Cherry Bomb
Cidu Bill on Apr 10th 2009
Probably this is something you’re only going to notice if you’re Jewish, but…
Marshmallow twists are a staple of Passover snack food (I prefer them frozen, personally); and in addition to regular marshmallow, they’re also made with cherry-flavored marshmallow. And by the second day of Passover, every supermarket that carries Passover food has a full shelf of cherry-flavored marshmallow twists just sitting there. By the end of the week, everything else is gone, the cherry-flavored marshmallow twists are marked down 90% and still not moving.
I’m astounded by the fact that the same supermarkets, every single year, never figure out that nobody likes cherry-flavored marshmallow twists.
Filed in Bill Bickel, Passover | 47 responses so far
James Apr 10th 2009 at 05:14 pm 1
Same with Matzoh crackers - a five-pound box is $14 before Passover, $1.50 after, and yet every year the stores stock up on several hundred extra boxes. They’re actually not bad with peanut butter on them!
buzz Apr 10th 2009 at 05:49 pm 2
Supermarkets don’t make their money selling food. Supermarkets make their money renting shelf space to companies that sell food. Somebody somewhere has figured the excess cherry flavored marshmallow twists into the equation.
Lola Apr 10th 2009 at 06:01 pm 3
Many years ago the factory owner (FA) of the plant that is the only maker of both varieties had a brother-in-law (BIL) who had this “brilliant” idea of making the cherry flavor. They were a total flop but to keep peace in the family, FA makes them every year and because no store would buy even a single case of them after their first experience, he packs every case half and half. BIL is in ignorant bliss because the factory sells just as many of his wonderful creation as the original flavor. FA (and probably the sister as well) know the truth, but there is peace in the house. So, you see, the stores don’t want them, but what’re they gonna do? It’s a package deal.
Vic in Chicagoland Apr 10th 2009 at 07:47 pm 4
I always buy a few boxes every year. Good to feed the goyim- they don’t know any better and think that, like matzo, we HAVE to eat that stuff. The shiksas actually seem to like the taste, and I get the good ones for myself..
drdan Apr 10th 2009 at 07:55 pm 5
as a goy they sound Intriguing, I asked my GF and she tinks I am making this up and it sounds disgusting, yet she eats gefilte fish, a food that shattered my belief that nothing would look worse than pickled pigs feet.
are they that bad?
and my GF still thinks I’m making it up
but is their a connection between marshmellows and passover?
Cidu Bill Apr 10th 2009 at 08:33 pm 6
drdan, it’s not a connection between Passover and marshmallows as much as that so many things can’t be eaten on Passover — so marshmallow twists (along with jellied “fruit slices”) win by default.
padraig Apr 10th 2009 at 09:16 pm 7
They’re the Jewish equivalent of Peeps.
Frank the curmudgeon Apr 10th 2009 at 09:24 pm 8
Bill,
What in a standsrd box of chocolates ( say Whiman Samplers)
would be prohibited? caramel, nougat, cherries ? Since the marshmallow twists are chocolate covered, I assume chocolate is ok.
Patrick Apr 10th 2009 at 11:09 pm 9
Padraig - when I read this post I had the exact same idea - “Sounds like Peeps,” then I get to the comment page to find that you beat me to it.
My oldest brother is the only person I know who likes Peeps. But he insists that they are much more delicious stale than fresh. Every year, early in Lent, he gets a package, pops some holes in the cellophane on the top and then eats them, properly stale, on Easter.
I know that has nothing to do with cherry-flavored marshmallow but I enjoy talking about how weird my brother is. Thank you.
(and Happy Passover or Happy Easter to you all)
Elyrest Apr 10th 2009 at 11:27 pm 10
Patrick - your brother isn’t weird. Everyone in my family likes peeps stale. We’d all leave them in our Easter baskets to get to the right consistency. Then someone would finish their peeps and steal someone else’s peeps and then that person would steal and so on. Finally my mother started buying peeps early, opening them up and letting them age so they’d be perfect on Easter.
Mmmmmmmm!!
Patrick Apr 10th 2009 at 11:40 pm 11
OK, so maybe he’s not weird for liking stale Peeps.
