate Coconut Lime was created to be mixed with Dr. Pepper soda, and while I'm sure that this may sound pretty gross on the surface, the combination is surprisingly tasty.

I couldn't find any instructions for the proper Coffee-mate to Dr. Pepper ratio, so I just poured some soda in a cup, then poured a few tablespoons of the creamer on top, then added more soda and stirred it up.  The results are hard to describe.  It tastes a bit like the last few sips of a Coke Float after most of the ice cream has melted, but with the added combination of coconut, lime, and whatever ingredients make up the Dr. Pepper flavor.

I guess you could just use the creamer in your coffee, but where's the fun in that?  Come on... give it a shot.  You know you want to try it.  Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?

Breakfast From The Quik Bunny

Nesquik Cocoa Crush Cereal

Nestle (2023)
For quite a few years, I worked for the consumer relations team of Nestle USA Confections, Baking and Ice Cream, which was known internally as Nestle CBI.  The divisions got shuffled up a bit during my time there, so by the time I left the company, I was the consumer relations trainer for Nestle West, which was comprised of four product divisions: confections, beverages, ice cream and international brands.

The International Brands division was kind of a catch-all for brands and products that Nestle produced in other countries which were imported to the United States due to high consumer demand, such as Maggi seasonings, Nescafe coffee, and Quality Street chocolates.  However, this division didn't include every foreign-born product that the company made.  For example, Nestle was heavily involved with breakfast cereal overseas throughout my time with the company, but the product line wasn't a part of their International Brands portfolio.  It's not impossible to buy Nestle breakfast cereal in the US, but it's not something that the company itself has any role in importing or marketing here in the States, so you can only really find it in stores that specialize in foreign products.

One such store has recently opened in the old GameStop location in the Laurel Mall in Hazleton, PA.  It's called NEPA Exotic Snax, and they have a great selection of snack foods and beverages that you can't get in a typical grocery store in the United States.  One of the products that they had was Nesquik Cereal, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to give it a try.

From the photos that I've found of this cereal online, it seems as if there are a few different versions of Nesquik Cereal.  The one that was available at this store was called Nesquik Cocoa Crush, which are little crunchy chocolate squares that are filled with chocolate cream.  It's a pretty tasty cereal.  It's not quite as sweet as I was expecting it to be, but that's probably a good thing.  With all of the weight that I've put on over the past five years, the last thing that I need is more sugar.

 

If you live in the United States and you want to try Nesquik Cereal, but you don't have a specialty import shop in your neighborhood, I may have a solution for you.  Kellogg's has a line of breakfast cereals in their lineup called Krave, and one of their flavors is Double Chocolate Brownie Batter.  I haven't tried it yet so I can't confirm that they taste the same, but it's not uncommon for the rights to one product being split between multiple companies depending on which country you're in.  For example, here in the United States, Kit Kat bars are a Hershey product, but if you go anywhere else in the world, you'll find that Kit Kat bars are made by Nestle.  I'm not sure if something similar is going on with this breakfast cereal formula, but it sure looks like that could be the case.

Carrying The Physical And Psychological Weight

I feel kind of stupid writing about myself on here,  After all, who the hell am I?  I'm not a celebrity, or an artist, or even a content creator.  I'm just a dude who hasn't really done anything remarkable in this world who happens to have a lot of interests without really being an expert in any of them.  However, writing sometimes helps me to come to terms with things, so what the hell.  Today, I'm going to talk about myself and my struggle with my weight.

This came to the surface of my mind from the strangest of places.  A few weeks ago, I wrote a review about The Matrix Resurrections.  It's a movie that I didn't particularly enjoy and I don't recommend.  In the process of writing it, I went searching for a photo that shows the Matrix poster that was hanging on my closet door back in the days when the first Matrix movie was the only one that existed.  In the process of searching for it, I saw a lot of pictures of myself and the way that my weight has fluctuated in my life, and it's been on my mind ever since.

When I was a little kid, my grandfather used to call me "the raging toothpick" because I was always very skinny.  It didn't matter how much I ate, it didn't seem to matter.  That continued into my teenage years and my early 20's.  This all started to change when I was around 22 years old.  I was continuously overeating to cope with depression, but I was now getting less exercise and I had been prescribed a medication that had weight gain as one of its most common side-effects.  As a result, I had blown up to over 300 pounds by my mid 20's.

