Ghetto Snacks

Good morning everybody.  Before you’re done with me, let me explain!! What had happened was….

No seriously.  I thought yesterday was gonna be a light one, cause I make it a practice not to do much work on Monday (or any day for that matter), but Mr. Charlie had some crucial tasks that needed to be done from the instant I arrived, and like a good house negro, I did my job.

Anyway, this post here is one that I did before, but there must have been some ghost in the machine that deleted it when I tried to save it.  I put so much into it, that I didn’t feel like doing the entire thing over.  So here it goes one mo gin…

I titled this one “Ghetto Snacks” because I first thought about candy, but I knew I’d do the hood a disservice by not mentioning other snacks.  Now when I say snacks and candy in the ghetto, these are things that when I was little I could get at the little hole in the wall store around the corner, or from the fixture in the black neighborhood, the Candy Lady.  I feel a little sorry for the affluent caucasian kids that lived in their gated communities and went to their private schools, because the convenience stores weren’t as plentiful.  But as I type this, it occured to me that this could be a consipiracy to start black children on the path to be unhealthy adults.  In the words of Arsenio Hall from the greatest nighttime show ever, this is something that makes you say “HMMMMMMMM…..”

There was a 7-11 around the corner from my house, that had to be like the first 7-11  in the city.  The sign was some old ass “7 to 11” sign, with the “to” written in cursive and the numbers were in a burgundy color with the rest of the sign white.  I think that sign is still there, but I don’t think it’s a convenience store anymore.  Anyway, it was poorly lit, with one flourescent bulb over the front counter, and that was it. The rest of it might as well been in someone’s closet, it was so dark.  But the candy and snacks were all clustered around where that only light was, so you never needed to venture to the other parts to get anything else.  So you may be wondering what the top ghetto snacks and candy were?  I’m sure if you thought, you know them all..

#1 Now and Laters:  When I was little I thought the name of the candy was “Nowlaters”  because that’s how everybody pronounced it.  As a matter of fact, down south, we still do.  It wasn’t until I got about 16 or 17 that I discovered there was an “and” in there!  Here is a pic of modern day Now or Laters:

I say modern day because when I was a kid, they didn’t come in this fancy wrapping.  They were just in wrapped in wax paper, like this:

My favorite flavor was green apple, and next was watermelon.  I remember they had mystery mix nowlaters that had one half dayglo yellow and the other half purple.  They named them right because I could never figure out what they tasted like.

#2 Blow Pops

Who doesn’t like blow pops?  If you don’t,  you may be mildly retarded.  Sh!t, you may even be full retard.  The trick with blow pops is concealing the stick so that the teacher doesn’t see you.  The best part about blow pops is just when there is a thin candy coating over the bubble gum, so you can bite down, and chew bubble gum mixed with candy coating. Unfortunately, that sugary bliss lasts approximately 60 seconds, because once you are left with only the gum, you find that you are left with some of the weakest bubble gum ever.  As a matter of fact, how can they even call it a Blow Pop?  That’s not even enough gum to blow a damn bubble!  And on top of that, the gum is all grainy feeling, and can’t even stretch and hold itself together!  Yeah, that name is deceiving.  My favorite flavor was green apple and watermelon (something about those watermelons…guess that shows how black I am!)

 

#3 box candies

Lemon Heads, Johnny Apple Treats (I thought they were Johnny Appleseeds), Alexander the Grapes, and Red Hots. I lumped these in one category, because I don’t know which was more popular.  Personally, I don’t like cinammon candy or gum, nor do I like spicy stuff, so I’ll pass on the Red Hots.  As for lemon heads, they were cool, but once you suck the lemon stuff off of the outside and get to whatever that nasty buttery tasting nugget sh!t in the center was, it makes me want to puke every time, so I don’t f*ck with lemon heads at all.  I don’t think the other two had that buttery nugget thing, and depending on the day, I liked one or the other better.

