Posted on 12/01/2006 5:10:31 PM PST by SamAdams76
Many Freepers are probably too young to remember but I can remember the day that when you bought an Almond Joy or a Mounds bar, you got the entire bar. Not "two halfs" sold as a "whole".
At some point during the early 1970s, Peter Paul decided to sell these popular bars as two individual pieces as opposed to a whole bar. I trace this seminal event as a turning point in my life - when I started to become cynical and jaded.
I forget the exact circumstances but I seem to remember these candy bars weighed in the neighborhood of 4 ounces and costed 10 cents each. A pretty fair price back in the day when Richard Nixon was making friends with China and the Boston Bruins were winning hockey games with a blond-haired guy named Bobby Orr.
But a terrible scam was perpetrated upon the American public. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, Mounds and Almond Joy bars started showing up in two pieces weighing a total of about 3 ounces between them.
Not only did Peter Paul cut the weight of their candy bars by a solid ounce but to add insult to injury, they raised the price of these bars to fifteen cents!
But that was not the worst of it. They used the extra profits gained by shrinking the candy bars and increasing the price by launching a multi-million dollar advertising campaign geared towards making the American people think that they were actually getting more for their 15 cents instead of less!
The advertising slogan was wickedly brilliant, evidently thought up some advertising executive with a very warped mind.
The slogan was "With Almond Joy...You Can Share Half and STILL have a WHOLE!"
I can still remember the TV commercials, probably shown during the first episodes of "Sanford And Son" and "The Waltons."
The commercials showed some smiling woman opening her Almond Joy bar and giving some dorky looking man (kind of looked like "Meathead" Rob Reiner) half and then taking the other half for herself. Thus the American people were duped into thinking they were getting "two" candy bars for the price of one when in actuality they were paying more for less.
Had Almond Joy and Mounds kept their original full-size, one could easily split the bar in half and still share - while getting "bigger" halves in the process.
For some reason, I am still bothered by this to this day. While Mounds and Almond Joy were my absolute favorite candy bars at the time, I hardly ate them since, switching over to new favorites such as Zagnut (a much better version of "Butterfinger"), Milky Way and the now extinct Marathon bar (that used to be like a foot long of chewy chocolate-covered caramel - no kidding).
My sister like Three Musketeers but eating that candy bar always made me dizzy for some reason. I think they put girly sugar in that.
Was the jelly Turkish Delight? We do a chocolate bar in Britain called Fry's Turkish Delight and that has a rose flavoured Turisk delight centre which is set firmer than the normal turkish delight you buy in the shops covered in powdered sugar.
I love turkish delight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokum
Fry's Turkish delight now made by Cadbury's has been produced since 1914.
http://www.cadbury.co.uk/EN/CTB2003/about_chocolate/brand_stories/turkish.htm
Girly sugar, huh? Never heard that one before. You get points for originality...
Peter Paul is going to put a legal stake in the vampire's heart in a Los Angeles courtroom.
Oh, you would LOVE to visit my island....
Hey, 3 ounces of Mounds (or Almond Joy) are still better than pretty much any candy bar, IMHO. Other than Hershey's Special Dark of course...
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