When you're a 300 plus pound dude, there aren't a whole lot of styles that are available to you.  I had a lot of aloha shirts in those years, partially due to the fact that I was raised to believe that I was part Hawaiian (which is a whole separate personal crisis), and a lot of dark clothes to hide the weight as best as I could.  It got to a point where I was seriously concerned about my health.  I have a family history of diabetes on both sides, and I started to really hate what I saw when I looked in the mirror, so I started a diet after the 2005 holiday season.  As of January 1st, 2006, I cut out all snacking and recreational eating.  I still allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted for breakfast, lunch and dinner (within reason), but no dessert, no snacks, and nothing to drink except for water and coffee.

 

The diet worked out pretty well.  I lost over 50 pounds in the first year, and the weight loss got easier the longer that I continued to eat healthy.  I felt better about myself, both physically and mentally, so there weren't nearly as many moments of depression when I felt compelled to overeat.  This helped give me the confidence to go back to college and earn my degree.  It was around the summer of 2009 that I reached the lowest weight that I ever remember being as an adult - 159 pounds.  At this point, I decided that it was alright to have snacks and to ease up a bit on the diet.  I eventually settled in to around 180 pounds and found that this was my resting weight.  If I didn't allow myself to binge eat, but I also didn't count calories or skip out on the occasional dessert or snack, I tended to hover between 175 and 185 pounds.

I majored in psychology, and one of the earliest things I learned was the effects that major life stressors have on your physical and mental health.  In 2011, I experienced six major life stressors at virtually the same time: the death of a close family member, graduating from college, getting married, moving to a new home, starting a new career, and taking care of a sick/elderly family member.  Experiencing a single major life stressors lead to changes in your life that are crucial and, in many cases, permanent.  They're not always negative events that lead to bad changes, but good or bad, they are a source of stress, and human beings find ways to adapt to that stress.  The most major of these events was the first, and I'm still finding ways to cope with it ten years later.

My grandfather was the closest and most influential person in my life, even more so than my father.  He passed away a month before graduation and it hit me very hard.  I could continue writing about my grandfather forever if I don't rein myself in and focus on the subject at hand, so that's what I'm going to try to do.  When someone passes away in my family, we tend to either send or receive trays of food, which is mostly made up of either meat and cheeses or pastry.  My father and my grandmother were both diabetic and couldn't eat sugar, and I binge eat when I'm depressed, so I'll give you three guesses who ate almost all of the danishes and cookies and other baked goods that we received.  I didn't even enjoy it; I just mindlessly ate until there was nothing left, and then I went to find something else.

 

That became a pattern as I swallowed my stress, both metaphorically and literally, and I gained back a lot of weight in the process.  Looking back on that time in my life with a decade's worth of hindsight, it is clear to me that I had become addicted to food.  I didn't eat because I was hungry, or even because I thought it tasted good.  I ate to cope with stress and depression.  The challenge of a food addiction, compared to an addiction to something like drugs and alcohol, is that food is not optional - you need it to survive.  You can pour every last drop of alcohol in your house down the drain and vow to never pick up a bottle again.  It's an extremely large and difficult step to take, but it can be done.  You cannot throw out all of your food and vow to never pick up a fork.  Also, unlike other addictions, you will be offered food constantly.  This is especially true when the new career that I referred to earlier was to work for the confections / baking / ice cream division of one of the world's largest producers of consumer packaged foods.

My weight fluctuated a lot over the past ten years.   It went up in the years following my grandfather's death, topping out at around 280 pounds, after which I would commit myself to eating healthy and lose the weight.  That wasn't easy, especially during the years of my career when I had access to as much chocolate and ice cream as I could ever want.  Sometimes, I would fall back into my old habits of binge eating to cope with stress, and sometimes I would get back on the wagon and take off a few pounds.  I'm pretty sure the lowest weight I got to after graduation was 215, but I eventually settled in at around 230 by my 37th birthday.

