This afternoon I opened up a two-piece Starburst pack just hoping to avoid getting a yellow chew and an orange chew paired together. Imagine my jubilation when I opened the corner and saw a pink chew and then ripped all the way down to see a second pink piece! It was as if I won the lottery. My excitement with the contents of a pack of candy left over in my office from Halloween had me strolling down memory lane. I started thinking about other lucky scenarios with food and drink back when I was younger. For tonight’s blog post I want to quickly touch on four other awesome edible joys that defied the odds.

I got very lucky with my Starburst pack today…double pink chews!!

Solid Chocolate Peanut M&M – From a young age my mom told us the story about how at the M&M factory the workers sometimes forget to put a peanut in the Peanut M&M sized chocolate shell. To make up for the embarrassing mistake they instead fill the hollowness with delicious milk chocolate. This actually happens! Never one to shy away from scarfing down Peanut M&Ms, I have enjoyed several solid chocolate ones over the years. When we were kids though, it was a huge deal. If I ever ate a solid chocolate one I would let my brother and sister know about it and they would do likewise. I am pretty sure we also lied every now and then about eating one just to make the others jealous. Racking my brain right now, I would say that for every five packs of Peanut M&Ms, you will find one M&M that is peanut-less.

That Special Gumball – If you are my age, you must remember when malls would have gigantic gumball machines. Picture a classic red mini gumball dispenser and enlarge it a thousand times to have an idea of what I am talking about. Anyway, about halfway through the hay day of these machines, they started inserting gumballs inside that had the word “winner” written across it. The chance of putting a quarter in the slot and having the winning gumball dispensed was always a dream of mine. However, I never achieved this glory. Sadly enough, I can’t even remember what you received for getting the special piece of gum.

Fruit Snacks Special Piece – Growing up, especially at the houses of my friends, we ate fruit snacks like I eat peanut butter sandwiches now. We of course ate the character inspired ones, whether it be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Scooby-Doo, Looney Tunes, or whatever. A quirk with all of these packs of fruit snacks (my family called them “fun fruits”) was that there was a unique shape in all of them. For example, when it came to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles you would have shapes of all the turtles but then there would be a piece that was round in shape and looked like some type of special coin. It was totally different from everything else and if you even got one in your pack, you considered yourself very lucky. If you managed to received two in a pack, you were living very large. In my group of friends it was mandatory to share one of your special pieces (if you received two) with your poor buddy who didn’t receive even one.

Winning Free Soda From Bottle Cap – Growing up, my brother and I participated in every single Coca-Cola and Pepsi promotion you could think of. My obession for collecting Coke and Pepsi points/caps lasted through college where people in my residence hall would hand deliver me their consumed drinks so I could cash them in. My first introduction to winning free stuff from soda companies was the simplest promotion of them all…twisting off a bottle cap for the 1 in 7 chance of winning a free 20 oz. beverage. Now you are going to think terribly of me for this but back when I was probably 11, I would go to the coolers in stores that carried Sprite. I would then take the bottles, tip them at an angle, and would be immediately able to tell if it had a cap on it that was good for a free beverage or not. It was way too easy. When you lifted the drink you could easily tell if the bottle had three lines of text (a winner) or a single line of text (loser). I enjoyed several free Sprites during my pre-teen days. I guess this is more about being really greedy and dishonest rather than lucky.

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I will be back at it tomorrow evening with my Thursday Rundown. Until then, indulge in some type of snack or drink from your childhood. Have a great night. Don’t Blink.