On my first trip to buy candy to recap, I grabbed a 5th Avenue bar. I liked the understated, elegant, retro wrapper. It reminded me of old musicals. Fred Astaire singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" and old hits from "Easter Parade." New Yorky Art Deco elegance. There might be some hallucinogens in that wrapper.

And after I bit into it I started to wonder if there were any in the candy. Because do you know what this is?

IT'S A GODDAMNED BUTTERFINGER.

Maybe I lived a sheltered life up till now. But I thought that the Butterfinger was pretty much unique. I had never, ever, ever heard of another candy that had crunchy layered peanut-butterish stuff in the middle. I thought it was totally unheard-of outside of that bright yellow wrapper. The only one of its kind. Am I making myself clear? Why the hell was there suddenly another Butterfinger in my mouth?

I mean, there isn't even a variation on the Butterfinger. They don't make Butterfinger With Almonds, or White Chocolate Butterfinger, or Butterfinger - Now With Freeze-Dried Bananas! There are other things they turn Butterfingers into, like Butterfinger-flavored ice cream and little round Butterfinger BBs, but that is totally different from variations. It's still a freaking Butterfinger bar, you know? I thought that people had just sort of backed away in awe from the total weirdness of that hard orangey peanut-butter-like stuff and gone off to put nougat in something. It's like the clove-flavored Necco wafer, okay? There should be only one.

And speaking of fucking Neccos, I went and looked this up and do you know what? There are not two Butterfingers. There are THREE. Wikipedia told me, and I'm telling you this as a friend, you understand, so that you can make the right decision here, Wikipedia told me that Necco's Clark Bar is ALSO... A BUTTERFINGER.

WHAT POSSESSED THESE PEOPLE TO DO THIS? WHY IS THERE SUDDENLY A HIDDEN ARMY OF BUTTERFINGERS BEARING DOWN ON ME FROM ALL DIRECTIONS?

And the Zagnut bar! They say the Zagnut bar, which I have also never ever had, is just a Butterfinger wrapped in toasted coconut instead of chocolate. Disgusting! Okay, I'm sure it's good. But freaky, especially when you imagine the coconut flaking off all over the place and the bar just sitting there naked and blushing and then you realize that THAT... is a CHICK-O-STICK.

WHY GOD WHY.

And by "the right decision," incidentally, I meant "to stay away from all of these." Not because they're not good, they're fine. I liked the Butterfinger bar a lot more before I tried the 5th Avenue. Butterfinger's filling tastes weirdly like butter. I swear I am not being influenced by the name. I've bitten into sticks of butter before and it tastes a lot like that, except crumbly and both sweet and salty. The 5th Avenue filling actually tastes like peanut butter, so much so that I expect it to get stuck to the inside of my mouth. Supposedly the Butterfinger was named through a public contest. Maybe they noticed that it tasted like butter. And was shaped like a finger. We can only speculate about what giant, candy-coated monstrosity the human hand resembled in those far-off days. And how deliciously crumbly it was inside. I haven't tried the Clark Bar. I don't even know where I would find one. I have some good ideas though. There's this gas station by my house that has a lot of weird stuff. And that super-huge Longs probably has a Clark bar if it had a 5th Avenue and Necco wafers, am I right? Because it pretty much sounds like 5th Avenue + Necco wafers = Clark Bar here. Or, you know, BUTTERFINGER.

But why am I even talking about this stuff? DO NOT EAT THEM. It will drive you mad. You will stop being able to tell the difference. It will be crazy-making, like eating candy in a world where everything is just a little tiny bit different and then you find out that somebody has been messing with the time-space continuum and in your reality you actually had these little half-moon glasses and a cat instead of a dog and the bowl where you kept your keys was three inches to the left and everything is just constantly a little tiny bit off. Candy is powerful, man. Do not mess with it like this.

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