As my weight stabilized, so did my mental health, though I can't say for sure whether the chicken or the egg came first.  Additionally, I was doing pretty well in my career.  I earned three promotions in my time with the company, first to social media specialist, then to consumer engagement specialist (which was, essentially, the quality coach for my team), and finally to project trainer.  The pay wasn't fantastic, but as cheesy as this may sound, it was rewarding and I felt driven in much the same way that I did in college.

My motivation as a trainer came from a desire to make a positive difference in people's lives.  I spent a lifetime dealing with autism, social anxiety disorder, and as I've come to terms with today, an eating disorder.  I have had a lot of jobs over the years, most of which were in some form of customer service, and while I was a hard worker with no attendance issues, I often ran into social roadblocks.  To put it simply, I just don't know how to talk to people sometimes.  My intentions are good, but it often comes out wrong and I screw everything up.  Most of the people that I trained didn't have the same challenges that I have, but they did have their own personal struggles, and I was committed to making their transition to a new job as smooth and stress-free as possible.  Training people to talk with consumers about food certainly wasn't the career path that I had in mind when I decided to be a psych major, but I made it work for me.  That's when I went to El Paso, and everything changed.

 

There's a lot going on in this chapter in my life, but I'm going to do my best to stay on topic.  I was around 230 pounds (give or take) when I touched down in El Paso in 2017 on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, but that didn't last.  Long story short, I had gone Charlie Sheen for a few months, and I ate and drank more in a three month span than I ever have before or since.  I couldn't tell you how much of this was an attempt to use food to cope with stress, or part of an overall manic episode.  The results were the same regardless.  I ate breakfast at the hotel, lunch at the office, and then had two or sometimes three separate dinners at night during the week, and weekends were even worse.  I went to as many bars, fast food, food trucks, diners, and restaurants as I could find, and I ate like a mad king.

When I got rid of Facebook, I downloaded all of the photos that I had posted on there.  I went through them and found a photo that I took at an airport bookstore.  I saw this book cover and posted a photo of it with what I thought was a funny caption.  Looking back on it now, I wonder how much of this was a joke and how much of it was an unconscious cry for help.

It wasn't long after my three months bopping back and forth between NEPA and El Paso that I was the one who was making the transition to a new job.  Again, I don't want to get off topic, so I'll over-simplify the hell out of this time in my life by saying that it was very stressful, and the stress that I caused to myself and to others was entirely my own fault.  I knew it then and I know it now, but I want to stay on the topic, so I'll close the subject by saying that I was continuing to binge on food as a coping mechanism.

In the first two years after El Paso, I hovered at around 260 pounds, give or take a few, on any given month.  Frankly, considering how much I ate and drank in 2018 and 2019, I'm kind of surprised that my weight stayed as low as it did.  On New Years Day 2020, I decided that I was going to go back to the same diet that worked for me fourteen years earlier.  I was doing pretty well in sticking to healthy foods until a few months later when Covid-19 closed the door on the world as we all knew it.

 

Since the start of the pandemic, there have been fewer opportunities to stop for fast food and donuts.  On the other hand, with so many things closed (especially in 2020), there weren't many things to do besides sit around, read books, listen to music, watch movies and eat.

I know a lot of folks have stories about how they had time to reflect during the initial lockdown and make improvements in their life, like exercising and eating healthy.  I wish I could say that I had one of those stories to tell, but my response to this was far less inspirational.  I am by no means a hypochondriac, but in the early days of the virus before the vaccine, I was fully prepared for the possibility that I was going to catch Covid-19 and that it would be where my story ends.  I was even making a list of things that I owned that I knew could probably get a good price on eBay so that my wife would be able to stay afloat financially until the life insurance check came in.  However, from a food perspective, I pretty much just said screw it - I'm not dying with a belly full of carrots and lettuce.

While I do enjoy donuts and ice cream, my binge eating usually doesn't center around snacks or desserts.  If I had to go the rest of my life without chocolate, cake or candy, I don't think I'd even miss it all that much.  Most of foods that I tend to overeat are things like hamburgers, sandwiches, burritos, pasta... things that could conceivably be parts of a healthy meal if eaten in moderation.  So, since I've been working from home and could have any of those things at a moment's notice, I've been doing a lot of mindless eating and have gone weeks and months where I lost track of how much I had to eat.