But he’s still weird.
Patrick Apr 10th 2009 at 11:41 pm 12
And I say that with love. I’m weird too.
Elyrest Apr 10th 2009 at 11:48 pm 13
My whole family is weird - me included.
Annie Benson Apr 11th 2009 at 01:53 am 14
I like peeps, but I usually eat the sugar-free kind since they are lower calories. But calories or no, I’d like to try the chocolate covered passover stuff. But maybe not the cherry ones, since the people who would know about them seem to think they’re better off being ignored.
chuckers Apr 11th 2009 at 06:56 am 15
Peeps are *supposed* to be eaten stale. It’s a rule or something.
Tom T. Apr 11th 2009 at 08:07 am 16
Perhaps the cherry twists are actually flying off the shelves so fast that the store works to keep them constantly restocked. The sales volume is so high that it’s worth overestimating and being left with one load unsold at the end of Passover.
jp Apr 11th 2009 at 08:45 am 17
I had thought that marshmallow was not kosher for Passover, since it is make from corn syrup (corn not being one of the grains which are kosher for Passover). Or, as with Coca-Cola in NYC, are these specifically manufactured using real sugar rather than corn syrup during Passover?
-jp
drdan Apr 11th 2009 at 09:17 am 18
OK CIDU I get the part what you can’t eat, Good Friday is more about avoid doing anything, at leats as a kid it was. My GF saw the web site but never heard about the marshsmellow thing, we live in the southwest, so I’m guessing it is a regional thing
Lola Apr 11th 2009 at 09:45 am 19
Soups and stews are always better the 2nd day. Peeps are disgusting fresh, but wonderful about a week after opening. Then there are circus peanuts which are just plain awful fresh but perfect after 8.3 days on the top of a dresser. Of course results may vary depending on atmospheric conditions and local humidity.
Morris Keesan Apr 11th 2009 at 10:21 am 20
I’m wondering whether this is a regional thing, because I don’t recall ever having seen marshmallow twists, either regular or cherry flavored.
Frank the curmudgeon: most of the Whitman Sampler box would be prohibited because it hasn’t been packaged and supervised to make sure nothing prohibited goes in it, but in principle most of it should be okay, as long as there’s no corn sweetener or soy lecithin in anything.
jp, corn is not actually one of the prohibited grains. Corn falls in the category of “kitniyot”, things which should really be okay, except that one rabbi a few centuries ago added an extra category of foods which he thought should be prohibited. Corn, rice, legumes, are all completely okay for Sephardic Jews, and some modern rabbinic authorities are now saying it’s okay to use things which are derived from those foods and no longer have any resemblance to flour, e.g. corn syrup, corn oil.
Matthew Apr 11th 2009 at 10:32 am 21
Actually, cherry-flavored marshmallow twists sound good. I gotta go to the supermarket ‘n’ look for ‘em. In addition, I’m out o’ matzos, which I love!
Speaking (Writing) as an atheist & a respecter of no religion, all the dietary laws are a reason that I find Judaism difficult to take seriously–Islam, too, for that matter, & Roman Catholicism, too, back when you couldn’t eat meat on Fridays (although that meant, in my Italian family, that we had spaghetti, which was one of my favorite dishes!).
patty leidy Apr 11th 2009 at 01:27 pm 22
I JUST got back from grocery shopping….
and wouldn’t ya know…that’s all those bastids had
left…..
BWHAHAHAHAH..so I bought some PEEPS to blow up in the microwave….tee hee
Mitch4 Apr 11th 2009 at 01:27 pm 23
There is (or anyway was) a school of Cultural Anthropology / Sociology called Functionalism which tried to find a rational / pro-survival basis for traditional practices which to outside and latter-day eyes would look like mere superstition, and generally pointless if not in fact counter-productive. Even those who instituted the practice may not have consciously framed the practical reasons, and for descendants the traditional practice was quite divorced from those practical reasons. Thus, “sacrificing” a portion of each year’s crop to the gods of the cave turns out to have been prudent, when there is a drought every seventh year or so and the priests release the stored grain for present consumption. But nobody says “We’re saving it up for the inevitable bad crop year” — they say “This is what the god of the cave wants from us”.
