Buttered Popcorn Jelly Beans – A Growing Pandemic or There’s a Bad Egg in Every Batch

After my 2 week Sabbatical to get inside Lavar Ball’s head, Bloggin Hood returns with his unique brand of angry rant. Some might argue that most of the uniqueness is the extreme amount of typos in each entry. I’d argue those people are jerks who have been permanently banned from the site. For the one person remaining, I’ve got ideas for about 25+ new blogs, and the number continues to rise. With a few weekends of not having plans (shouldn’t be tough) I should have the reserves back up in no time. This should put Will Karlet’s mind at ease for sure.

Today, we’ll begin with a concept still fresh in all our minds – Easter. Easter is of course the holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, traditionally through a musical. I’m not sure what was going on in the live performance of Jesus Christ, Superstar – it looks like the Sons of Anarchy put on a play for the community with a celebrity guest, but people apparently liked it. You know who didn’t? Papa Bloggin Hood, who lost a battle against Mama Bloggin Hood for TV control as I was leaving Easter Dinner. There’s some real entertainment for you.

I also don’t understand why Easter involves a bunny. I might not be the most religious person, but I don’t remember a rabbit in the bible. Also, rabbits don’t lay eggs. Do rabbits lay eggs?

*google break*

Ok, I was correct, rabbits do not lay eggs. Then why is it the main symbol of the season that doesn’t involve gruesome bloodshed? It makes no sense. All Easter leads to is a poorly constructed egg hunt where one is not found and stinks up a person’s home for weeks. Also, I’m sorry, but the Easter buddy is creepy. If some kids are afraid of Santa, I can’t imagine the amount of Pampers they go through when it’s time for a picture with the Easter Bunny.

There is certainly a positive to the season though – candy. This is something we all hold close to our heart, usually because we’re clutching our chest after all the excess sugar. Adults might not get Easter baskets, but that’s not always the case. Currently, there is about six pounds of candy sitting in my apartment from Mama Bloggin Hood, clearly unaware how old her son is.   But even if you’re not an only child still getting gobs of candy for no reason, you’ll certainly get a handful of the stuff for weeks after the holiday. If you have kids, you can dive right into their share without noticing. But what candy should you be focusing on? Fortunately, I’ve done a power rankings. This is a much better ranking than any power ranking ESPN has provided over the past 20 years. In 1998, they ranked the Utah Jazz ahead of the Bulls after the finals stating “Hey, they had the league MVP”. I don’t even need to add the asterisks.

You’ll notice that most of the elite Easter candy is egged shaped to keep the confusion about the holiday going. As usual, things shaped like an egg are significantly better than eating real eggs. The only times eggs should be consumed is when they are baked into something else, burnt to a blacken crisp and covered in hot sauce, or as an ingredient in delicious, raw cookie dough. The fact that Easter candy is usually shaped like eggs continues the media’s pro egg propaganda, but the candy is good, so I’ll let it slide.

For now.

Last Place – Peeps – The combination should be better. Peeps combine marshmallows, typically a delicious treat, with sugar, which tends to be popular. There’s really nothing to dislike here, yet they aren’t very good. Peeps usually lead to strong opinions – most either love them or despise them. Consider me in the despise camp. I’m not against the occasional peep, but they’d be a late pick in a candy draft.

Also, for those who love the things, consider many people who enjoy Peeps only eat them stale. That’s seems like a problem. Instead of eating the candy as intended, people let them get teeth breaking levels of hard and then enjoy them. Doesn’t that say it’s a faulty product? I mean, they aren’t gross, disgusting circus peanuts, but they aren’t that far away. You can do better than this America. You can even do better eating things other than intended. Seriously, raw cookie dough is incredible, and Salmonella filled.

Fifth – Reese’s Egg – This isn’t really even trying. Reese’s have nothing to do with the holiday, but try their best to get involve. All that happens here is that a normal Reese’s is reshaped into a poor looking egg and packaged in the “Easter” wrapping. It’s a shameful, deplorable way to try to cash in on the holiday.