And now, we're at the start of another new year.  Overall, I think that my mental health is in a good place.  I may not receive the same amount of personal satisfaction from my current line of work, but the pay is better and I get to stay at home and avoid the anxiety of an office environment (not to mention the virus).  From a social perspective, I discovered my home away from home at the Mahoning Drive-In and an online community of movie fans that I at least sort of fit in with a little bit.  I'm not much better at social interaction than I've ever been, but I've reached an uneasy peace with who I am.  Not everybody is going to like or understand me, but that's alright.  It doesn't have to be a cause for conflict if I don't allow it to be.  I'm not sure what my goals are in life these days as I've just been on auto-pilot since the start of the pandemic, but at 41 years old, that might not be such a bad thing.  In the words of Ozzy, I don't want to change the world, and I don't want the world to change me.  I'm content to just be here and to live a peaceful life.

Despite all of this, I know I need to get in shape.  I look at myself in the mirror and I'm seeing the same guy with the puffy face I wasn't happy with back in 2005.  Now, that face staring back at me has 17 years of additional mileage on the odometer.  If I plan on living a few more decades and having a quality of life that makes it worth sticking around, I've got to do something.  With that in mind, I'm starting yet another diet to try to get back to a weight that's healthy for me, but I'm doing things a little differently this time.

The last time I weighed myself was about three weeks ago, and I was 279 lbs.  That's not good, but it's not the highest that I've ever been.  I've decided to go back to the 2006 diet of meals only with no snacks, but with the following modifications:

• I'm going to finish the Pop Tarts that I already have in the house.  There's no point in letting good Pop Tarts go to waste.  But after these are gone, that's it.  I'm not buying any more until 2023 at the earliest.
• I'm giving myself an exception for popcorn, but only when I'm out to see a movie at Regal or the Mahoning.  I don't get it with butter even when I'm not trying to lose weight, so that shouldn't be too big of a deal.
• I'm limiting my alcohol strictly to times when I'm hanging out with my dad.  I don't have a problem with drinking aside from the additional calories, so that won't be a big deal either.
• I'll allow myself an occasional diet soda or a glass of V-8 with a dash of hot sauce, but for the most part, I'm sticking to water and coffee.
• Here comes the hard part: I'm going to avoid eating anything for the sake of it being a new, seasonal or limited edition product.  That's a trap that I've fallen into many times before, where I pick up a new flavor of peanut butter cups or stop at McDonald's for a new sandwich on their menu.  I tell myself that I should make an exception because if I don't try it now, it probably won't be around by the time I reach my target weight, so it's now or never.  The problem with that line of thinking is that there are so many new, seasonal, or limited edition products that I'm in a constant state of making exceptions.  I'm sure I can live a happy life without knowing what the next Reese's Peanut Butter Cup variation tastes like.  Most of them aren't as good as the original anyway.
• Finally, I'm not going to weigh myself until New Years Day 2023.  When I went on the diet in my mid 20's, I weighed myself on a digital scale every morning and kept track of my weight in a notebook.  Back then, it served as motivation, but I was a younger man who lost weight much faster than I expect I will in my early 40's.  I've tried diets over the past ten years where I weigh myself once a week, but all it ever does is discourage me.  I would see that I lost one pound or less and think "man, I gave up all of that good food for a lousy 0.7 pounds" and then it became that much easier to say "to hell with it" and just eat whatever.  It's a trap.  I know it's a trap, so I'm going to avoid it - no weighing myself until 2023.

Well, that's enough self-absorbed yammering for now.  I'll do a status update on my weight loss at around this time next year.  Until then, back to your regularly scheduled rotation of pop culture randomness.  If you've made it this far, thank you for caring, and have a happy new year.

