Chocolate worms

 : Remember back when we were kids and we had to check chocolate bars for worms?

 ,  ,  : Uh, what?

: You’d look for holes in the chocolate and if there were holes you broke it in half, and if you saw webs you wouldn’t eat it?

 ,  , : Um… you mean after it had been sitting in your parents’ cupboard for a couple of years?

: No, I mean a chocolate bar you just bought in the store.

 ,  , : No. We don’t remember that. Nobody remembers that.

So, Internet…

Does anybody other than Paul remember that? Worms in newly purchased chocolate being commonplace?

27 Comments

  1. what? could this be the REAL reason my parents didn’t let us have chocolate??

    no; if it were, they wouldn’t’ve passed our Hallowe’en take on to
    other kids.

    (but I’m not bitter)

    1. Author

      Ouch, really?

      That’ll scar a person for life.

  2. After my Aunt Julie found worms in her Rieces Peanut Butter Cups when I was a kid, I still check them for worms occasionally.

    I’m sure quality control is pretty damn good these days, but I can’t get that paranoia out of the squeamish part of my brain.

    1. Author

      Ew.
      I like that you used your “chewing” icon for that.

  3. Nope. I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from Hershey. Maybe our chocolate was fresher? :^)

    1. Author

      Mmmm, did it smell like chocolate when the wind blew the right direction?

      1. Alas, no. It’s a rural area, with Amish farms that use traditional fertilizer, so the dominant smell wasn’t usually chocolate.
        We would visit Hershey to go to the amusement park, and in the town itself you definitely smell chocolate. It’s been more than 20 years, but back then Hershey Park had a wooden roller coaster that was fabulously terrifying!

  4. I am old enough to remember when Hershey bars cost a dime. And I don’t remember that.

    1. Author

      Ha. I think Paul remembers that, too, actually. Even though he’s only 6 months older than I am, he remembers all this geezer stuff that I don’t. Probably because he had all these older brothers and sisters.

  5. My question is: did he ever find any worms (or webs) in his chocolate? Otherwise it sounds like one of those stupids things that kids make up and foist upon other gullible kids. Or that pranksterish parents fool their kids with. And then it spreads from one gullible kid to the next.

    When he says “webs” does he mean spiderwebs or veins of airholes? I’m guessing he means spiderwebs, and I like the lovely illogic of wormholes linking to spiderwebs.

      1. Author

        I don’t know if Paul ever found any bug indications, actually.

        But now I’m working on a theory that maybe it happened once for real, and then his older siblings convinced him that it happened all the time as a plot to steal his chocolate.

  7. OHMYGOD YES! Not when I was a kid kid, because I was never given chocolate, but when I was living in Denmark TWICE bags of chocolate candy were full of spider webs and eggs. And when I lived in Toronto I bought Cadbury bars a couple times with worms in them. I couldn’t believe it, but yep.

    1. Author

      Our theory in the room was that maybe he and his siblings got their candy from a store with really terrible product turnover.

  9. Yep. A friend had something called a cherry blossom that was full of worms. I actually saw her purchase, open, and bite in… this was in the early 80s, I’d guess. The candy consisted of a maraschino-type candied cherry, some kind of gel/fondant-y surrounding material, and a chocolate and nut (or maybe it was coconut) outer shell. It was shaped like a big gumdrop, bigger than your standard cherry cordial.

    I have never eaten one since.

    -Dawna

    1. Author

      How disgusting! I used to eat those “cherry cordials” sometimes. Probably even in the early 80s.

  10. If, by “chocolate bars” he means “apples”, then yes. Otherwise, no. Nobody remembers that. When I was a kid we “checked chocolate bars for worms” by devouring them as fast as possible without looking at all.

    1. Hey, I did check and still do. It may be silly at this point, but I was one of the gullible kids and I’m a bit too squeamish for my own good.

      1. Well, tinatsu’s link seems to indicated that you are right and I may have eaten some delicious chocolate covered worms…

        1. Author

          Not exactly. The actual article (not the yahoo answers poster, but the article they reference) seems to indicate that food that sits around for a long time may become infested.

  11. No, but after some Googling I more than half wonder if I should have been checking. Gah.

    1. Author

      There’s nothing like the Internet to make you never trust anything ever again.

  12. Ha! This is really disgusting. I think you need to write a chocolate worms story, Julie.

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