The Twinkie Phenomenon

Am I the only one who is fascinated by this Twinkie phenomenon? 

I mean, really.  Someone actually spent $10,000 for a small package of Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes.  That's four pastries, if you can call them pastries. Nick was on the phone with Mike this morning, trying to convince him to sell his last three packages on eBay.  So here's the interesting thing - at least six eBay auctions timed out with zero bidders for Twinkies at $0.99 for 10 Twinkies or more.

One rich fat idiot is willing to pay $10,000 for four pastries while ignoring 15,310 other results for Twinkies that are selling on eBay for a better price.  I know that was mean, but what's your opinion of this person?  Was it the need to be the person who paid the most for a Twinkie?  Can you be competitive about that?

By the way, that 15,310 figure is just for bidding that has already closed.  There are 21,461 items using the word Twinkie currently available for bidding on eBay right now.  Lots of jerks are using the word in irrelevant auctions just to get viewed, though, so not all of them are actual Twinkie sales.  Still, there are a lot of Twinkies on the market.

The highest request is currently $21,000,000, but these big ones are connected to charities, although I'd guarantee the charities won't rank very high on Charity Navigator.  Cute idea though. 

Whew! I stand corrected.  Samaritan's Purse is auctioning off a box of Twinkies for $21,000,000.  They have a four star rating with Charity Navigator!  So bid away!  Another charity Twinkie event is for the Orangewood Children's Foundation.  They're asking for a mere $15,000,000.  They have a pretty good ranking on Charity Navigator too and I like that they're trying to take care of kids using Twinkies.

So what's causing this Twinkie reaction anyway? 

It's Twinkie memories. 

Did you know that companies like Hostess spend millions of dollars researching the effect of their products on your olfactory bulbs?  That's your sense of smell.  Think about Fruit Loops.  Nothing else in this world smells like Fruit Loops.   They don't even taste all that good, but they smell divine.  My mouth is watering right now, just thinking about them.  They remind me of my grandma, the only person who ever allowed me to eat Fruit Loops as a child.  Smell is the single most effective way to jog your memory, so these companies are trying to link their smells with your brain, permanently.  That's why people like me, who haven't been eating Twinkies since she was about eleven, are having a total fit with the news that Twinkies may never be available again!  Plus, it's why, when I opened a package of the chocolate Twinkies on Friday, the smell just didn't do much for me.  It wasn't that classic Twinkie smell that I had been looking forward to smelling. 

This morning, Mike told me that there's a potential buyer for the Twinkies brand.  Hell yes!  If I were in the market to buy something such as this, I'd work to keep the supply down so that demand stayed high.  Would they be able to maintain this kind of demand?  I doubt it, but the first few days when the Twinkies came back onto the shelves might be interesting, especially if there weren't a lot of them available. 

Do you remember the furor over the Tickle-Me Elmo dolls?  Every Christmas, the toy industry tries to create another reaction like that.  Right now, some popular toy is ramping up its demand on eBay.  Folks are trying to figure out what that toy is and buying them in lots of 100 or 1000 so they can make big profits off of simply reselling them.  Could be good money if you can guess what kids will want. 

I love eBay!

I'm going to tell you that we currently have five packages of Hostess products on a tray in our kitchen.  Oh, and there is an open box of HoHos above the refrigerator, but they've been up there for a while and I'm sure they're past their sell-by date.  I wonder if I should try to sell an old, previously unused, not marked for resale HoHo on eBay?  Would you buy it?  Still, HoHos aren't the issue here, are they? It's all about the Twinkies when I think I'd actually miss the Hostess Cherry Pies the most if you needed to know.  I used to buy those things altogether too frequently from the vending machine when I was in junior high. 

You know, I looked at the Twinkies, the ones that are known for having a forty year shelf life.  Best by Nov 25.  Hmmm.  That would make a cool experiment.  Would they turn green after a year or so or would they just shrivel up a bit and dry out.  Who knows?  Not many people are going to be trying that these days when those last Twinkies might sell for $5000 apiece.

Here's a question - is it illegal to sell these things past their 'best by' dates?  I know that the food bank in town won't take any food that's past that date.  And the grocery stores are always trying to unload stuff that's almost ready to expire with those 'reduced for quick sale' stickers.  What happens to the remaining Twinkies then? 

Boy, I hope that high school economics teachers across the country are using this Twinkie explosion as an interesting lesson.

I'm willing to sell you a package of Twinkies.  What will you pay me for them?

Thank you for listening, jb
 

An Early Birthday and Christmas

Mike's birthday is one week before Christmas.  By the time the expiration date on the milk in the fridge is Mike's birthdate or later, I know it's time to get on the job of buying his presents for him. Over the years, he's learned to be very specific about what he wants.  We don't like returning things.  We will, but we don't like it.  Mike likes getting just exactly what he wants.  Most of my surprises are a bust anyway.

This year, the top thing on Mike's list was an iPhone 4s.  His old 3G was getting painfully slow.  Oh, I think it was the comparison with the way my iPhone 4G worked.  Did I ever tell you how much I love my iPhone?  Well, Mike and Nick love it too and it seemed like they were asking to use is more and more.

So last night, I made myself a decaf breve Earl Grey tea latte and when I put the half-and-half back into the fridge, I noticed that it was time to get Mike's birthday present.  One of the milks even had a New Year's expiration date.  Oh man, it's time to get going!

So after I dropped Nick off at karate, I headed over to the AT&T store.  The first obstacle that I had was getting my name onto the account so that I could make changes, like buying Mike a new phone for Christmas.  It turned out that if I have all the information, I can add myself to the account.  Scary.  So I got onto the 611 with a rep and did it, after a few problems hearing him over the Christmas music in the store.  I won't tell you my address, phone number, or any social security numbers, or you might be able to add yourself to our account too. 

