Hola, Sneakers! And welcome to Episode 376 of Sneaky Dragon! (Please send help. We don’t know how to stop doing these.)
This week on the show: dangerous erasers; bill paying; hillbilly hilarity; cartoons parody cartoons; Ian was okay with Alita: Battle Angel; we have Sneakers’ answers: best TV shows based on movies; something about EC Comics; war movies; the New Coke conspiracy; Oreo stuff; wine gummery tours; sugar shacks; sugary ham; McChicken sauce; disappointing variety chips; Ian’s tax woes update; Love Bug movies; and, finally, Ian’s Valentine’s Day poem.
Question of the week: What’s the best chocolate bar? And sub-question of the week: What chocolate bar needs improvement?
Thanks to Jimmie Gilmer and the Fireballs for this week’s closing theme.
Thanks for listening.
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I don’t think Snickers or Twix really need fixing but you could put the cookie fromTwix in a Snickers.
My favorite would be Reece’s pb cup or Heath bar.
Size mattered to me growing up. OH HENRY! was the biggest bar by weight so I thought I was getting more bang for my allowance buck. (I didn’t know that some ingredients were cheaper than others.) Plus I enjoyed the mix of chocolaty coating, fudge and peanuts. Then along came MR. BIG. He was bigger but he didn’t have any nuts, so I remained loyal to OH HENRY! (Yes, I know that technically peanuts are not nuts, but legumes.) To this day, I still hold back on the mini OH HENRY! bars at Halloween and only hand them out if we run out of the others.
I haven’t finished the episode yet, but by far the best chocolate bar is the Cherry Ripe, an Australian institution. Also Australian is the Summer Roll! So good! And Violet Crumble, which is like a Crunchie but poops all over that one with its vastly superior honeycomb.
Bounty is made better just by buying the dark chocolate version (this holds for many other dark ‘variants’ out there – Kit Kat, Caramilk, Mars, etc.) It sets off the sweet coconut a bit. Honestly, I know apricots are an acquired taste, but I would put apricot in to a Bounty to make it better. Either chunks mixed in to the coconut or some kind of biscuity apricot (not too sweet!) layer.
Also when you were talking about the soft drink situation, making so many variants to push other companies off the shelves, have you heard of shelf pricing? (‘Slotting fees’. I looked it up.) This is where supermarkets charge companies a premium for the best shelf space and it’s why the top two or three shelves in the soft drink aisle (or indeed the entire half of an aisle, toward the front of the store) is dedicated to Coke and/or Pepsi (usually more Coke, right?) because they can pay the premium. Then little companies are left to fight over the remaining shelf space. Which means new flavour variants of the big two usually only ever cut in to their own paid space.
Also, in the US the Coke/Pepsi situation is pretty much 50/50 (I don’t know if that holds true for Canada) but in Australia it’s 80/20. The only thing that’s ever cut in to Coke’s sales is flavoured milk, not Pepsi. In fact, Australia holds one of, if not THE only KFC (being owned by Pepsi) to sell Coke because it’s in the middle of nowhere and it’s the only fast food joint around. The locals demanded Coke!
Listening now, but I’m wondering if the file was sped up at all? It seems like you both are talking in a higher register. I listen at 1.3 speed, but that doesn’t speed up the voices. Anyway, to answer your question, Take 5 is currently the best. And I would like Payday to be a chocolate covered bar, does that count?
For me, the chocolate bar that most needs improving is Snickers. Where I live they have gotten rid of the regular sized Snickers bar and replaced it with two smaller ones in the regular sized wrapper. I want my big Snickers bar back.
My Top 10 candy bars. You’ll notice a trend with the top 3. Oh, by the way, the Big Kat bar is awesome! The only reason it’s #2 is because I’m a traditionalist.
Improvement? Make the Big Kat in dark chocolate.
10 – Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup
09 – Milky Way
08 – 3 Musketeers
07 – Hershey Bar
06 – Twix
05 – Mounds
04 – 100 Thousand Dollar Bar (aka 100 Grand)
03 – Dark Chocolate Kit Kat
02 – Big Kat
01 – Kit Kat
Wow, I’d forgotten all about Bar Six, so Ian’s mention took me straight back to childhood and the sweet van that used to park outside the school gate. These days, anything by Green and Black is great. Bournville is my daily treat. And for special times, you can’t beat Montezuma’s Absolute Black, ideally accompanied by a strong espresso.
As I know you guys aren’t scared to tackle the big issues, though, here’s the key question: fridge or cupboard?
Dave! You aren’t crazy!
The move you were thinking of where Dean Jones and his family inherit a derelict lodge is 1972’s “Snowball Express”.
Mars Needs Moms the movie was utter garbage. Mars Needs Moms the book that Berkley Breathed did is one of the most beautiful things I ever read both in the artwork and narrative. I couldn’t get through reading the final pages of the story aloud to my kids the first few times without a giant golf ball sized lump in my throat and my voice wavering.
Compleatly Beatles related note about Mars Needs Moms: Robert Zemekis was going to remake Yellow Submarine using that crazy motion capture animation he used for Polar Express, Christmas Carol and Mars Needs Moms, but that third film tanked so bad, thankfully, the plug was pulled on what would have no doubt been an atrocious Yellow Submarine film.