h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My favorite as a child was pixie sticks. These are basically stiff straw covers filled with colored sugar that has a tart taste. The wrappers are typically decorated with a slow spiral swirl of white, plus a color matching the sugar inside.

Pixie sticks taste somewhat like sweet tarts, but are both tangier and more sweet. They really pack a punch! And of course, kids love colorful and bright things, especially candy. So making a mess by spilling a pixie stick's contents on the floor or yourself is fun in its own right.

To eat a pixie stick, you rip or bite off one of the ends and suck the sugar into your mouth. At the end of the process, it is usually necessary to tip the filled end of the stick into the air to get gravity's help.

Less advanced pixie stick eaters will clamp their mouth over the stick, which tends to make the stick mushy and may cause sugar clotting. In this case, the best solutions is to bite, rip, or cut off the newly sticky tip of the stick. You can also try biting off the in-tact end, but you risk losing the rest of the candy if the sugar clot dries before you're finished eating.

It isn't unusual to see a small tyke eat the stick along with the candy. Fortunately, this causes no harm as long as the stick is softened with saliva before being swallowed. The pixie stick paper casings are edible, if not entirely tasty.

Pixie sticks are a generic and cheap candy, and are made by a variety of manufacturers. They're especially good on a long hot day. In my native state of Texas, it was possible to poor pixie stick sugar on the asphalt during a summer heat wave and watch the sugar granules melt together into an unattractive blob.

To freak out your friends, have them eat a pixie stick while quietly refraining yourself. Then do the asphalt melting trick. Finally, remind them that they have already swallowed the same stuff, and make vague comments to the effect that pixie sticks may be poisonous. You're not sure...

Of course, and then there are the "adult-sized" pixie sticks. These are about 3 feet long, and about half an inch in diameter, and completely full of that sweet sugary powder. For some unexplainable reason, these jumbo pixie sticks are normally sold in toy stores rather than in candy shops.

In high school, we used to empty pixie sticks into a can of soda and then shake it up for a super fizzy, super sugary drink. A "Jolt" soda with a few pixie sticks mixed in would keep just about anyone awake all night.


Mikey

Cool! Another great pixie stick trick. I'll have to remember that one and try it sometime...