Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers

Then he ran over to another machine, a small shiny affair that kept going phut-phut-phut-phut-phut, and every time it went phut, a large green marble dropped out of it into a basket on the floor. At least it looked like a marble.

“Everlasting Gobstoppers!” cried Mr. Wonka proudly. “They’re completely new! I am inventing them for children who are given to very little pocket money. You can put an Everlasting Gobstopper in your mouth and you can suck it and suck it and suck it and suck it and suck it and it will never get any smaller!”

“It’s like gum!” cried Violet Beauregarde.

“It is not like gum,” Mr. Wonka said. “Gum is for chewing, and if you tried chewing one of these Gobstoppers here you’d break your teeth off. But they taste terrific! And they change color once a week! And they never get any smaller! They never disappear! NEVER! At least I don’t think they do. There’s one of them being tested this very moment in the Testing Room next door. An Oompa-Loompa is sucking it. He’s been sucking it for very nearly a year now without stopping, and it’s still just as good as ever!”

When I was a kid, I loved Roahl Dahl books. I mean, who didn’t? We recently bought my daughter a bunch of his books, since the only book we already had was Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was probably my favorite out of all his books. She loved it and since she seems to be a little too young still for Harry Potter (I tried 3 months ago and the Dursleys were hard to get through.), I bought Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for her. Six chapters in and she’s still captivated.

A few years back, when Tim Burton’s revamped Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out, Nestle decided to bring back the Wonka candy line that they’d originally launched in 1971 and today you can still buy tons of Wonka brand candies, most of which are actually existing candies like Nerds and Spree and Sweet Tarts. Or maybe those were launched in 1971. I don’t know, I wasn’t even born yet!

The packaging is really cute and true to the Wonka spirit, but sadly, the Gobstoppers are nothing like in the book. (obviously) They do “change” color, but I was very disappointed to find that it only changes color once and after that, it’s got a Sweet Tartish kind of middle. I feel like they should have made them bigger, but that’s probably a choking hazard. Still, I’d have thought that even a fictional Willy Wonka would have put more than two colors into these.

(6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

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