I was at Toys 'R Us a few days after Christmas walking around, looking for random oddities and items left after the seasonal rush. The section I was most curious in was the candy portion of their sale items. There wasn't much left, but I did stumble upon this little gem. Imagine to my surprise and total chagrin the feeling that swept over me when I stumbled upon this artificially flavored trophy. A candy tackle box! These are the types of bad ideas that are golden in the annals of candy lore and tale. It was either this, or chocolate Nascar cars, and I had to choose the lesser of two evils.
When looking a little closer at the packaging we can gather some more information. I recognize the name Palmer, if I remember correctly, I used to see their name popping up on a lot of the Easter candy I received in my youth. "Fun gift for any fisherman" it proudly states, although, I'm sure if you gave this to some random outdoorsman he'd probably chuckle, toss it aside, and invite you into his cabin for catfish and stories of hunting glory and inebriated slumber parties with girl sororities. Or, maybe not...
Here you get a closer look at the goods inside. I have to give them the nod on presentation, regardless of if the candy is any good or not, it certainly looks presentable.
I figured we'd start off with the "gummy bait". I mean, it's your standard traditional gummyworm, what could they do to screw that up? Well, this is a staple in any and all candy tackle box kits, but that aside, these particular gummyworms were the stalest and hardest I've ever attempted eating.
I couldn't finish the one I tried to eat, so I gave the other one to my neice whom after one bite put the "bait" down and quietly walked out of the room.
Here's the "double crisp sinkers". They really sucked.
Upon closer inspection, my "sinker" looks more like a chocolate morbid mix between a football, seashell, taco, and elephant vagina. Waiter, check please!
Alright, here's the saving grace of this ridiculous tackle box fiasco. These were good. Kind of like Swedish fish, the somewhat well known gummi fish ingested by theatre patrons for many years, but not quite as good. I had the purple variety and was surprised to finally find an edible entry. That does lead me to a minor problem, however. What's with the colors? I mean, if we're working on any level of realism here, which, I thought we might be considering the detail in some of the other items, why in the hell are there purple and yellow miniature fish along with these other fishing accessories?
We now venture from the slightly gross to pure abominations. These little guys are known as "fudge filled bobbers".
They looked similar to the popular and ultra yummy Nestle Wonderball, but, failed to measure up in any way whatsoever. The fudge filling was more reminiscent of fish guts, or maybe just nasty chocolate fudge, actually it was closer to the latter but I thought the first summary was funnier.
And what tackle box would be complete without... frogs?
This is what a one of the aforementioned frogs looks like half-eaten. As you can probably assume, I wasn't thrilled. I guess I just don't find really old gummy amphibians very palatable.
After everything was said and done, I guess we can all sleep easier at night knowing that somewhere out there exists a "real" tackle box filled with really, really bad candy. I know I plan on bringing mine on my next fishing outing.
Overall Grade: C+