Aug31
THE BONUS STORY ARC COMIC CONTINUES! THE LAST PAGE IS LIVE!
It’s the tail end of summer, and that brings to an end the ‘Car Wash Caper’ bonus comic! To see the very last page, head on over to TWC and vote for Puck!
VOTE TO WASH THAT CAR REAL GOOD!
As far as rectangles go, a Hershey Bar would be a better enticement.
Especially with Almonds.
Cadbury will also suffice. Or a Chunky.
What is Canada’s favorite sweet ?
Prolly Maple Sugar Candy (me too).
Canada has many sweets to choose from. Generally speaking, we have most of the American options, but we ALSO have the British options, because we don’t fall under some archaic candy law that forbids British candy from competing on American soil. Up here, it’s all fair game, meaning it’s one of the only places you can buy Whoppers (American) and Maltesers (British) on the same shelf. Even though they’re mostly the same product. (For the record, Maltesers have a slightly thicker chocolate layer, and Whoppers have a larger crunchy malt center. And also for the record, I prefer Whoppers, but Maltesers will also do in a pinch.)
All Canadian chocolate is made in the British fashion, though, including the ‘American’ brands. American chocolate contains butyric acid, which was added as a preservative and became standard in your fine country’s candy. Unfortunately, butyric acid is also the primary compound that gives vomit its distinct flavor and aroma, so you might be able to see why us international types really don’t like your candy bars. American palettes, though, have been raised on the stuff, and they find Canadian candy “sickeningly sweet”.
So to each his own.
But for the record, my favorite candy bar is Crispy Crunch. It is only available in Canada. And it is magical.
I think it’s a tragedy that Coffee Crisp is not readily available in the US, and I know I’m not alone.
Actual conversation with US Customs when a friend returned from Canada:
Customs guy: Do you have anything to declare?
Her: Just a whole case of candy bars.
Customs guy: I’m guessing Coffee Crisp.
Her: Correct.
Coffee Crisp is great. That’s my wife’s favorite. Also my daughter’s. It must be noted that though my daughter is eleven, she already requires a morning coffee. A better father probably wouldn’t have let that happen. But shrug.
Her name isn’t Robin, is it?
Ooh! I just had a thought! Will; had such a problem getting his colleagues’ heads around the idea of a girl Puck he just gave up and wrote her as a boy. One of his few failures, he might have been fighting with his wife.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Is that why we don’t get all the zany foreign candy bars here in the states? What a crock of poutine.
There’s some law specifically about British Candy, anyway. https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/08/british-chocolate-to-be-banned-from-america-after-trademark-dispute-between-hershey-and-cadbury-5054183/
It all has to do with a war between Hershey and Cadbury.
Hershey’s milk chocolate is gross (and I’m from the US).
Kitkat bars are probably better anywhere in the world they aren’t made by Hersheys.
I feel that a lot of Americans are kind of quietly coming around to the fact that American chocolate is a little … subpar. Witness the growing group of Americans that touts European chocolate as the best. Sure, they’re kind of snooty elitists, but they have a point.
I love American candy bars. Like you, I just prefer them when they’re not made in America because everywhere else doesn’t do the weird butyric acid chocolate.
The brush is a bit broad; if you prepend “mass market” to “American chocolate” you’ve nailed it. There are enough local boutique producers of candy, supplying material which is over 70% cacao and without butyric acid, to satisfy chocophiles like me.
Now that sounds good. The thing with me is, I actually have very low brow chocolate tastes. I like a good cheap mass-produced candy bar. Just with better chocolate. The Quebecois, in my opinion, make some of the best cheap chocolate. It doesn’t break the bank, it’s kinda tacky, but man does it taste good.
@EG
Agreed.
Cadbury is far better than Hershey.
Personally my favorite chocolate treat would be Kinder Surprise Eggs and Mr. Big bars.
Mr. Big, yes. Kinder Surprise, I like the toy. Chocolate is … okay. Just okay.
I agree the toy IS the main reason we buy them.
The chocolate in the Kinder Surprise is like the stick of gum in the baseball cards.
Kinder Surprise is another candy banned in the States as it is a prepared food product that contains inedible pieces (the toy) that did not naturally grow in the food. That last part is to allow bones to be served in your fried chicken.
It’s also the size of the object. It’s small than what ever is used to gauge a child’s throat that would cause a choking death from swallowing an item.
Kinder now has a way around. That by packaging two complete halves in an egg, they’ve worked an around of sorts to market in America.
They’re in my local mid sized grocery chain.
Those Kinder half egg things are an abomination. Look what your American safety standards have wrought!
Toys: the unnatural bones of the Kinder Surprise.
Hey, wade-a-minute….
A delicious spot of MAPLE SUGAR CANDY is on your national flag !
I’m still not moving to Canada, but I’m buying your candy, fer sure.
I do love maple sugar candy, but a little goes a long way. It’s so sweet, I find it quite literally hurts your teeth as you bite into it.
Maple candy is basically sucrose with other trace sugars and compounds left from cooking the sap that give it the characteristic flavor.
Maple syrup’s a big deal in the mountains where I grew up. It was the first product to get a production subsidy from the U.S. government.
She’s walking. It’s a miracle!
Well, she’s still got a hand on the couch, but she’s ready! Next comic!
Of course, all parents of a child of post-toddler age know that this is the beginning of the end. Both my son and his wee daughter went from crawl to zoom seemingly overnight.
