News arrived this morning that Chocolate maker Hershey will be discontinuing the venerable Cherry Blossom candy from its lineup.
This is like Santa Clause retiring.
I haven’t had one of these things in a long while, a good long while, but I can still remember the sheer luxury of flavour associated with this confection.
Packaged in its iconic yellow box, the Cherry Blossom was the top branch of the candy tree, as it featured the kind of chocolate you’d find on a really good Easter Bunny and combined it with a Maraschino cherry to deliver a gooey, syrupy, explosion of, well, chocolate and cherry.
This was the apex predator of chocolate treats. A person would have one, and only one of these before requiring an angioplasty. Even as kids, we showed an appropriate level pf respect for what it could do to you, and like I said, we were kids, who had no problem stuffing ourselves with candy until we puked. Yet we respected the Cherry Bomb.
This is one of the few candies I’ve experienced that comes with its own Health Canada warning on the side of the box, almost as if it could kill you quicker than a pack of smokes.
It does, however, seem to be more of a holdover relic from another time, another generation, as the new-fangled kids of today don’t seem to be able to place it within their own memory bank of candies they enjoyed while growing up. One girl I asked said “My grandfather loves those,” but when I offered one to her to sample, she performed the equivalent of the “hard no.” Another declined on the grounds that, since it was discontinued, it wouldn’t be right for her to consume something that one day might hang beside the Mona Lisa in The Louvre. She didn’t want to rob future generations of their opportunity to be exposed to this staple of the 1970’s.
My goal when I set out this afternoon was to film several people trying a Cherry Blossom and get their reactions to the experience.
I first went to the Dollar Store to get some, but they had never heard of it. I slid over to Giant Tiger, who knew of it, but didn’t carry it, although they were aware that it was being discontinued. No Frills was No Help, either, but at Walmart I hit pay dirt. I found them in the self-checkout area, where you grab things you don’t need while waiting for a cash to open up. There was a half-full box there, with twelve inside, and I snapped them all up at $0.98 a pop. The sales clerk told me she just put that box out not long before my arrival, to replace a full box of 24 that was bought entirely by a woman earlier in the day. She couldn’t account for the sudden popularity, so I told her. I didn’t get the sense she was any threat to buy out the remainder of the stock on hand.
I set up shop in the downtown Ottawa Valley Coffee, where I was hoping the relaxed and convivial atmosphere would be conducive to having people take me up on my offer of a free Cherry Blossom if they’d allow me to film the event just for kicks.
It appears there is little appetite among downtown Espresso drinkers to indulge their sweet teeth, if that’s the appropriate plural form of several people with a sweet tooth. Or perhaps they were simply cautious at being approached by a stranger with a bad shave entertaining an even poorer idea. Or maybe they just looked at the box and instinctively knew better.
Regardless, our attempt at learning was denied as the experiment never really got off the ground with the OVC crowd, as they appeared overwhelmingly disinclined to participate in the advancement of the scientific process. These are not the people you want on a jury. A cold, humourless bunch is what they were.
Or maybe they’re just people who determined, correctly, that there was somebody setting them up to have a good laugh at their expense. However they viewed it, they represented the equivalent of what’s known as a “tough crowd.” It was evident that there were no laughs to be had here.
As the afternoon advanced, it became apparent that I may go down in history as the last man to ever buy twelve Cherry Blossoms in a single shot. And it seems certain that I will remain the sole owner of these twelve little treasures, since I have absolutely no intention of trying one myself before spiriting myself directly to the Ottawa Heart Institute. So I guess I’m kind of stuck with them.
It’s the end of an era. And it looks like it will pass beyond the notice of most.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 