#1123 Bubble Dum

Recently my son and I went to a Mexican restaurant. They gave us little Dum-Dum suckers as a treat when they delivered the bill.
Using things named “dum” and “sucker” when you deliver a bill is perhaps not the best message you want to send to customers.
Let me say first off that it was one of the most frustrating candies I’ve ever eaten. Because the Dum-Dum I got was bubble gum flavor. And my genetic code is hard-wired to only expect bubble gum flavor when you are about to chew.
Chewing a sucker is a contradiction in terms. You don’t chew a sucker and you don’t suck a chewer. My mouth memory doesn’t react to a chunk of bubble gum with a gentle sucking motion, roiling it around in my mouth and not biting down.
But with the flavor of bubble gum on the sucker, that’s what I was asking it to do. Suffice it to say, I was down to the Dum Dum stick in about 10 seconds flat. Which really sucked.
My son’s sucker sucked less, as it was “Cream Soda” flavor. Which made me curious about how they were determining flavor, so I looked at the wrappers for a clue. They had pictures on them. The Bubble Gum one had pictures of pink bubbles.
Must be the pink bubble fruit from which bubble gum flavor is derived.
But the cream soda Dum Dum wrapper had a picture that appeared to include, oranges, lemons, pineapples and bananas. Somehow, I don’t remember my A&W Cream Soda tasting of pineapples. And when my barista makes an Italian cream soda at the coffee stand, it’s vanilla, sugar, cream, and soda water.
I looked desperately for pictures of a vanilla pod or a cow on the Dum Dum wrapper, but to no avail. I then looked at the ingredients list. No help there. It just said it was made with artificial flavor. Oh hoh. Artificial banana, pineapple, lemon, orange, non-cream and non-vanilla.
Which brought me back to the bubble gum Dum Dum wrapper. You won’t believe this, but they used artificial bubble gum flavor in it.
Cause, you know, it’s so expensive to use organic natural bubble gum flavor.
That would be really dumb.
America, ya gotta love it.