CLASSIC

 

the candy on the top, sorry this pic came like this

 Hey, peep that “A Fat Free Food”, like that makes a difference! See that’s a trick of the man, trying to get fat people to look at the candy and be like “Ooooh this is fat free, so I can eat all I want!”   I peeped your game Mr. Charlie.

that buttery nugget sh!t is gross

I don't do cinnamon candy

As you can see Ferrara Pan ruled the hood with their candy concoctions, but there are some other candies I’d like to mention…

Honorable Mention

BIG BOL gum…. This was a usual suspect when I went trick or treating as a kid.  To this day I don’t know what the aim of the name for this candy was.  Do they mean, that this was a big BALL of candy coated gum that you were going to chew?  If you’re familiar with the candy, you’d know that they are anything but big, they are pretty small.  The other alternative is that they really meant to spell it Big BLO and someone messed up in printing, and after they made the first batch, they thought “well, ghetto kids don’t care how it’s spelled, and it’s too much trouble to change it, so f*ck it, let’s roll with BIG BOL.”  This has to be one of the tastiest candy/gum combinations ever, but at the same time, as you might suspect, when you are left with just the gum, the thrill is GONE!!

WHAT DOES BIG BOL MEAN??

 

The last candy I’m mentioning is one called Jingles.  I don’t know anyone who knows this candy.  I only got it at one place too.  There was a fish market around the corner that I would walk to that had it.  Imagine a pack of candies, similar to Nowlaters, but half the size.  So they were 6 little squares of candy in a wrapper with a little cartoon man playing a banjo.  They were better than nowlaters too because the flavor wasn’t as biting, and they were softer too.  They had flavors like banana too, and every one was delicious.  I miss Jingles.   I couldn’t even find a pic of them. 😦

Snacks

I bet ya’ll are thinking, “Damn, Cord is on a roll today!”  Well I gotta make up for my being absent, so I hope you’re enjoying this trip down memory lane.  Anyway, I don’t know the popularity of snacks so much because snacks make noise, so they made appearances few and far between in school.  Usually you’d only get to have some if you had a girl in the class with a big ass pocketbook that you were cool with.  I had a few of those, and they were always sneaking snacks in class because they stopped by the store on the way to the bus stop that morning.  I’ll give it a try.

#1 Doritos – does anything need to be said about Doritos?  I’d go as far to say that it’s America’s chip, and not just a ghetto treat.  But I mention Doritos because I can remember when COOL RANCH DORITOS came out.  There are a whole lot more flavor options nowadays when it comes to food, but this definitely was something special because there was only plain doritos.  I used to eat them, and lick the cool ranch goodness off my fingers afterwards:

Funyons – this is just a super ghetto chip.  Onion flavored fried junk.  In finding this pic (sorry it’s so tiny), I saw a picture that was a bag of Funyons with Wasabi flavor!  We don’t know what wasabi is in the hood!!!

Super Ghetto

Pickles – this is actually a healthy treat, but it was ghetto nonetheless.  I can think back to being in middle school and the pregnant teens walking through the halls with their bellies all big and a pickle in hand.  Yes, this was my middle school, and yes we had pregnant girls that went there. 

 

Chick-O-Stick – I never got with the Chick O Stick.  whenever someone ate one, it made their mouth look nasty like they ate some doo doo.  Also, why did it have to be so orange??  Then it had coconut going on in it, and Cord doesn’t really dig bits of coconut at all. Almond Joy is terrible, and remember those multicolored coconut bars that looked like rainbows or something. Horrible. I’d rather eat vegetables before I ate one of those.

 

Now I can’t leave this post without mentioning the ghetto sodas. We black folk like fruit flavors, I mean, look at kool aid?? NUFF SAID.  Is it that white folk don’t like fruit flavored sodas?  I always wondered that.  I mean, Fried Chicken fast food restaurants are the only places where you can get strawberry and grape soda! 

I’m not gonna post the pictures of all the sodas. You know what they are though, Nugrape, Orange Soda (Sunkist?), and Nehi in Strawberry and Peach.  I would like to give a shout out to FAYGO!!  Faygo was as ghetto as you can get.  When I was 15 and lifeguarding, this little girl from the neighborhood used to bring me a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips and a faygo to the pool everyday.  You could get a 16oz Faygo for 33 cents!! Now how hood is that!!!  Faygo was extremely strong and would feel like it’s ripping your throat up if you tried to guzzle it, but it felt great!  The problem is, though, that the strength of that carbonation would maybe last 3 minutes, and then it lost a lot of punch. Wait thirty minutes, and you might as well left that soda in an open cup in the refrigerator overnight.

 

So come everybody, walk down memory lane and tell the class what your favorite junk food was from growing up!