Boxing Day: American Style

Wal-Mart Supercenter
Airport Road - Hazleton, PA (1996)

Throughout my life, my grandparents would tell me that time goes by faster the older that you get.  When I was younger, I rolled my eyes at illogical sentiments like this.  After all, time is time, and the age at which you experience it shouldn't matter a bit.  Well, I'm here to tell you now as a man in his early 40's that it's no bullshit.  When I was in high school, we would get four report cards per year.  Each marking period between report cards was nine weeks long, which felt like to me like nine months.  A full school year felt like an eternity.  We're now entering the final week of 2021, and it feels like this year has gone by in the blink of an eye.

These thoughts started rolling around my mind this morning when I was considering the differences between the day after Christmas in the UK and the United States.  Across the pond, December 26th is called Boxing Day.  I won't pretend to be an expert on the holiday, but when I was in London over the holidays a few years ago, it reminded me a lot of Black Friday here in the States.  It's a shopping holiday in which stores advertise big sales that attract massive crowds.  Stores here in the US also tend to get busy on December 26th, but we don't really have many store sales except maybe for unsold Christmas candy and decorations that they've put on clearance.  The reason for the increased store traffic over here tends to be for returns.

I've worked retail for a few different places over the holiday season, but the one that sticks in my mind the most happened 25 years ago, on December 26th, 1996.  This isn't one of those times that "feels like only yesterday", but it damn sure doesn't feel like it was a quarter century ago.  I was 16 years old and working for the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Hazleton, PA.  I had just started working there in the fall, with most of my time being split between the front end registers, the customer service desk, and the Lawn & Garden department, which also served as the Christmas decoration department during the holiday season.

On the day after Christmas, just about everybody who was register trained was working on the front end doing returns.  We had all 30 registers open and at least a third of them were set up exclusively for returns, and that's where I was assigned for my shift.  Wal-Mart had a very forgiving return policy back then, so we took back just about everything for a refund of either cash or store credit whether they had a receipt or not.  I had a line of people who were returning items for eight hours nonstop, and we took back a ton of merchandise, including some things that I knew for a fact that we didn't sell.  I'm pretty sure one guy just took a VHS tape that he had for years off of his shelf and brought it into the store for a full refund, but it fulfilled the policy requirements, so the dude walked away with a gift card for about $15 bucks.

With the increase in online shopping and the Omicron variant, they probably aren't nearly as busy with returns today as they were twenty five years ago, but it's one of the busiest days I've ever worked in my life.

Dungeons & Dragons Is For Nerds

Nerds Gummy Clusters
Ferrara Candy Company (2021)

Now this is a brilliant promotion; a game that has been associated with nerds for over forty years is now associated with Nerds candy.  If you buy a pack of Nerds Gummy Clusters and upload a photo of the product and the store receipt to nerdscandy.com/dnd, you'll receive a downloadable Nerds themed Dungeons & Dragons game module, with seven total modules to collect, as well as a code to unlock the Nerds Champion within the Idle Champions Of The Forgotten Realms video game.  Additionally, those who participate in this promotion are also entered for a chance to win a prize, including a chance to play a game of D&D with folks from Wizards of the Coast, and Dungeons & Dragons game books and materials.

As for the candy itself, it really is a clever idea and is one of the best new sugar candy products I've tried in a long time.  It's essentially a Nerds Rope that has been chopped up into bite-sized pieces, but the end result comes across sort of like a jellybean with a crunchy candy shell and a chewy interior.  It eliminates the biggest complaints I remember hearing about the Nerds Rope back when I worked for Nestle confections, which were the fact that the Nerds candy came off of the product and spilled when you bit into it, and that the candy itself was too small for the packaging (a side effect of the gummy candy being packaged warm, then cooling and shrinking in shipment).  I'm not sure how we missed out on this when Nerds was a Nestle/Wonka product, especially when you consider how many confections products came out in a bite-sized version over the years.

Spicy Pink Frosted Goodness

Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut
Dunkin' Donuts (2020)
I've been a huge fan of Dunkin' Donuts for as long as I've been eating solid foods.  One of my happiest childhood memories is walking with my grandfather to the shop on Broad Street in West Hazleton.  It had a counter with bar stools, and a very cool aesthetic of pink, orange and grey on little micro tiles throughout the restaurant.  I've found photos of other Dunkin' Donuts restaurants from the 80's, but I've never come across one for this particular restaurant, or of any that looked like it on the inside.  As cool as it looked, it smelled even better, with the aroma of hot brewing coffee and fresh baked donuts.  If I close my eyes and focus, I can almost smell it.

