When you see that title, your immediate reaction is likely either an emphatic Yum or an equally emphatic Yuck. I don't find many who are neutral. People have strong feelings about these licorice-flavored tiny treats!
On Easter, I saw a tweet that called black jelly beans the worst candy ever. Naturally, out of the goodness of my heart, I offered to take all of the black ones away from that person to ease her suffering. If I were offered my choice from a dish filled with all variety of jelly beans, I would choose as many black ones as I could get my hands on without fingering the entire bowlful!
How could that be? How could I enjoy them so much and someone else dislike them so much? Candy makers would stop making them if people didn't eat them, right? (Of course, snack makers keep producing corn nuts and pork rinds, so I may never understand them.)
Well, at least I'm not alone. And the "haters" aren't alone, either. I posed a simple question online, just to satisfy my own curiosity. Out of approximately 230 FaceBuds and Twitquaintances, I managed to get 32 responses. That seems like a respectable number. It's not like I was offering a chance at a fabulous prize for completing my "survey." And obviously no one was paid for their participation. (It's only a question about jelly beans, for Pete's sake!)
Turns out that it's a fairly even split: 47% hate, 53% love. Some lovers prefer a bag of just black, without the distraction of the other colors and flavors. Sounds good to me! Some of the haters were quite enthusiastic in the other direction, even suggesting that the black beans were created "to spread misery and gross teeth around the world." For me, they spread joy. And the gross teeth are no worse than Oreo teeth. Your smile might look bad, but if feels so good getting it to look that way!
So what was the point of this little social experiment? Hmmm....it was completely self-serving, really. I guess I thought that black jelly beans were more popular than that. I had no clue I spent time with so many people who had different candy tastes than mine. But I promise to put those differences aside and not let it affect my realtionships. It's not unusual to agree upon topics to not be discussed in each other's company. I won't think less of you, and you won't judge me.
Now excuse me while I pick through our remaining jelly beans for some that will make me happy. After all, it is really all about me, isn't it?
Thank you for doing this research. I don't like jelly beans, and black ones least of all, but I do support you in your research.
ReplyDelete