However, Reese’s are delicious, so I’ll allow it.

Fourth – Chocolate Eggs/Bunny – These are the stereotypical candies for Easter, but they’re here for a reason. It’s rare that chocolate can be beat. Now, I’m not talking about the chocolates filled with something gross, or low quality fake Reese’s, or peanuts – I’m talking about a solid chocolate egg, or a hallow easter bunny. There’s still a few filled candies we’ll get to, but this is boring, plain old chocolate, and I wouldn’t have it another way.

Your choice of treat depends on your hunger and shame level. The chocolate egg is bite sized, able to satisfy a sweet craving without going into poor glutton mode. The chocolate bunnies tend to be much bigger. These are the types you eat after a break up or your car dying on the highway. No, you can’t really eat your feelings away, but you sure can add some jiggle to your walking, creating more sadness and more chocolate eating. It’s a sad, endless, sweet cycle.

Third – Chocolate Marshmallow egg – This is what the peep wishes it was. This is a great combo because the marshmallow is surrounded by chocolate. You avoid having your hands stuck to goop while you enjoy the combo. This is basically a S’more without the bland graham cracker acting like it’s important. There’s no downside.

Unless you consider the fact they aren’t filling a downside. You see, marshmallows don’t have much to them, and the thin layer of chocolate encasing them only encourages your body to crave more of them. You can easily need 20-30 of these things in a sitting, and not know what happened. It’s similar to drinking except there’s not as much embarrassment. Hope you have extreme willpower, or a personal trainer on speed dial.

Second – Cadbury Creme Egg – Except no substitute! Don’t fall for these non Cadbury eggs that are filled with kid’s toothpaste. And don’t buy the hype on the Caramel filled egg. Caramel is the most overrated thing since we talked about the stale Peep, and that was only a few minutes ago. No, the egg you want, and the one egg that rules them all, is the classic Cadbury Crème egg. There’s a reason they haven’t updated their commercial for 45 years – and it shows. The delicious candy speaks for itself. And mostly, it says “Yum”… And then later “Why don’t my pants fit?”

While the chocolate itself is fine, the star of this show is the wonderful crème filling. Nobody has a clue what the filling is, including the creators. I imagine its 90% sugar and 10% various, borderline legal chemicals. But boy are those chemicals tasty. If you’ve never had a Cadbury Crème egg, do yourself a favor and pick one up. Typically they’re on sale now after Easter for basically free. No, this won’t help your summer body, but are we definitely going to have Summer this year? I think that’s wishful thinking at best.

1). Jelly Beans – Was there any doubt? I mean, I had to get to Jelly beans at some point. They’re in the title of the blog. Pay attention people.

One of the trickiest parts about Jelly Beans is not all of them are created equal. Sure, the average candy eater probably thinks each bean is the same, but that’s just not true. Unlike most of the time, where I believe generic is 95% as good as the real product¹.*, Jelly Beans do not have such a luxury. You’ll have to pay up to get the best quality product. The three Jelly Bean tiers are as follows

• First you have the giant, tasteless Jelly Beans. These things are legitimately made exclusively of sugar, and encased by a hardened sugar shell (made of sugar). These taste like nothing but processed, chunk adding garbage. So, overall, they don’t taste bad. There’s just nothing to them. Some of these brands make the licorice jelly bean with its bitter, disgusting flavor. Naturally, these are the lowest of the low tier. Well above Peeps though.
•  The second tier is jelly beans that are knock offs of real candy. I’m talking about Jolly Rancher, Smuckers or Warheads in Jelly Bean form. These are pretty good, but they fail to capture the full essence of the candy they are based off of. Like Reese’s, you really only see them around Easter when everything needs to be in an Egg shape. If people need Egg Shapes this bad, they should stop by a bar and look at the male patrons.
• Finally, the king of all Jelly Beans, and thus the ruler of Easter Candy is the Jelly Belly’s. These tasty morsels do not come cheap, but you pay for the quality. In fact, even the knock off Jelly Belly’s are really good. If you can save a buck or two and get the knock offs of these, it’s worth it, because they’re like 98% of the quality, and 50% more quantity².**

