Remember that big blockbuster movie that came out a few years ago? The one where Speilburg took leave of his senses (again)? Yeah, Jurassic Park. Well, do you remember where the "scientists" got the DNA to replicate the dinosaurs? Right, mosquitos. Last question: What were the mosquitos sealed in that preserved them, allowing them to retain this genetic information?

Resin. Right. Bare with me.

Now take a look at the picture on the left here. Does it remind you of anything? Like oh, let's say, RESIN COVERED MOSQUITOS!?! YES! And so there we have it. This candy was designed by Communist China to alter our genetic traits, thus turning us all into submissive zombies during the COMING SOVIET INVASION! RIGHT! THAT'S IT! GRAB YOUR CHILDREN AND HEAD FOR THE FALLOUT SHELTER! THE REDS ARE COMING! THE REDS ARE C... um, ahem.

Actually, Happy Plums do herald the coming of the end, in a fashion. I mean, we stand no chance of ever finding a candy THIS horribly, disfiguringly bad again. We could search for ages, roaming the earth, our quest spanning centuries. We could attempt to design a candy with the SOLE PURPOSE of tasting worse than Happy Plum, and we would fail. So, in a way, we outdid ourselves.

You think I'm kidding? Son, you have a lot to learn.

Happy Plums come packaged in groups of four, with two little baseball-playing monkeys on the front. Silly monkeys. Anyway, through the packaging, the Happy Plums appear to simply be withered, spice covered plums (and so I doubt their happiness), coated in a transparent, gelatinous material. However, turn the packaging upside down. Shake it as hard as you can. Throw it against the wall. Stomp on it. Pick it back up, and you begin to realize what's so special about Happy Plums. They haven't moved from their original location. Still stuck to the same spot. Remember this; it will be important later.

Eating Happy Plums is the equivalent of dying a thousand deaths. Nay, a million deaths. Keep telling yourself this as your molars crack through the hard gelatinous shell, because at first, Happy Plums don't taste that bad. But this is only to trick you into putting the whole thing in your mouth at once. Because once you actually break through to the spice covered plum... words, for the first time ever, escape me. There is no way to describe the horror of the sweet/sour spicy coating as it smothers you physically and emotionally and drags you, screaming and kicking, into a hellish, fiery pit of excruciating pain and agony, where it slowly flogs and tortures you in the sulphurus recess of your darkest fears for hours on end, before finally leaving you, mangled beyond recognition, to die. And that's not the worst part.

The worst part is that you can't spit it out. Remember that sticky, crunchy, gelatinous material coating the plum? It has permenantly sealed bits of the spicy terror between your teeth, and not even industrial steel wire will floss that crap out. So as my roommate Brock is dry heaving into the trash can (again, I am, for the first time, not exagerating), he is also desperately trying to pull plum shards out of his molars, while simultaniously gargling water. I would have found this extremely amusing, had I not been dealing with my own devilish Happy Plum at the same time.

Again, I wish I could describe the absolute pain. All I can say is that everything else pales in comparison. I am condemned to live out the rest of my days, an empty shell of a man, all meaning to my existence ripped from my being, left to lay amongst the bits of Happy Plum at the bottom of the garbage disposal, lost... forever.