Wednesday, June 08, 2005

The Candy Wrapper Museum!

The Candy Wrapper Museum, where wrappers are to be enjoyed as art, nostalgia, and humor.





From the Site:
I began collecting wrappers in 1977 with an eye toward the unusual, ironic, and aesthetic, although I also collected "classic" but more mundane wrappers for posterity's sake. I haven't yet counted all the wrappers in my collection, but it's HUGE. It's stored in a stack of boxes nearly 4 feet high and about 1.5 feet x 2 feet wide. (Physics majors - you tell me how many that probably is!)

As frightening as it may seem, I've actually eaten most of the candy in my collection, and yet I'm not (yet) overweight. I'm sure I owe this to countless intense walks and aerobics sessions. And no, I'm not a diabetic. Perhaps this can be attributed to good genes, although knowing my family, this theory is doubtful. Maybe it will catch up with me soon and I'll decompose all at once, like an aged candy. (See below.)

One thing I learned the hard way is that no matter how chemically inert or unresembling food a candy product might be, it will eventually become molecularly unstable and turn into a hideous, sticky goo. For this reason, you'll see precious little candy in this museum. However, amazingly enough, the candy that I kept actually held up for about twenty years before I had to throw most of it out. Based on this experience, I'd say 25 years is the point when you've kept the candy too long.

For the record, I collect some gum wrappers, but only the ones I think are really great. Purists may quibble that gum isn't candy, but why pass up a hilarious wrapper when they fit right in with the spirit of the Candy Wrapper Museum?

Due to the immensity of this project and my desire to make nice images of the collection, this site will be slowly assembled for an unspecified period of time. So if you stumble across this site during its formative years, please make a bookmark and visit again sometime. I hope to make it worth a visit.

Check it out-

http://www.candywrappermuseum.com/index.html

1 comment:

Mary said...

I have one of those buttefinger ones! And a baby ruth one too! Well, *I* dont have it, but Patrick's grandmother used to keep scapbooks and she had two candybar wrappers taped into an old album (she taped EVERYTHING into this album!) and she apparently loved candy. It was from 1932 or 33....

She passed away a couple years ago and we kept this book so that we can preserve it. VEry cool stuff.