Five years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Dunkin' Donuts Headquarters in Canton, MA.  I had just been promoted to trainer, and the Consumer Engagement Team at Nestle had loaned me out for a few weeks to create and deliver a training program for their rewards card program.  It was an awesome experience and an opportunity that I was very thankful to have had.

As a consumer, I left Canton with mixed feelings.  The impression I was left with was that donuts were quickly becoming an afterthought at Dunkin' Brands, and they were transitioning into a business model that focused entirely on coffee and breakfast sandwiches.  Don't get me wrong, I love Dunkin' coffee and their sandwiches are delicious, but there's something special about a Dunkin' Donut that you just can't get anywhere else.  I was concerned that the days of new and innovative flavors from the "time to make the donuts" brand were going to be a thing of the past.  I'm very happy to learn that I was wrong.

Photo Source: DunkinDonuts.com

The Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut is truly remarkable.  The vast majority of hot and spicy foods I've tried over the years have been highly disappointing.  It seems as if most of their creators made little effort in making them enjoyable to eat.  It was just a cash grab gimmick where they'd make something that isn't typically spicy as punishingly hot as possible, then sit back and collect all the money while people dared each other to eat it.  I'm very happy to say that this isn't the case with the Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut.  When I took my first bite, I got a quick burst of the ghost pepper.  It's not the kind of spice that'll have you rushing for a drink, but it's there.  However, it doesn't last very long because the bread and the sweetness of the sugar beats it back almost immediately.  It's like starting a small fire, then tamping it out.  It's thankfully not the kind of thing that will result in thousands of "challenge" videos, but it makes for a delicious and unique snack.  I hope that it turns into an annual Halloween tradition at Dunkin'.

Not Quite A Lifetime Supply Of Chocolate

Wonka Golden Ticket coupon
Nestle (2001)
This is another piece of confections ephemera from my time working for Nestle.  The company sent these to consumers who called the company to ask a question about their Wonka branded sugar candy.  The coupons from later years had a pretty generic look, but the ones from 2001 were designed to look like the Golden Ticket from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.

Shaq Snack Attack

Nestle Crunch Assorted Minis
Nestle (2003)
Now that not quite so hot outside, I've been able to clean out some of the garage.  I came across this coupon in a box of stuff that I had from my time working for Nestle Confections.  This was one of the enclosures that we would send to consumers who would call, write or email to ask about our candy products, and it features NBA center Shaquille O'Neal.  Shaq was playing for the Los Angeles Lakers when this coupon was printed.  He would go on to play for another seven seasons before ending his Hall of Fame career in 2011.

These Crunch bars were very tasty.  The bottom of the bars were made with standard Nestle Crunch ingredients, but there was a little space between the crisped rice and the chocolate layer on top which was then filled with caramel, peanut butter or chocolate cream.  The caramel one lasted a bit longer than the others, but the product line unfortunately didn't last too long.

The Hershey Alpine White

Hershey White with Whole Almonds
Hershey Foods (2020)
The Nestle Alpine White bar is one of my favorite snack foods of all time, but it was discontinued in the 90's.  I worked for the Confections division of Nestle USA for a number of years, and I quickly learned that they are a very forward-thinking company that rarely brings a discontinued product back to the market.  Any hopes that I had of the Alpine White coming back ended when Nestle sold their American confections business to Ferrero.

When I bought this new candy bar from Hershey, I was expecting it to taste like their Cookies & Cream bar, which I've never been too crazy about.  Thankfully, it did not.  I was extremely happy to find that this tastes exactly like the Nestle Alpine White bars that I had as a kid in the late 80's and early 90's.  In fact, with the thickness of the bar and the inclusion of lots of whole almonds, I think the Hershey one may be even better.

I hope they can think of a better name for this.  I know that FDA regulations make it next to impossible to label a confectionery product as "white chocolate", but I have to say that "Hershey White with Whole Almonds" doesn't exactly sparkle.  Maybe they could slide a few bucks to Nestle for the rights to the Alpine White name.  While they're at it, they should definitely buy the rights to that epic commercial, with the Lloyd Landesman song that sounds like something you might perform around a bonfire to summon the gods of synthpop.

