Smiley Face Gumballs...with a dark side.

Hello Gumball Fans!

The subject of today's post is Smiley Face Gumballs, those lovable, adorable little globes of fun and enjoyment. Unfortunately, it appears that this symbol of childhood and all that is good has been corrupted. Alas I say with a great deal of dysphoria and tristesse in my heart - these gumballs are being used to get high.

Here's the story from the Washington Post:

Four people in the Washington area have been charged in recent months with selling marijuana-laced gumballs, including an Arlington man who was arrested last month after police said they found more than two dozen of the altered candies at his apartment.

To the unsuspecting eye, the individually packaged gumballs look like regular bubble gum. They are yellow with a black smiley face stamp. But upon closer inspection, a small, crudely drilled hole in the gumballs marks where they have been altered.

Arlington police said the gumballs discovered July 22 at Paul C. Cofer Jr.'s Crystal City apartment contained THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana. THC, which is extracted from marijuana leaves, is more potent on its own, police said.

Cofer, 20, was charged with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Police said he was released on bond.

"This is the first that we've seen of this, and so we really want to get the word out to parents that these things are out there and they need to be aware if they see their child with one," said John Lisle, an Arlington County Police Department spokesman.

"It looks like he was breaking them open or drilling into them and putting the drugs inside," Lisle said. "But he wasn't just putting marijuana inside. He extracted the THC, and so they were more potent and highly concentrated."

Lisle said the gumballs were packaged in green wrappers with smiley faces and were being sold for $10 apiece.

Cofer is not the first person in the region alleged to be caught with marijuana-laced gumballs recently. In what authorities said could become a disturbing trend that could put illegal drugs into the hands of unsuspecting children, three 17-year-old Maryland students were arrested earlier this year on drug charges after a teacher allegedly saw two of them selling packaged gumballs to the third.

In that case, Howard County police charged the teenagers after the teacher told a school resource officer that she saw a student give a plastic bag containing what she thought was drugs to another student.

The officer seized the bag, which contained two gumballs wrapped in foil, police said. Instructions on the package, labeled "Greenades," told users to chew the candy 30 minutes to an hour "before you would like to receive your high" and to "chew for as long as possible, then swallow."

The gumballs were confiscated in January at Howard High School, police said, but federal drug tests didn't confirm the presence of marijuana until May. That month, the Drug Enforcement Administration released a bulletin about the candies and said each gumball contained one gram of marijuana.

Calls to a DEA spokesman were not returned.

In news reports, DEA and drug education officials said the gumballs found in Maryland and Virginia appear to be the first of their kind in the region. Concern over drug use is growing as dealers develop increasingly sophisticated methods of marketing and packaging illegal substances.

In the Arlington County case, Lisle said, police were called to Cofer's apartment building in the 1600 block of South Eads Street after residents reported seeing a man armed with a gun trying to break into an apartment. Police said they followed the man, later identified as Cofer, to his residence in the same building. He told detectives that his ex-girlfriend lived in the other apartment and that he was trying to get money that was owed him, police said.

While police where inside Cofer's apartment making a report about the gun, which was a BB gun, one officer noticed an odd-looking case in Cofer's bedroom. The officer asked Cofer's permission to look inside the case, where he found a bag of gumballs with a strong odor of marijuana, Lisle said. There also was a large bag of unaltered gumballs in the case, police said. [Washington Post]

It is a sad day indeed.

The Written Word...with gumballs?

Ah friends - another opportunity to share a unique, unexpected, and perhaps revolutionary use of the gumball and the gumball machine. In this case, a few literary fellows have used the gumball machine as a medium for expression, thus transforming a simple sweetened-orb dispensing machine into a potentially life altering apparatus. This is what Shakespeare or Whitman would have done if they had had a sweet tooth. The gumball is truly an apt locale for the written word.

Now, more about the folks who have spawned this cross-breed of the mellifluous and the lexical. Gumball Poetry is "a non-profit literary magazine that publishes the best poetry it can get a hold of. But we publish it differently - into gumball machines (capsules) and onto the Web." [Gumball Poetry]

Check out their great looking gift boxes complete with gumball poetry:


















Also of note - the folks at Gumball Poetry have set up gumball poetry gumball machines! Check it out:





The machine looks a lot like some of the gumball machines at Gumball.com like this one.















What a great idea this truly is. An inspiration for intellectuals and foodies alike.

Review (finally.)

It’s been much too long since my last review, so here goes. My next stop on the gumball-filled adventure called life was the Peach Gumball from Gumball.com.

Maison Review #5 - Peach Gumballs

My investigation began upon reception of the box. This prunus persica flavored ball was sure to delight my taste buds, I thought to myself. The delightfully colored peachy orange orb connoted the furriness and fleshiness that I have come to expect and enjoy from a peach. Opening the box with sheer merriment plastered upon my visage, I ripped through the cardboard only to find a shining, yellow, globate, chewable that was nothing like the peachy treat I had feasted my eyes upon only days before.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. I slunk back into my oversized, brown armchair and simply gazed into the fireplace before me. The coals that filled the sooty stall were a fitting metaphor for this nightmare of an unwrapping.

