"gumdrops" news and stories

These fat, shiny, sugar-crusted gumdrops could make Willy Wonka weep for joy, and a dentist weep, period.

Given that the best candy can trigger nearly hallucinatory pleasures (chalk it up to the sugar high), it's somewhat fitting that this is not actually a photo of gumdrops. Technically, it is, but what you're really looking at is a photo of another photo of gumdrops. Taken by johnnypants over at Flickr, it's a shot of a promotional poster at Ikea. Sneaky, eh? Still, you've got to hand it to those Swedes: just as their furniture can fool anybody into thinking they know their way around an Allen wrench, these gumdrops are so vivid that you'd be forgiven for thinking they were gobbled up right after this photo was taken. And maybe they were ... somewhere in Sweden.

[Via Flickr]

When I was a kid, I remember people saying the phrase "oh, goody goody gumdrops." If I remember correctly, it was used sarcastically, when you had to do something you didn't want to do or you heard news you didn't want to hear, you'd said "oh, goody goody gumdrops." It was even a song in the 1960s. I don't think I've heard anyone say it in many, many years, and the more I look at it the more it seems unreal, like the words don't even make sense anymore (it doesn't help the half the people in the world spell it as one word and the other half spells it as two).

That's my long way of saying that today is National Gumdrop Day. Here's a recipe to make your own, and recipes for Gumdrop Cake and Gumdrop Cookies, along with the song I mentioned above. It's by the 1910 Fruitgum Co.

No, I'm not kidding.