#2 All for One

So I’m standing in this store the other day, minding my own business, shopping for something I used to be able to buy but somehow can’t even find now because they went and changed the darn packaging. What is it with this endless quest in this great country of ours to reshape the familiar into some new permutation? Don’t the great marketing muckety-mucks realize we all recognize things using a variety of strategies? Like we recognize people from a distance by the way they walk, or in a dark room by a trace of their scent.
Specifically, I’m looking for a Three Musketeers bar. In the past, even when it went from its old white waxpaper wrapper to its present shiny foil one, I’ve still been able to pick it out of the mix of its candy compadres. The visually challenged amongst us will appreciate this. Even in a dimly lit all-night convenience store; even in the mental fog and less than perfect visual acuity engendered by one too many libations, one could always pick out a dear old Three Musketeers by its distinctive shape―shorter and stouter than the rest of the carbo-criminals in the diet-busting line up. You could pick out a Three Musketeers quicker than you could say Artos, Demos, and whoever that drunk one was.
I finally found one. Guess what? It’s now shaped the same as a Snickers and a Milky Way. And I just want to scream as I pull out my few remaining hairs and say: It’s all about SHAPE Madison Avenue! Shape is important. You wouldn’t expect people to buy a square roll of Necco Wafers, or M&Ms fashioned into tetrahedrons―whatever the heck a tetrahedron is. Or how would you ever explain to the love of your life that the familiar Hersheys Kisses you get for her at Valentine’s Day now come as cubes? I don’t think so.
Shorter and stouter is fine Mr. Madison Avenue anorexic model lover. Three Musketeers were beautiful just the way they were.
America, ya gotta love it.