My Slightly Less Than a Year of Laffy Taffy Journey: A Look Back

Well, it’s not how far you make it on a journey that counts, it’s the fun you have along the way, right?

Though I fell short of my goal with this project, it was everything I had hoped it would be. Tearing into terrible jokes, eating lots of sweets, and getting comments from my estranged family… all good times.

As an analytically minded guy, I tracked my progress on a spreadsheet so that I could have a cool recap of my stats at the end of the year. With only 56/365 days completed, it’s far less impressive than it could have been, but I think it’s valuable to share some data points on my stalwart path towards a diabetic coma.

Nevertheless, in the short time that I worked this bit, I came up with a few interesting data points that you might find yourself interested in. Something of a recap of my time spent annihilating my teeth, taste buds, and guts.

The underdog no one saw coming, the clear favorite taffy flavor of mine (calculated by most units consumed) was…. Banana! 13/56, a whopping 23% of my days were spent consuming banana taffy and ridiculing the jokes on their wrappers. I think I was so intent on getting them out of the way early, I failed to consider the consequences of what it would look like if I ended early as well. Oh cherry, I should have appreciated – and consumed – you more.

Also not as impactful as it could have been, this title is shared between two flavors. First, the forgettable Mango-Passionfruit flavor from our fusion bag, which somehow only had a few pieces of this and all but one had duplicate jokes. The other of course goes to the singular loooong piece of Mystery taffy, which was not like traditional mystery flavors from my childhood but instead another fusion-type flavor that they just conceal from you. Not as cool, but it was the tastiest piece I ate this whole year.

The true number of duplicates, when counting wrappers with two previously done jokes, was like 80% of my entire stash. This metric only considers wrappers where one joke was a duplicate while the other was fresh. With that criteria, there was still a whopping 3.6% of reused jokes I had to discard for their respective day. 4 of them, to put a precise number on it. Most of them revolving around fruit, and all really bad.

So, so many to choose from. I had to narrow it down a little, but there were three jokes that stood ankles and feet below their peers. In no particular order:

• How is a USB like an elephant? They both have memory skills.
• What am I? An emu & smiley face: Emoji
• Why was the queen antsy? She was the queen of the ants.

Honestly, two of them are so bad that finding a third to put into the running was a little hard. Clearly the antsy queen one, though brutal to read and painful to think about, is not on the level of the other two. It’s basically an anti-joke which gives it some light armor against criticism and it does at least make sense.

The USB one really makes me mad – it hits all the failings of a modern Laffy Taffy joke: unfunny, total lack of understanding of basic computer terminology, and bad grammar. Horrendous, and would easily take the top spot if it weren’t for……

The “Emoji” question. Impossible to be called a joke even sarcastically, I cannot even fathom what the author’s intent was or how it got past Wonka’s famously vicious, attentive, and snobby Witzpolizei. They normally would have shot them on the spot for such a crime. Well, better late than never.

The best of the worst, I suppose, obviously none of these jokes were expected by anyone to be any good, but I must confess there were a few that pleasantly surprised me. For lack of better options, we’ll crown a “king of the trash heap.”

• What do you get when you mix molten rock and tropical fruit? Hot guava.
• What do you call a king’s rabbit? The hare to the throne.
• Why did the girl have a tiny wooden infant? She wanted a whittle baby.

Not bad, right? They don’t make my eyes roll all the way back in my head as I convulse and foam at the mouth. Actually, that might be happening because of the pounds and pounds of sugars, dyes, and toxins I’ve passed into my body since beginning this challenge.

Ok, choosing a favorite here is a little harder than picking my most hated, surprisingly enough. Hot guava is ok but easily the least stellar banana in the bunch (see, I can bust out fruit references too). It gets more difficult to crown a winner between the other two – “hare to the throne” is so clever, but “whittle baby” has that whimsical quality that actually makes me smile. But, gun to my head, I’d say the best one is…

Whittle baby! By a hair (haha). It’s a true joke that brings as much delight as the sterile, corporate joke approvers of Wonka could allow. All in all, it goes to show that even among the immense dreck of Laffy Taffy jokes, there are a couple pieces of silver to be found.

Thanks for going on this journey with me. Shorter than I thought it would be but I have no regrets, and my teeth appreciate the mercy. See you around, readers.