Then the cheerful woman helping me asked if I wanted a 16, 32, or 64 Gig iPhone.  I would guess 64, because Mike likes his toys to have some punch.  I remember the days when 16K was a lot of memory for a computer.  I'm so old!  Shoot, I remember when my dad came home and told me about these great inventions called microchips and how you could fit an entire computer into one small room now with 1032 bits of RAM.  Ha!  He would have loved that I have 32 million times the memory in the palm of my hand now.  Those things amaze me too, stuff all the rest of you take for granted.  Twenty-two years back when I was working for AT&T Bell Labs, I got a tour through their clean room for a project I was writing.  I remember the man telling me that the silicone lines on the cards were so small, you'd have to blow the card up to the size of a football field to make the line three inches wide.  He was so proud of his tiny silicone lines and the microchip that allowed you to have a 64K computer on your desk!

"We don't have any of the 64 Gig phones in stock right now," the cheerful sales woman said.  "You'd have to come in earlier in the day.  We'll get another shipment tomorrow."  What?  This was going to go the way of the Tickle-me Elmo.  I was going to have to wait until tomorrow and I'd get there it was going to be out of stock until December 23.  I would end up going down to a Renton store on Mike's birthday eve, where they still had a couple in stock.  Then, I'd find that, after driving for forty-five minutes through stop-and-go traffic, they'd just sold the last one to that nice man over there. See?  The next shipment comes in two days.  I was going to have to consider tackling that man, throwing my Visa card at the nearest cheerful sales woman, and run screaming out of the door with the last 64Gig iPhone in the entire state of Washington. 

"I'll find out what he wants," I tell Cheerfulness herself and I turned my back as if she was going to look over my shoulder and read as I texted.

"Do you want 64 Gig for your phone?  They have 16 and 32 as well.  I'm assuming black, not white," I wrote to him. 

Cheerfulness and I stood there trying to look useful while we waited for his reply.  I went to check out Otter boxes and earbuds.  She played with her computer.  I wondered if she played Scrabble Free with anyone anonymous.

"Ping!" my iPhone said without too much delay.  Thank God!  He wanted 32 Gig and black.  Even though I knew we'd both wish we got him 64, I rushed back to the counter and told my new sales friend his answer.  I was still picturing how I'll end up in handcuffs down in Renton being half-dragged out of the AT&T store because I'd tackled that guy and he'd still get that last 64 Gig iPhone in the entire state of Washington, plus have a good story to tell his wife on Christmas eve.  The worst of it was that she wasn't even going to even appreciate the fact that he got her 64 Gig instead of 32.

So then, Cheerfulness and I went on our way through the process.  I was spending all of Mike's hard-earned cash and Cheerfulness herself was selling the only 32 Gig iPhone she'd sell all week.  We were both very happy. 

She started in on asking me about sim cards.  I answered her questions thinking of the old days when you just slipped one sim card out and slid the other one in.  Oops, I forgot that I was in the dark ages and there's no getting into the back of my iPhone now.  It's probably a good thing for most people, but Mike is a software engineer and good with mechanical problems.  He could handle it without breaking it.

"Well, you can take it as is and bring it back after Christmas to get it activated, no charge," my friend said, still smiling.  We were both imagining the lines out the front door of the store on Boxing day.  I realized I don't have to do that even though she will, regardless.  I felt some sympathy for this woman.  I wouldn't want to spend all day on my feet watching that line creep along, getting nowhere.  One fewer person in that line would be just fine with me.

"I think I'll just go ahead and do it now," I told her. "Why wait?"

"You realize that your old phone won't work after we make this change.  Will that cause any problems for your husband?" she asked.  She really is a nice woman, sales person or not.

"Oh, he'll be okay.  I'll text him," I said, getting a gleam in my eye.  That time, I didn't turn away from her as I texted.  I even read it out loud as I typed:  Your phone is going to stop working.  Now.  Ha!

Then I sent another one: Happy Birthday! Merry Christmas!

"Oh, you are just bad," she said, laughing.  I figured Mike was out walking with Jay and he wouldn't really need his phone for that, even though he and Jay are both attached to their phones with very short mental leashes.  While my friend was working on setting up Mike's new phone, I sent Jay an email just in case Mike's texts didn't get through.  She read my mind. 

"Oh, he got it, but he didn't get that second one you just sent."  We were both laughing then, as I handed over my Visa card without looking at the total.  I think she knew how men are with their toys.  By then, she was all done and handed me a cute miniature shopping bag that reminded me of the Clinique bags I used to come home with from Macy's, with the lipstick, blush, and the mini samples in it.  I loved those bags. 

I wasn't quite ready to stop talking to my new best friend yet.  I wasn't going to get the chance to talk to her the day after Christmas after all, so I clutched my tiny bag and told her how I was a convert to texting and living with my phone even though I'm old and should still be using a flip phone for emergencies instead.   She nodded and smiled.  I'm sure she was thinking of the kudos she'd get for getting rid of one of those old 32 Gig iPhones. 

After picking Nick up at karate, we drove home and gave Mike his present.  He wasn't surprised at all, but he was happy and suddenly, it felt like Christmas.  I put Dr. Demento's Christmas CD on the stereo.  Nick played with his new/old iPhone 3G.  Mike got to work playing with the voice recognition on his new toy.  Later, while it was syncing, we put lights up on our naked Christmas tree.  Now, I won't have to make that trip down to the Renton police station after all or stand in line for an hour in the rain on Boxing Day.  Life really is pretty good, isn't it?

Thank you for listening, jb