Cartoon Food Update

When my sista and I arrived in Calgary from Montreal, we drove through the hamlet of Nanton on our way to Lethbridge.  That there’s an antique-style candy store in Nanton comes as no surprise, but that they had one of the most well-stocked sections of gummy candy that looks like food was unexpected and ultimately bittersweet. 

Okay, so the selection wasn't that great, but still, I had never seen these before.  The "Lunch Bag" collection wasn't too
exciting because, with the exception of the hotdog and fries, I had already see all these candies before (there are two
Coke bottles obscured by the "Lunch Bag" text).  I have to admit that the fries were a really exciting find, though.  By
no means was the Lunch Bag collection a disappointment, but the Mexican collection was especially fun, if not slightly
disgusting. I'm not sure why there's a hotdog in there. It also comes with two corns and two peppers.

You know that feeling when something is so powerful and overwhelming that you’re certain it could happen only once in a lifetime?  And the whole time it’s happening to you you’re playing Celine Dion’s video of “A New Day Has Come” in your head and watching the camera pan around her as she stands in the clouds looking down on the world like the angel that she is?  But then that exact same experience happens again, and it almost cheapens the initial experience?  As if someone with a much weaker voice was now singing “A New Day Has Come”?  You know?  But at the same time, you’ve been here already, you know how great this can be, and to be lucky enough for something great to happen to you twice, let alone once, is really phenomenal and humbling.  These are the thoughts that were rushing through my head when I saw the different gummy candies available in the Nanton candy shop.

I don't want to spend any more time talking about these gummies, so I thought I would just provide a series of photos and perhaps make a few brief comments.

Here are the burgers from the Lunch Box series. Nothing we haven't all seen before.

The fries are new to me, however, and really appreciated.  One thing
that I think is really special about the fries is the sour sugar coating,
meant to stand in for salt.  Without it, they would have been just
gross strands of yellow gummy.  The cardboard fry container
is a really nice touch, too.

Here's the hotdog. I think it's a pretty decent representation, but sometimes these gummy
foods can really suffer when the makers put too much emphasis on condiments. 
I think I would have preferred just the hotdog and bun--just like in real life.

I stand by my original criticism of the gummy pizza, but one detail I really appreciate is that the pizza actually is in
five separate slices.  And, actually, that one mushroom looks pretty good.

Here they are all together, including the cola bottle which I didn't
provide an individual picture of because we've all seen it before.

Moving on to the Mexican collection, these peppers were probably the biggest
disappointment of the pack.  I'm not sure why. They felt like a lazy afterthought to me.

The corn was a really nice surprise for me. I really didn't see that coming.  I worried that I wouldn't enjoy eating
them because they were made of that weird marshmallow candy, but they were actually pretty good.

Now we're getting into the exciting additions to the Mexican collection.  This tortilla is pretty disgusting
to look at, but I'm not sure where the happy medium would lie between this and the pizza. The
pizza is way too busy, and as a result loses the simply quality that cartoon food needs in order to be
appealing.  But this tortilla is too plain.  I think that Trolli missed out on a really great opportunity to
make something special, and the vegetables are obviously way too globular.  That being said, without it,
the Mexican collection would have really been lacking.

Along with the tortilla, this Chili con Carne is the other big draw of the Mexican collection.
It's really disgusting to look at, but a neat detail is that it comes in a little plastic "cast iron"
serving pan.  I could not bring myself to eat this.  One lingering question I had after unpacking
the Mexican pack is why wasn't there a taco included?  But then I remembered that for some
strange reason, there is a hotdog, and now I am thinking that the hotdog was probably intended
to function as a taco.  At any rate, I think that was a pretty major oversight and lost opportunity.