After a good deal of sulking, I finally gave into my innermost temptation to insert this sad excuse for a gumball into my mouth. For approximately 26 seconds, the ball simply rested on my tongue as my teeth remained perched above and below the ball refusing to engage in mastication out of utter disdain. Finally, molar met marble.

What followed is a simply indescribable sensation, but I will try to relate it. Imagine yourself in an ever-extending Georgia peach field. Everywhere you look, simply the freshest fruit ripe for the picking straight from the tree. You begin to run – simply for the pleasure of it. The scent of delicious, fresh fruit fills your nostrils as you run by dozens then hundreds then thousands of Georgia peach trees. Then you stop. You’ve found the tree. You pluck fruit from the highest branch. It’s a perfect sphere – no flaws. You know it’s the one. Grasping the fruit in your hand, you lower toward your mouth then sink your canines into its sweet, moist flesh. Nirvana.

Yes, friends. This once peach gumball skeptic is now perhaps it’s biggest fan. I can utter no more words on the subject, so it must be grading time.

Aroma - 4.5. I was in the orchard.

Look - 2. These gumballs left much to be desired. And they weren't, well, orange.

Composition - 3. Not the sweet, fleshiness of a peach but a good chew nonetheless.

Taste - 4.5. Simply delicious.

Overall, I give the Peach Gumballs 3.5 balls out of 5.

This gumball represents what is good in the world of gum. An accurate and excellent chew that left me feeling satisfied.

Now I must ask a favor of you - please excuse an unexcusable portion of corniness, but I feel that in this instance it is justified.

Here goes: The Peach Gumballs left me feeling downright peachy.

Gumballs can be scary.

Hello all!

Sorry about the lack of posts lately - it's been a hectic week. I don't have much time for today's post either (expect much more next week!), but I did want to share this picture.

I would say it's kind of cool, but honestly, it's more scary than anything. Enjoy, and look out for gumball reviews on Peach Gumballs and Jelly Bean Gumballs!

Feng shui-ed gumball machine

First off, I wanted to let everyone know that I've been recently published on a great chocolate blog called The Chocolate Review. Everyone should definitely check it out - it's got great photos and content. Definitely one of the better chocolate blogs out there.

Second, the feng shui gumball machine. It's called the Picture Perfect Gumball Machine. It's very hip - perfect for chic chewers.

That's all for now. Expect more reviews soon...

Review Quatre

Maison Review #4 - Ice Cream Sundae Gumballs

You put a cherry on top of a sundae, but what do you top an Ice Cream Sundae gumball with? A Very Cherry gumball perhaps? Well, I ordered a case of the Ice Cream Sundae gumballs from Gumball.com to get my answer.

The gumballs came in 4 different flavors: pistachio, strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate. At first, some of these flavors were a tad off-putting. The gumballs I grew up with were fruit flavored or simply infused with high quantities of sugar. So, I had my doubts – could a gumball truly capture the complex and varied flavors of a pistachio or the richness and pure pleasure of chocolate?

Sort of.

I’ll break it down one by one. First, the strawberry. It was fruity and creamy, capturing the essential elements of a strawberry ice cream. Its speckles, while certainly not visually appealing, provided the necessary flavor boosts of fruit to complement the cream. This gumball was tasty and accurate (well, as accurate as a gumball could be). But, a fruit-flavored gumball is certainly not the most challenging flavor to capture – it has been refined over the long history of the gumball.

Content with the first ball, I ventured for a second still more nervous and perplexed by the difficulty of the mission that this set of gumballs had set out to accomplish. Next up was vanilla. While certainly a more difficult task than its predecessor, this gumball had some leeway in my mind. While I am certainly no connoisseur in vanilla flavor, I am sufficiently experienced to state with a good deal of confidence that so-called “vanilla-flavored products” can, in fact, vary a good deal in taste. Vanilla is by no means a constant beacon of flavor – a metaphorical “golden arches” that will (no matter where one may be) serve up a deliciously average, low quality hamburger with a set number of seeds and meager quantity of pickles. So, while my expectations were high, they weren’t too high due to the flexibility of what one may classify as “vanilla.” Upon first chew, my taste buds immediately detected “vanilla.” Was it vanilla ice cream? Well, not exactly. It lacked that creamy texture necessary to simulate the melting, pleasurable feel of ice cream on the tongue. Despite the tad of inaccuracy, it was an enjoyable chew with superb texture and chewability and an excellent after-taste.

