Everlasting, schmeverlasting.

Another item from Tia's snack sampler was a box of Wonka Everlasting Gobstoppers, My opinion is that no one who has read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or The Great Glass Elevator can ever be satisfied by the real-life Wonka brand candies. Actually, I'm usually disappointed by hard candies, but am not unhappy to give 'em a whirl (though I am suspicious of the eyelids at half mast on the anthropomorphized candy on the box pictured above).

So, these are "Jawbreakers that change colors and flavors."

Oh, do they?

GREEN tastes like lime, then maybe cherry, then turns a sickly green color that changes to yellowish and then is white and then pink. The flavor fades away from lime and cherry but never makes anything else of itself.

RED has that cherry candy flavor (have I ever mentioned that I like cherry Luden's cough drops?) and fades to light orange with maybe an orange flavor pretty quickly. Then the orange becomes brighter and more Tang-y. Orange fades and goes to whitish orange, then pink and sweetly sour. Then I get impatient and bite it in half. It is powdery white the rest of the way in to the center of its core.

PURPLE is grossly, cloyingly grape and fake tasting right off the bat, then becomes a dark pinkish red. Soon speckled with white, it gets generically sweet tasting and a darker pink-red. Maybe there's some cherry flavor in there, but it could be my imagination. Two white stripes develop on either side of the Gobstopper's equator at this point. It looks like a dark salmon pool ball. Then the stripes consume the candy until it is all white with a faint pink tinge and has a familiar sour candy tanginess (while still being sweet) and powderiness.

YELLOW has a strong "tastes like the way lemonheads smell" start as the color deepens and becomes more orange and then less orange. I notice those white stripes around the middle again before it gets pinky and starts breaking up. I'm tired of eating these now.

ORANGE is a solid ball of McDonald's orange drink in the big cooler at a playground picnic, but sweeter. The flavor changes a bit (but to what? It's kind of grassy) and the color goes yellow. White stripes come in around the center again (this probably happened on all of them) and then it's white and faintly pink and melting away. Crunch crunch.


p.s. I kept tipping the box over and then gobstoppers would roll all over the floor. This is not very stable packaging for something shaped like a marble. I didn't want to eat the whole box myself, but neither do other people want to share something I've dropped on the floor 6 times.