Munchie of the Month: Pop Rocks
Lose your mind to the fizzle fizzle!
You’re in the woods, deep in the woods. It’s dark and you have no idea what time it is. The mushrooms you ate earlier are now in full effect and the world you were in back when you consumed them has long since dissolved into a completely different reality. No one can possibly understand the voyage you’re on other than your follow psychonauts.
That stick that caught your eye earlier hasn’t left your hand since. Hell, it’s not a stick—it’s your staff, your sceptre, your divining rod. It’s your protector, your companion. Pupils big as marbles, your senses are all in overdrive—eyes open, ears pricked out like radar dishes scanning for contact from outer space. “Shit man,” you say, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this fucked up. This is awesome!”
So now what? You smoked the last of your weed back at that weird rock that looked like an ape. The road rockets you stuffed in your pockets didn’t make it much past the strange puffy flowers that you’re convinced can only be seen by people who are tripping on shrooms. And a stop at the pizza joint is completely out of the question—the mushrooms have taken over your stomach and they don’t want company. Not to mention, it’ll kill your buzz.
Pupils big as marbles, your senses are all in overdrive—eyes open, ears pricked out like radar dishes scanning for contact from outer space. “Shit man,” you say, “I don’t think I’ve ever been this fucked up. This is awesome!”
Then you remember that little pack of candy in your pocket that you’d been saving for a time like this. Pop Rocks, those little exploding fruit-flavoured crystals that sizzle like bacon in hot grease when you put them in your mouth. Invented in 1956 by some nutty scientist at General Foods, these little space rocks got a bad rap in the late seventies when a nasty rumour spread like wildfire across the nation’s schoolyards. Legend had it that Little Mickey, the kid from the Life cereal commercial, died after eating Pop Rocks followed by a Pepsi chaser. Panic spread and for awhile there in the mid-eighties General Foods pulled Pop Rocks from the shelves. Rumours are just that and you can’t keep a cultural phenomenon like Pop Rocks down. Pop Rocks have now reclaimed their place under a variety of different names back on the shelves of the world’s candy shops. Little Mickey, it ends up, is alive and well and working as a sanitary engineer at a General Foods plant in Arkansas. When asked to comment on his Pop Rocks experience by Heads, he declined claiming that it was a long time ago and that he just wants to put it behind him.
So rip open that little foil pack and prepare yourself for a sensory experience of mind-blowing proportions. Just don’t follow it up with a big swig of Mountain Dew—we’re not entirely convinced we were talking to the real Little Mickey, so don’t take any chances.
Gourmet version:
Lick and sprinkle those bad boys over your fellow psychonauts.
Strain pairing:
Plandyland by Talking Trees Farms
First appeared in Heads Magazine, Vol. 5 Issue 05