Yeah, it’s a dangerous time.
Wait until Mirsnda learns to CLIMB. God have mercy on their souls!
Yeah, that’s when stuff gets really terrifying.
Coming soon: GLOWING HAPPY RECTANGLE, with 50% more happy.
Seriously, it’s enough happy to make kids through tantrums when an adult takes it away.
Also enough happy to make tantrums disappear when handed one. It’s a parenting approach that is surprisingly common in today’s world.
Yes!
Let’s REWARD throwing a tantrum by giving the child what They want.
(Tongue firmly embedded in cheek)
Hey, it’s the easy answer. And when you’re a parent, you don’t have the will or the strength for the hard answer.
Re: the bonus comic part 13, somewhere Twilight Sparkle is crying, and has no idea why.
Friendship is profit!
Baby translator error – odd, because usually I’m pretty good with that kind of stuff.
I don’t think she’s really saying anything in particular. It’s just happy noises of approval. And a bit of a garbled attempt at ‘rectangle’.
Daphne could be an outstanding babysitter! 🙂
She knows the ins and outs of motivation, certainly.
She’s young enough to remember and old enough to know what to do, as well as well-enough parented to choose the optimal path.
Well said.
When the women of the MacTavish home are together something interesting always seems to happen. I’m curious if we’ll see anyone else from Puck’s side of the family introduce themselves.
There are none. At least as far as I’m concerned. Her background is never really going to be explained, ?I don’t think. Besides, I already have too many characters!
Be kind of difficult to introduce her ‘birth family’, wouldn’t it?
She’s a fairy, right?
fairies are ‘flighty’ and not prone to staying with anyone, right?
Puck is over 400 years old and a very good example of the type.
Yeah, I just… I don’t have any good ideas that work with the Puck family angle. If this were a daily comic and I was burning through 365 comics a year, I’d probably eventually run out of ideas and I’d turn to that. As it is, though, I have enough story arcs in my head to last me a decade.
E.G.
I just started playing an online game that basically allows the player to change everything about an avatar’s appearance (and I do mean EVERYTHING).
I hope you don’t mind if I ‘borrow’ some of the outfits you make for this strip.
I think you are a genius at wonderful outfits. (particularly female outfits).
I would love to see what you create. Send me some screen shots!
As soon as I figure how to make the outfits, will do.
This ‘new’ game literally enables the player to design and make EVERY thing about a character from outfits, to number of arms/legs (0 to 12+), skin tone (even no skin), to number of wings and/or tails (kitsune with 9 tails, anyone?)
That’s cool. This game sounds interesting!
What game is this?
Miranda is looking at Puck as if she’s used to being conned by a parental mentor, and instead goes for the flash from a serendipidous influence. Youth is served, and why not? It doesn’t last for long.
You know your social dynamics. Kids are always inherently sceptical towards their mothers. Especially when their mothers are acting uncharacteristically chipper.
Granola Bar: Worth demanding, not worth working for.
GHR: Worth working for;
Miranda has her priorities!
Smart kid. And honestly, that’s my opinion on granola bars too. If you hand me one, or there’s one sitting out, I’ll eat it. But I’m not going out of my way for one.
Someone’s earned big sister credit.
Somewhere, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Alexander Graham Bell are being wired up in different sized dynamos. Let’s see who can provide electricity for Buffalo, N.Y.
They’re still alive?
My question was “who is/was Aldous Huxley?”
I am certain when someone tells me, I’ll slap my forehead with a “OH! HIM!”
Author of “Brave New World”.
“Let’s see who can provide electricity for Buffalo, N.Y.”
Nikola Tesla actually did it.
He, IMHO, is History’s Greatest Inventor.
I like Tesla. I even like the 80’s hair metal band named Tesla. Though my appreciation for Tesla has waned due to the ceaseless campaigning of the Tesla Institute, which has sought to hold up Tesla as some sort of modern day Daedalus. They go around putting political pressure on cities and states to rename random stuff after him.
In Hamilton, there was a main access artery in the heaviest industrial zone named Burlington Street. Burlington is the next town over. So yeah, kinda confusing to have Burlington Street in Hamilton, but whatever. It’s not Burlington Street anymore, though. It’s Nikola Tesla Boulevard. Why? Cuz someone in City Hall couldn’t say no.
I’m not against renaming stuff sometimes. But Tesla has ZERO connection to my city.
@EG
Every single modern item that uses electricity owes their very existence to Nikola Tesla.
For an amazing, thought-provoking, and entertaining tribute to Tesla (with David Bowie playing Tesla), do not miss THE PRESTIGE.
I’m allergic to Christopher Nolan.
I love that Tesla was the sort of inventor who spent a good fraction of his life (on and off) working on a Death Ray. An actual Ray of Death.
You just don’t get more traditional Mad Scientist(tm) than that.
Well, he was the prototype. And that’s worth something.
Things like that makes me hope that the U.S. Government put his papers in a crate next to the Arc Of The Covenant.
Why do you think I said it like that.
Ooh! I’d follow that rectangle to the ends of the Earth. I might have. I don’t remember much from that age. And my dad did tell my I fell in a hotel pool once.
A hotel pool is another form of rectangle entirely. But equally attractive to small children.
And not-so-small.
Particularly when occupied/surrounded with members of the opposite gender.