Popular culture has long held a Funtionalist account of some dietary laws, without the baggage of the whole theory and academic school-of-thought bizness. Pork was banned because of trichinosis, this widespread belief holds.
The Hindu ban on killing “scared cows” was originally useful (and remained so up into the 20th century), according to the Functionalist accounts argued out in the seventies, for the sake of preserving not so much the common beef/milch cow but more the water buffalo, as the essential draft animal for farming.
The debate about the historical Indian bufalo census data got very heated and even mean-spirited in the seventies, particularly in the pages of the journal Current Anthropology. Until readers got distracted by the spectacle of the editor being detained in London to “assist the police” in their investigations of his wife’s murder …
Howabominable (aka Lindsey ^_^) Apr 11th 2009 at 01:38 pm 24
Honestly, those Marshmallow Twists look a LOT better than peeps. I hate peeps.
Paul Apr 11th 2009 at 01:53 pm 25
There’s an EconTalk podcast (http://www.econtalk.org, specifically http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/06/mckenzie_on_pri.html) on pricing puzzles that sorta gets into this a bit. It’s probably not worth it to listen to unless you are interested in pricing puzzles in general, but they talk about how there’s all this overstock after Christmas. Both people agree that the people ordering for the stores know perfectly well that they are buying too much stock (more than will sell). McKenzie thinks that it’s price discrimination - charge more during Christmas, then less after Christmas and you get a higher profit on net. Roberts thinks that it’s an asymmetry in the way people buy things - that it’s much worse to have less than you could sell than to have more than you could sell.
I think the same sort of thing applies to easter candy, marshmallow twists, etc. They probably only ever sell that stuff once a year, and it’s priced high enough to make a profit before the holiday, and then marked down probably as far as wholesale or even as a loss leader.
Cidu Bill Apr 11th 2009 at 02:26 pm 26
Paul, what you say doesn’t really apply here because nobodyseems to be buying the cherry-flavored marshmallow twists at any price: They sit there on the shelf until the day the Passover display is taken down, and then they just disappear en masse. They’re a complete loss.
Plus, of course, the space they take up could have been used for items such as fruit-jelly pieces, which sell like hotcakes (not that you can eat hotcakes on Passover) and are often gone by the time the holiday begins.
David N Apr 11th 2009 at 03:34 pm 27
Bill, can you help answer a question? Why are the regular marshmallow twists just fine, but the cherry flavored ones are terrible? Or for that answer would I really HAVE to be Jewish to understand?
I get that they are, but I was wondering why cherry ruins the deal here.
Cidu Bill Apr 11th 2009 at 04:27 pm 28
David, you don’t have to be Jewish to understand. You merely have to eat a cherry-flavored marshmallow twist and think “Good God, why did anybody think this was a good idea???”
Chuck Apr 11th 2009 at 05:59 pm 29
I hate all marshmallow products.
Mark in Boston Apr 11th 2009 at 05:59 pm 30
I have never tried a cherry marshmallow twist, but I love chocolate-covered cherries — don’t you, CIDU Bill?
Elyrest Apr 11th 2009 at 06:06 pm 31
Now I’m hungry for fruit-jelly pieces.
Cidu Bill Apr 11th 2009 at 06:08 pm 32
First of all, Mark, there is no known connection between cherries and cherry-flavored marshmallow twists other than their names.
But since you asked, the answer happens to be no. I like my fruit as fruit: not baked into things, not covered with chocolate or peanut butter
Zbicyclist Apr 11th 2009 at 06:09 pm 33
Why does cherry persist? Why not blueberry, apricot, lemon, orange or some other flavor?
Cidu Bill Apr 11th 2009 at 06:10 pm 34
Maybe artificial cherry flavor is easier to use than artificial blueberry or apricot flavor?
Lessa Apr 11th 2009 at 06:16 pm 35
Speaking of Peeps, if you want to see creations from peeple who have a little too much time on their hands and/or are amazingly creative go to The Washington Post picture gallery where you will find a contest depicting Peep dioramas. Amazing what peeple can do with those little marshmellow creatures.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/04/10/GA2009041001969.html
Cidu Bill Apr 11th 2009 at 06:29 pm 36
Just for the record, six or seven years ago I didn’t even know what Peeps were: Dr. Fun did a week’s worth of Peep-themed comics, I out one of tehm on the CIDU Page, and I was duly educated.
