Trying to keep up.

Alright, after the new template (which I'm not sure I like), and the personal commitment to update more frequently, I...er.....yeah.

So, while out and about on my 'long day' (the day I go right from work to class - more on that tomorrow, maybe), I stopped to pick up a soda for class. Of course, nothing goes better with a soda than a candy bar, so I started browsing the candy aisle, looking for....'something'. I'm tired of Snicker's, and I was looking for something different. Not 'candy bar disguised as an energy bar' different, either: something other than the old Hershey's/Snicker's/Mars/Reese's routine.

I found myself hankering for a Seven-Up bar: Pearson's (maker of the Nut Goodie) used to make this candy bar that was, essentially, a Whitman's Sampler covered in chocolate. Seven different fillings (nougat, fudge, marshmallow, etc.) all segmented and covered with chocolate. You could break off a piece and savor the individual flavor, or just chomp away and get that blended sugary goodness in every mouthful. And almost every filling rocked: the fudge was fudgy, the marshmallow was soft and yielding, yet packed with sugary mallow goodness, the 'nougat' (the brown nutty filling stuff) was the best around. The only filling that was less than good was the jelly: some amorphous, colorless blob of unindentifiably-flavored 'gel' that really didn't do much. Honestly, I used to break it off and give it away, or toss it, but anyway.

The last time I found a Seven-Up bar was back when the Tom Thumb in South St. Paul was still a Tom Thumb - back in the middle Eighties or so. It disappeared, along with the Nut Goodie (also by Pearson's) for the longest time. A few years ago, the Nut Goodie came back - a bit smaller, not quite as nutty, but back, nonetheless. But no Seven-Up bar.

So - while I was pining for the flavor of my youth, I started to think about all the other things that I remember from the 70's and 80's that are no longer around. In no particular order:

Marathon candy bar - a braid of caramel covered in chocolate. Well, caramel isn't quite right - it was more like caramel-flavored taffy, notoriously hard to chew, unless it had softened in your pocket for an hour or two. Of course, by then, all the chocolate had melted off, and was stuck to the wrapper.

Banana Flip. A "yellow" banana-flavored cake, folded over a banana-flavored creme filling. I think the sugar content of this was enough to send diabetics into a coma at the mere sight of it.

Viking Pop. Not "soda", POP. Locally bottled, available direct from the distributor on Concord Street in So. St. Paul. The highlight of the weekend, going to Viking with my Dad to pick a mix-n-match case so we could have creme soda with spaghetti dinner.

Pop Shoppe. A larger 'chain' store, similar to Viking. Mix and Match a returnable case. Like Viking, the Grape, Orange, and "citrus" pops were colors that do not normally appear in nature.

Mr. Steak. Restaurant, a step up from Ponderosa. Not quite "fine dining", but a decent steak and potato. I spent years trying to figure out what the hell their billboard sign was - and finally figured out that it was a chef's hat with Bull horns. It tormented me for years.

Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. When I finally broke down and tried it, one of the better fish and chips I've had. Of course, I resisted eating there for years as a child, due to the adolescent fear of any food with an unusual sounding name. In this case, "Treacher's" sounded too much like "Creatures", which I associated with the goo-spewing aliens of my sci-fi loving youth.

(Craig -> weird, yes. Move along.)

Shakey's Pizza. Ahhh, the Bunch of Lunch. For one low price, you could gorge yourself on pasta, salad, more pasta, and those hand-tossed, crispy crust pizzas that no mass market chain pizzeria has been able to replicate since their demise. One of the best memories of my trip to L.A. was finding a Shakey's near our hotel.

Zayre's Shopper's City. I'm not sure why I remember this so fondly. Their clothes were worse than K-Mart's, and their toy selection always sucked. Maybe it was their game room.

Jolly's Hobbies. The store where I bought my first D&D book. And my second. And scores of plastic models and model rockets. I remember the smell of the store to this day...