My Whistle Pop Memories

The elementary school I attended was pretty quaint. We had big trees in the front and a playground that would draw blood, and lots of it. It was so wonderfully dangerous, that at least one time each semester it sent a kid to the hospital. When you could avoid the bullies, that school was a pretty alright place to spend the day.

One of the off-campus highlights was a corner store about 100 feet from the entrance. It sold newspapers, cigarettes and had a couple of arcade games, but most importantly, it had candy. This is why to this day I still refer to it, as does the rest of my family, as the “candy store”.

The candy store had a wall of candy to choose from which is good because, on the playground, candy buying and consumption came in waves. Sometimes the choices were based on novelty, but most often candy came riding into the school on an inexplicable magic breeze of kid sugar cravings that defied marketing. One of the candy trends that hit hard was the Whistle Pop.

We could not get enough of them and by the end of each morning, before school started, the box they put out each morning, would be sold out. I remember it hit in the fall because the warmth our breaths made steam come off the whistles when we blew them and blow them we did. The schoolyard was an out-of-tune sticky symphony.

I had a real problem with the whistle pops. It is the same problem I have with all suckers. I just eat them. I have always strongly identified with that Owl who did not have the patience to lick his way to the center of the pop.

The whistle pop trend did not last very long. By the spring we had moved onto flavored toothpicks, but the memories of those pops stick with me, and while I have not been able to get a Peter Paul Whistle Pop in a very long time. I have picked up some imitators. How do they sound? I really cannot tell you. I get one note out of them and… crunch.