Matthew Apr 11th 2009 at 08:31 pm 37
Thanks, Mitch, for the remarks, but you see my points: (1.) If these dietary laws made sense in the past, they no longer do. (B.) It’s patronizing and infantilizing to convince people to sacrifice to the gods of the cave rather than simply to store it away for the drought year. I despair, thinking how much further along civilization would be if we had opened our eyes thousands of years ago and behaved kindly, generously, and practically then.
Lola, I loved the pun with the names in your first comment (#3): FA and BIL: It’s a FABLE, get it? In re circus peanuts (comment #19): I love them in any form: new, old, and even frozen. (Try it!)
turquoise cow Apr 11th 2009 at 08:37 pm 38
it’s possible that the stores get a sort of package deal on the marshmallow things that they only get if they buy all the flavors, even the kinds that don’t really sell. so the stores are forced to buy every flavor or pay a higher cost.
i worked in a supermarket for many years, and several days after a holiday one of our managers often simply gave away the leftover candy…i remember handing out packages of candy corn to every customer that came through. their explanation was that even if they marked it down to half price and sold every single package (which wasn’t likely), they’d be losing money, so they might as well simply dispose of the excess inventory before it all went stale. does that stuff even go stale, ever?
i heard afterward that she got in a lot of trouble with some higher-up for doing that, even though it made sense.
David N Apr 12th 2009 at 03:29 pm 39
Well Bill, I looked last night at my grocery store and at a large drug store. I couldn’t find them in either place, so I guess no personal testing for me. Probably being in New Mexico has something to do with it. Mays be they’re saving me from myself.
Spiritcatcher Apr 13th 2009 at 05:14 am 40
some scientists found out that Jewish dietary laws make *perfect* sense from the viewing point of agricultural balance - 2000 years ago and in that exact climate, that is.
for example, raising pigs is only efficient if you have scraps to feed, and very bad for your irrigation system … so that’s a big no-no in arid pre-industrial climate. and enforcing a ban by religous law was a perfect solution. i don’t remember the reasons about not fishing shellfish and crabs off the Palestine coast, but that made sense too …
cryptoguy Apr 13th 2009 at 10:05 am 41
I know this is getting OT, but if you can have one peep related link, you can have another:
The Stations of the Peeps:
http://www.doriabiddle.com/Stations1.html
probably funniest if you’re Catholic.
David Apr 13th 2009 at 12:43 pm 42
Spiritcatcher, the issue with shellfish is the number of very nasty diseases they can carry, much worse when the water is warmer. That’s where the rule of, “eat oysters only in months with an ‘R’” comes from. In the cold months, oysters are less likely to carry something that will kill you.
Patrick Apr 13th 2009 at 12:48 pm 43
Re: David - “In the cold months, oysters are less likely to carry something that will kill you.”
In the summer months, many young hoodlum oysters walk the streets carrying small handguns, switchblade knives and other things that will kill you.
Lost in A**2 Apr 13th 2009 at 06:37 pm 44
I’d heard that the reason to not eat warm-water oysters was
that spawning ruins their texture.
Matthew Apr 14th 2009 at 09:51 am 45
Spiritcatcher, why is “enforcing a ban by religious law… a perfect solution”? Do you imply that people won’t do something that makes sense but will do something if one man says that he heard it from an invisible voice?
No, Lost in A, while oysters spawn, they are grumpy & will use those switchblades if you try to interrupt them to, say, eat them.
Elyrest Apr 14th 2009 at 11:14 am 46
Matthew, I have found an amazing number of people that are more likely to do something because they hear an invisible voice rather than listen to reason and common sense.
Joshua Apr 15th 2009 at 10:57 pm 47
I have eaten cherry-flavored Marshmallow Twists in the past, and never thought anything negative about them. I actually bought a box this year after reading this post. Guess what? I still like them.
They have no discernable cherry flavor, though.