
Getting too serious here. Let's talk about.. mallow cups. Something (nostalgia? hunger?) convinced me to buy a Mallow Cup candy bar (made by local
Boyer Candy of Altoona.. which gives it some blogability) the other day, something I had not done in an awfully long time. I remember that when I was a kid they had some green-stamp like marketing scheme where you collect stamps for money or something. Low and behold, they still seem to have this same plan, remarkably unchanged from decades ago.
So here is what mallow money, as I call it, gets you. You get 5 'points' per candy bar. Once you collect 500 points (so 100 Candy bars???), you can mail them in and get a $1.00 dollar (the decimal place is in the right place) rebate sent to you. So let's see, 50-75 cents per candy bar these day = $50-75 in purchases. Net out 39 cents to mail these in and you have the potential to make out with 61 cents... maybe 1% if you are lucky. but wait, these 'mallow money' things are actually small strips of cardboard... 100 of which probably gets you well over the 1 oz you get to mail for 39 cents... easily pushing you to 2 or 3 ounces to mail, which the post office will charge you 63 and 81 cents respectively. If it weighs more than that, this may become a money losing exercise just to mail it in.
There is actually a
catalog of items one can use the mallow money for, I assume other than wanting $1.00 as cash. Online they have their rebate
order form... The biggest item possible: for 8,500 points (1,700 candy bars... can you believe it) you yourself can have a Marty Mallow Quartz Watch. I don't think I will ever get the watch.
I would say the rebate program needs a little updating. The $1.00 back is probably unchanged from when your average candy bar cost a dime. It is possible that given
the troubled financial history of the firm, that they are just using up old stock of these cardboard backers. Maybe when they run out they will print up a new offer.
In Belgium last month I did buy a few of what I am pretty sure are the worlds most expensive marshmallows at the
Peter Macolini Chocolate shop... I think each mashmallow came out to be a dollar once you accounted for the exchange rate. Go figure.