Next, I reached for a beaming, bright globe that was an almost lime green in color. It was pistachio, and I was mighty skeptical. I was especially worried that the brilliant taste of the pistachio nut with just a tinge of sweetness and an explosion of flavorful nut-ness would be lost in translation – from a nut to an ice cream to a 25 millimeter sugared orb. Surely such an inappropriate site for the unleashing of pistachio flavor would erupt into flames of failure. Ah, how wrong I was. The pistachio was beyond words. It was TERRIBLE. Yes, gumball and chocolate fans alike, this nutty ball was not meant for consumption. It was not meant for a game of marbles or as a stylish centerpiece. This beyond unholy, globular, scatological piece of chewing trash was, well, the absolute antithesis of deliciousness.

My hopes and dreams for the gumball now mutilated, I limped toward the finish line – the chocolate ice cream gumball. My expectations trashed, my mood ruined, and my mind focused on finishing the remainder of the tasting as quickly as absolutely possible, I inserted the gumball into my mouth.

I bit into it. Chewed it once, … twice, … three times. Stopped.

Ecstasy.

The plight of the now forever tarnished gumball had been lifted. The gumball had been restored to its once lofty position of prominence among candies and sweets. This gumball was good.

But, not great. It was an accurate interpretation of chocolate ice cream and a tasty one at that. But, it was nothing special. It was not the best gumball I’d ever chewed (far from it, in fact). But it was good, and that was all this humble gumball reviewer needed – reassurance that the gumball will live on.

I'm too shaken to give an in-depth grade. I'll give the Ice Cream Sundae gumballs 3.5 balls out of 5.

Music with...gumballs?

Another answer to the gumball skeptics out there! Gumballs have truly infiltrated all parts of our diverse and complex culture, influencing philosophy, microfinance, and even football. The diverse uses of that rubbery orb confirm the range of potential thought of the human race. Divinely inspired? Perhaps.

The next use of the gumball has arrived. It is known as the "Bubblegum Sequencer." Techno fanatics might already grasp what this device entails simply from its title, but for the gumball fans out there, the explanation of this "sequencer" my evade comprehension. Here goes.

Here's the simplistic explanation:
The Bubblegum Sequencer is a physical step sequencer that lets you create drumloops by arranging colored balls on a tangible surface. It generates MIDI events and can be used as an input device to control audio hardware and software. Finally, people can't claim anymore that electronic music isn't handmade.
Here's how it works: A grid of holes, consisting of several rows with 16 holes each is the canvas. On it, you arrange colored gumballs. The 16 columns represent the 16th-notes in a measure. Each color is mapped to a specific sample.
Because the output is generated in the form of MIDI events, the Bubblegum Sequencer can be used to control any kind of audio hardware or software. [http://backin.de/gumball/]
From the video, it appears that these gumball techies have used basic, 1 inch assorted color gumballs. Perhaps not from our friends at Gumball.com, but a similar product nonetheless.

The lesson for today: Gumballs are delicious and, at times, can be down right groovy.

Review time!

Sorry for the long lapse in posts – I was out of the country (my next post will include a story from the trip – gumball related!). But finally, I’m back and ready for the third installment of Maison Gumball Reviews. Ready? Let’s go.

Maison Review #3 – Strawberry Shortcake Gumballs

I begin with a confession. I, Shmoel, have never had strawberry shortcake. Yes, my beloved fellow foodies. I am embarrassed to say it, but, alas, it is true. I placed my order for these gumballs from Gumball.com with a tinge of grief yet an overwhelming sense of excitement for the unknown. No, I’d never had strawberry shortcake, but soon, I would have the gumball modeled after this famed dessert.

And then, they arrived (the Strawberry Shortcake gumballs that is). My giddiness was undeniable, and I ripped open the box in juvenile glee. And there they were – white gumballs with red speckles and spots – as accurate a representation of strawberry shortcake that a gumball could ever hope to attain.

Biting into that first gumball, I immediately recognized the many flavors that make up the strawberry shortcake. There was a distinct fruit flavor that could only be strawberry. And there was the gnomic taste of a truncated cake. It was all there – at least I think. But extremely unsure of the accuracy of this globe’s composition, I set off to uncover the true cake. I wanted to be sure that the strawberry shortcake flavor had not been lost in translation, that the ball had remained true to its artful and supposedly delicious predecessor.

Long story short – the cake was good; the gumball was better. But, perhaps I’m biased – I am the proud proprietor of Maison de Gumball. Anyway, grading time!

Aroma – 3.5. Honestly, it didn’t really smell like strawberry shortcake.

Look – 3.5. About as accurate as it comes with gumballs. The speckles were surprisingly more visually appealing in this case (unlike the Fruit Freaks Gumballs).

Composition – 4.5. Superb chewability and very fresh.

Taste – 4.5. Better than the cake itself.

Overall, I give the Strawberry Shortcake gumballs 4 out of 5 balls.

I hope I haven’t insulted all bakers out there, but this gumball is better than the original (and best when both are crammed into one’s bouche all at once).