What makes Jelly Belly’s stand out over other beans is the amount of flavors. These don’t taste like a pile of sugar, nor is there a handful of flavors. Jelly Belly packs their product with 49 unique flavors. Why they decided to stop at 49 and not go for 50 is beyond me. Maybe they were hoping for a large cash bribe to become the 50^th flavor. I couldn’t blame them.

The variety of the flavors is what really makes the candy. Some of the best flavors are so varied. Typically, the best are loosely based on fruit. If fruit tasted like these beans, we wouldn’t have rampant obesity. Cherry, always a crowd pleasing candy flavor, stars with the sweet, refreshing taste you hope for. Watermelon is another standout flavor. The company goes as far to make the shell green, but the inside red. I mean, how cool is that? Finally, Juicy Pear is possibly the best piece of candy in existence. Complete with multiple spots just like a real pear, it tastes as close to the real thing dipped in a bucket of sugar as you can imagine. 2Pac was wrong – the second sweetest joy is juicy pear. I don’t need to list the sweetest joy³.***.

Now, I’m no fool. I know there’s nothing remotely close to fruit juice in these jelly beans. I’m sure there’s a boatload of chemicals I can’t even  pronounce. We’re not going to talk about those. I don’t really care what makes them taste so good, or how many years off my life I’m missing, I’m eating them all the same.

Speaking of dangerous, unspeakable chemicals, Jelly Belly also features a line of beans based off of soda, including Dr Pepper, Orange Crush, Cream Soda and Root Beer. Unfortunately, these flavors are rather meh. It’s still cool that they have the rights, but maybe need to focus more on their selection of flavors than securing the rights to copyrighted properties. I don’t think we’ll be seeing Lemon Lime Gatorade anytime soon.

However, I would happily eat a bucket full of these knock off soda flavors then ever eat even one of the most vile, disgusting “food substance” I can think of. This disgrace makes baby corn and kale look like an ice cream sundae. There’s forms of torture more refreshing than this.

I’m of course talking about the Buttered Popcorn Jelly Bean, the one misfire of the company, and one of mankind’s greatest blunders. Forget the apple at the Garden of Even – this is where we screwed up the first time.

I mean, this is just a cruel, cruel joke, right?

My first assumption was the flavor was a gag. I mean, no sane person would wish to turn butter and popcorn into some odd, sweet treat? And before somebody mentioned kettle corn, note that’s a completely different thing than buttered popcorn. Buttered popcorn is meant to be a savory snack. Nobody has ever thought “Hey, this salted snack sure could use a ton of sugar”. That’s because most people aren’t depraved monsters, despite popular opinion.

And of course, there are gag Jelly Bean flavors. Jelly Belly makes a version of their product known as bean boozled, which makes two identical colored beans, one tasty and one gross. Flavors include moldy cheese, lawn clippings and barf. I’ve always wondered two things about these beans.

1). Who is chosen to taste these things? Prisoners? Those on death row? Trump’s Cabinet members? I don’t understand how much work goes in to accurately recreating these flavors, but they are accurate. Imagine going into work and being told you’re the lead on the barf project? You’d be begging that it was an acronym all day long.

2). Why would anyone choose Buttered Popcorn over even the worst flavors?

I mean it. I’d exclusively eat lawn clipping flavors Jelly Beans if it meant I couldn’t get a Buttered Popcorn. At least when I eat a gag bean, I can appreciate the suffering that poor project lead had to go through to make something so accurate to the repulsive flavor. With the Buttered Popcorn, all I think about is how awful what I’m eating is. I mean, somebody tried to make this taste good and failed. And boy did they fail. If it was a scored test, they would have gotten an eight of a 100, only because the bean is in the proper shape. I’d go as far to say Jelly Belly could make all their gag beans Buttered Popcorn Flavored, and nobody would know the difference, since they’d be too busy vomiting to study the flavor. Save yourself the Research and Development and just mass-produced these godless beans. You can pass the savings on to me.