The Chipwich Is Back

The Original Chipwich
Crave Better Foods (2020)
In what might be the first evidence that 2020 isn't all bad, the most delicious ice cream sandwich ever made is available in stores once again.

Back when I worked for Nestle, we would occasionally get calls and emails asking us to bring back the Chipwich.  Our standard answer was to recommend the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich which was similar, but not the same as the Chipwich.  In fact, we didn't even have any information about the Chipwich in the knowledge base that our brand ambassadors used.  It wasn't until I was promoted and became the trainer for our team that I learned how Nestle was connected to the Chipwich.

The rights to the Chipwich were purchased by CoolBrands International in 2002.  That company ran into some financial trouble, so they sold off the Chipwich and Eskimo Pie brands to Dreyer's, which was acquired by Nestle.  The Eskimo Pie brand was cut down to a single product (a no-sugar-added ice cream bar), and the Chipwich was discontinued so that it didn't cannibalize sales from the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich.

In the two years since I left Nestle, the company has decided to get out of the ice cream business.  Five months ago, Nestle sold off all of their remaining ice cream properties in the United States to Froneri, including Dreyer's, Edy's, Skinny Cow, Drumstick, Outshine and the 100 year license to produce and distribute Haagen-Dazs in North America.  Prior to this, a man named David Clarke swooped in and acquired the rights to the Chipwich.  According to the website, they first returned to stores in 2018, but I just discovered them at Wegman's for the first time this year.

I'm very happy to say that the Chipwich tastes exactly as I remember it.  It's two soft chocolate chip cookies stuffed with vanilla ice cream with mini chocolate chips sprinkled around the perimeter.  The main difference between this and the Toll House Sandwiches are the the flavor of the ice cream and the chocolate chips.  The Toll House Sandwich doesn't have the mini chocolate chips, and the ice cream has a strange plastic aftertaste.  The Chipwich is an improvement in every way.

According to theoriginalchipwich.com, the Chipwich is now being made in two additional flavors: Birthday Cake (with sprinkles) and Chocolate Peanut Butter.  I think I'm going to have to make another trip to Wegman's and give them a try.

It Made The Grocery Store Run In Less Than 12 Parsecs

Star Wars Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches
Nestle (2020)
It's May 4th, which means my half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder self is going to spend a large chunk of the day watching Star Wars: original trilogy, original cut.  No added scenes, no replacement of iconic music with forgettable stock score, and no goofy CGI shoehorned in.  However, most Star Wars nerds will tell you that May 4th is about more than just the movies.  There are toys video games, comics and all sorts of other things that a man approaching 40 should have long since grown out of.  It's also important to have lots of Star Wars themed snacks close at hand.  That's where these Millennium Falcon Ice Cream Sandwiches from Nestle come in.

Before I review these, I should probably offer a bit of disclosure.  I worked with Nestle USA Consumer Services in various roles over the previous decade - specifically in the confections, baking, ice cream and beverage divisions.  In my time, I've visited the manufacturing plant in Laurel, Maryland to see first hand how the products are made, and I've eaten a ton of Nestle ice cream.

Having said all of that, I'm pretty confident in my opinion that the Star Wars Millennium Falcon ice cream sandwiches are virtually identical to the Nestle line of Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches.  The cookie has the same exact taste and texture of the vanilla cookie that was used for the discontinued Skinny Cow Strawberry Shortcake sandwiches, and the ice cream has the familiar Nestle Vanilla light ice cream flavor that I've had so many times before in the Skinny Cow and Dreyer's / Edy's Slow Churned product lines.

Low fat vanilla ice cream between a vanilla cookie is the very definition of bland, but these taste alright.  I think they were a bit overpriced, but if you want to enjoy an ice cream snack while you binge watch the Star Wars franchise, you could do worse than these little Millennium Falcon sandwiches.  May the 4th be with you!

