My Year of Laffy, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Eat the Taffy

I’ve decided to do something new with this blog. While I do plan to release some new, typical blog post content this year, I’ve had an idea for an interesting bit floating around my brain for over five years. What if I consumed a piece of Laffy Taffy every day for a year straight, reviewing the jokes on the wrappers? Something no one asked for, no one wanted, just like me. I’ll consolidate these posts in a weekly format, but the first day deserves a special call-out.

Let’s dive in.

Day 1

I open the 145 piece tub of red 40, and probably 1 – 39 as well, and am immediately hit with a chemical smell of some kind of preservative. Formaldehyde, most likely, but I’ve always wanted to get a head-start on my embalming. After a year’s worth of Laffy Taffy, I’ll probably be pretty close to dead anyway.

Picking a piece completely at random, making sure it’s not banana, I select sour apple. If only there were more than four flavors in this container, and if only more than three of them were any good.

At first I thought the grammar of this one seemed funky, but after some thought I realized it’s just an awful joke that my brain was trying to find some semblance of sense in. It technically works, linguistically speaking, but when you’re having to get into the technicalities of jokes, it’s already failed as a piece of humor.

This one actually broke my brain. It appears the “funny” lies in the assumption that you can replace the “psych” in “psychologist” with any other word, even if it doesn’t rhyme or sound similar in any way. I imagine the punchline would have had exactly the same weight if it had been “a jestercologist” which is to say, none at all.

The hard part of my job for the day done, I ate the sour apple taffy. Softer than I was expecting, thankfully. Historically I’ve bought packages where only the banana had a consistency and temperature something north of an icicle, but we’re off to a good start here.

One day down. 364 to go.