Not only does it taste atrocious, it disguises itself as a superior flavor. Toasted Marshmallow is one of the top five Jelly Bean flavors. It looks white with a few brown spots, to show it’s toasted. Buttered Popcorn is also a base white color, except it has yellow spots, to show it’s buttered. As an aside, yellow spots, not attractive and rarely refer to good things. Go figure. With these descriptions, it sounds like it should be easy to tell the difference. Let me tell you from a man eating Jelly Belly’s right now, it’s not.

Sure, if you check each individual bean for fifteen seconds before eating, you can probably sort out the type. But who the hell eats candy by examines the slight differences in the appearance of each piece? Not even the most extreme OCD cases can resist the allure of these beans for more than a few seconds. If you’re sorting out these beans, you’re eating them wrong, and should be forced to eat Peeps for a week.

If you see a white shell, your mind assumes it’s a toasted marshmallow as by nature, we’re positive people. And when that bean is Marshmallow, it’s that much better. You envisioned it, and you’re rewarded.

But when that bean turns out to be Buttered Popcorn it’s somehow even worse than before. All you get is a mouthful of butter. You even lick an entire butter packet? That’s pretty much what this is like, except you expected the sweet, roasted taste of marshmallow. I mean, you might as well just eat the barf bean. Make that lead on the project proud, damn it.

This is the only standard bean that isn’t mean to be sweet or a dessert, so it stands out even more as an oddity. We don’t have a grilled kielbasa bean, now do we? There’s no guac bean in production⁴.****. And nobody is clamoring for a BBQ pork rib flavor. Honestly, all of those sound 1000% times better than shitty buttered popcorn. In fact, I’d argue the BBQ flavor would be a better choice because most sauces actually have sugar in them.

This brings me to my main point – let’s keep our desserts dessert themed, shall we? Buttered popcorn has it’s place, in the movie theater. It doesn’t belong in my handful of jelly beans. Desserts need to be remain sacred and the way nature intended – heavily processed, filled with sugar and ruining our health. That’s the way to truly be happy.

I’ll end today’s blog with a story few know. When JK Rowling was working on Harry Potter, she often ate Jelly Beans. This inspired her to create Bott’s Every Flavored Bean, and it’s no surprise what inspired her to create all the nasty flavors – Buttered Popcorn.

Rowling despised the flavor, as any true red blooded human would, but her hatred was on another level. In the 6^th book, there was going to be a different twist toward the end. Snape was meeting with Dumbledore to discuss to on-goings in the school. Before the meeting occurred, Dumbledore was to offer Snape a Bott’s Bean, which he accepted. After announcing with disdain that it was Buttered Popcorn, the scene would continue as normal, until Snape’s nose began to bleed. He would then turn blue and die. Dumbledore would smile and say “I got you, you turncoat, nose nosed bitch” and laugh heartily for three minutes.

Did Dumbledore poison the beans? No, he didn’t have to. Buttered Popcorn did the trick on it’s own. Don’t you too die from the toxic waste that is the Buttered Popcorn Jelly Belly. You deserve better than that.

1. *I wouldn’t say this about things like medicine or health insurance. But I mean cereal? Don’t pay 6 bucks for a box of cereal. Besides, the knock offs are great. Like you wouldn’t eat a bowl of Rainbow Treasures are watch Ducktales every Saturday morning?
2. **Well, there’s goes Bloggin Hood’s potential sponsorship with Jelly Belly.
3. ***I also don’t need to be slapped by every female fan there is. Listen to the first line in Hail Mary if you’re stumped.
4. ****Perhaps with sour cream to add to the creaminess?