Phthursday Musings: Butterscotch Is Truly Outrageous

If you read other Substacks you have probably come across some year-end recaps, where highlights of the last year are spotlighted, etc.

None of that here.

No sirree.

We are talking butterscotch.

My question for you fine people is this: Why are butterscotch chips so good, and butterscotch candies absolutely not so good?

Butterscotch chips are little morsels of magic:

Say it with me and Teen Girl Squad now:

Butterscotch candies, however, I remember as some kind of complicated dare foisted upon children by the Brach’s company:

Now here’s how I remember it. You’d go to the grocery store, right? And at the end of some aisle there would be the Brach’s candies. And you could fill a bag for like 17 cents. Probably more than 17 cents, but it wasn’t my money, it was my grandmother’s money, so I’m going to go with 17 cents.

Typical fare that would wind up in the bag included peppermint discs (of course), some weird little chocolate things, a bunch of other stuff I forget, and - somehow - a couple of the butterscotch discs.

My grandmother maybe liked these best? But she didn’t really eat candy. So maybe she got these so that she would go to have a candy, and after a few seconds, would remember that the candy is terrible, and then throw it away.

And every so often I remember being tempted by the unfortunately colored candies and thinking, well they’re candy, and trying it, and at first thinking, oh it’s not that bad, and then a few seconds later remembering oh no and finding the garbage post haste.

My thinking is that at some level the problem is that you can’t respectably make a hard candy out of butter. But they did. And people bought them. Apparently.

This to me is a prime example of a product which continues to exist even though it’s not really what people like. There’s something else going on. Maybe they remind people of olden times? I don’t know.

Vitamin Water makes several perfectly tasty drinks. One of the drinks they make which is pretty weak is XXX, which purportedly is supposed to taste of “açai blueberry pomegranate”.

When was the last time you woke up in the morning thinking, gosh I could go for some açai blueberry pomegranate?

And yet this is the flavor that is most commonly placed in stores. I’m convinced it has nothing to do with any kind of consumer preference, and everything to do with this being the variety that was given the name XXX, and therefore it’s all just perpetual marketing.

I think it important to clarify here that Brach’s rhymes with rocks. It does not rhyme with watches or batches, it rhymes with rocks.

It is good and decent form for children to properly pronounce the name of the confectioner.

The occasion for consideration of butterscotch is the latest batch of scotchies my mom prepared. They’re exceedingly dangerous, the kind of food that triggers some sort of secretion from the pituitary or some such gland that makes you forget you’ve been full for 45 minutes.

I would take a picture but there are none left to photograph.

They are not made as round flat cookies but instead as cookie bars, about three-quarters of an inch thick, cut into squares not unlike Rice Krispies treats. The ingredients include butterscotch chips and, I suspect, the eye of a newt, or whatever passes for witchcraft in your realm.

I note all this because I imagine at least one person is thinking Where does he come up with this stuff while meanwhile another person is thinking Where is he going with this stuff and that is an excellent question for which I have a horrifying answer.

My child went to a three day afternoon baseball camp this week at the local rec center. It’s put on in some form by some entity attached to the White Sox. The guy in charge of the whole thing is former big league slugger Dan Pasqua.

His 1992 Upper Deck card is excellent:

His 1991 Score card is… Well, I’m not sure what this is.

Anyway, he exists, I saw him today.

The point of all this is that the boy was wearing a baseball hat at the camp, and still had it on when he got home, and still had it on at dinner, but didn’t have it on in any normal manner, and when this got pointed out, he looked like some crazy baseball player from the ‘70s or maybe early ‘80s whose hair didn’t fit under his cap and could care less about the situation.

This, combined with whatever madness was being discussed at the table, probably involving hummus, led to me observing that my family was truly outrageous.

Aside: anyone who’s ready, I am here to record the song “Probably Involving Hummus”.

Anyway, this all led to me asking the machine in the kitchen under the control of a very powerful corporation to please play us a theme song. It obliged.

Now, I was expecting this:

But instead I got this:

It struck me as possibly the worst thing I have ever heard, but in a kind of wonderful way, like if the Earth was destroyed by a meteor that looked like Hello Kitty.

Ahh, well, the good news, dear readers, is that come New Year’s Day, I will be announcing several impressively futile initiatives, delightfully half-baked ideas, and especially ill-conceived larks, at least some of which you will be invited to participate in. I suppose I’ll leave you quivering and quavering in anticipation.