Pandemic Pudding Pandemonium

Going to grocery stores over the past month has not been a pleasant experience.  I don't mind having to wear a face mask, but I've quickly learned that customers and store employees alike have absolutely no regard whatsoever for the six foot rule.  Pro-tip: if you happen upon a person like this who is making it their life's mission to be in your personal space, don't bother asking them to move.  Just start faking long, loud coughs and gasp for breath.  You'll have all the six foot clearance you need.  Still, the whole process can be stressful, so it's important to make your trips to the grocery store count.  Stock up on as much of the things you need in a single trip.  This will help ensure that you'll have enough food and other goods for when the supply chains inevitably break down.  It will also limit your number of trips to the store, thus limiting your exposure to the Covid-carrying soccer mom who is standing close enough to blow in your ear, which she can easily do from above her three week old surgical mask that hangs from her chin like a sarcastically bad cosplay of Bluebeard the Pirate.

Keep in mind that you're going to need a place to put your supplies when you get home.  Recreating the Iron Throne out of carefully placed 48-count packs of Charmin Ultra Soft is all well and good, but there's a limit to the amount of furniture you can build with your groceries.  Therefore, it's important that you go through the things that are already in your home.  Condense the eight open boxes of pasta into a single box.  Don't worry about mixing different kinds - if you're biggest concern during the apocalypse is the occasional wagon wheel in your macaroni and cheese, you're doing alright.  If you're feeling especially brave, go ahead and condense your open beverage containers as well.  Your quarantine-mates are sure to enjoy the Sunny Delight / Dr. Pepper / Clamato milkshake in the Kool-Aid Man pitcher.  I hear the CDC is recommending it as a way to ward off the virus.

One of the fun side effects of going through your cupboards is finding things that you may have purchased and forgotten.  Take, for example, this "Seasonal Release" of Jell-o Pudding Mix.  I don't know what I was thinking when I bought the Classic Turtle artificial flavor.  These days, I demand real turtles in my pudding.  I must have purchased it in the wild, carefree days of my youth - back in the days when we all skipped merrily in groups of ten or more while coughing openly into each other's face and shamelessly neglecting to wash and sanitize our hands.  Germs, you say?  Phooey!  I grew up in Hazleton.  My lungs have been working out on cigarette smoke and coal dust.  What my immune system doesn't kill, my Italian sarcasm will.

For a fleeting second, I think that I should throw this pudding away, but it passes quickly.  The flap on the box says "best when used by: 20 Aug 2012".  At least that's what I think it says.  It's hard to make out through all of this dust.  Hmmm... how would I have advised someone who called me at my old consumer services call center job back in 2012?  Let's see if I can remember the script: "We don't recommend using a product after it's best by date because it may not meet our quality standards.  Products within the best by date have the best quality, freshness and performance."  Then again, that script came from the same knowledge base which said that we won't put the words "gluten free" on our Slow Churned, 1/2 the fat, 1/3 the calories, all-natural ingredient Classic Vanilla Light Ice Cream because we consider it to be "over-labeling".  Besides, I was raised in a house where we didn't waste food.  Best by 2012, you say?  Well, I was best by 2008 and I'm still here.  Bring on the delicious blend of chocolate, caramel and pecan flavors!  I need the cupboard space for this pallet of Teriyaki Spam!

Yum!  The pudding was delicious, just as I expected.  It's a good thing too, because there are three more boxes just like it, along with a few Pumpkin Spice and Candy Cane flavors of the same vintage.  I wonder if there's a community of Candy Cane Jell-o Pudding junkies out there spamming the Kraft social media sites to ask for it to come back.  Maybe I can put this stuff on eBay and get rich.  Slide over, Jeff Bezos.  Here comes Will, the expired pudding slangin' gazillionaire, about to do a Scrooge McDuck swan dive in my Paypal money bin.  See that Ferrari in the driveway?  Bought that sucker on six year old Amaretto Coffee-mate.  The Maserati?  That's from Ecto Cooler juice boxes that were jammed in my freezer right behind the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving 2016.  Wait a minute... there's already 800 sellers offering it for a Buy-It-Now price of five bucks?  Damn!  I guess I still have to work on Monday, but at least I have all this sweet, sweet pudding from a decade ago.  Pass me the spoon.