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Here at the top of the show, wanted to uh just say I'm gonna be uh having the privilege to be on another episode of Pickled Parables. um So I would encourage y'all to go check out the good work that Jesse at Parable Ministries is doing on the podcast, getting good teachers and myself to come in to just share what's going on uh from a Bible perspective. Yeah, if you're interested, feel free to check out Pickled Parables. uh Yeah. And now let's get into the episode.
Who hasn't eaten a whole bag of gummy bears, if we're honest? Like, we're not trying to prove anything here. Dang it. It's Halloween. We're all eating too much candy. So we've all eaten way more gummy bears than we should have. Welcome back to Privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded here in my home bathroom. My name is Hunter Hoover. I'm your host from the porcelain throne of destiny and I love bathrooms.
It's been kind of uh a wild bowel situation this week if I'm gonna be real honest about it. At one point it really felt like somebody was making what I don't know what I imagine it feels like if somebody was to make yogurt inside of their own stomach in that it doesn't hurt um and you don't exactly feel queasy but man there's a lot of uh strange gurgling. It's interesting to say the least. So that's been my week.
Also an over consumption of coffee will result in more productive bathroom visits is how we're going to talk about So anyway, welcome to privy and it's candy season I don't know if you've been to a store in a second, but the the aisles are just chock full of candy It's also monster cereal season shout out And don't forget transylvania twist justice for the twist. But yeah, it's candy season and Here at the top of the show.
I thought we'd take a minute to get us in the Halloween spirit, you know As you're driving around, people are hanging up their ghosts and ghouls and putting out their pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns and all these things. I know we hit a patch up last week and it was a good time, but it's definitely fall, definitely getting into the hallowed season of EEN.
And so as we do that, you know, here in American, for lack of a better way of saying it, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme culture, It's trick-or-treat season, which means every store that sells anything is selling bags of purple, black, and orange colored candy like you wouldn't believe. There's candy like woofy left and right and you just can't get enough.
And so, here at the top of the show, thought if, you know, maybe, I'm not a candy expert, that's what I'm gonna say, but ah judging on my let's say physique. uh I am a candy enthusiast. So ah it's candy season and I wanted to just real quick share my top five like Halloween candy picks as we get going this week. So the first is what I'm calling the Reese's Peanut Butter Mix.
Now this is a wide variety of thing and it usually comes in some bag with You know, the classic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but also minis and sometimes a white chocolate variety. And then every now and then is you get one that's got one of the new bars in it. And these Reese's chocolate bars are just slammin'. They're just real good.
And you know what's a bummer is that Reese's and I guess Hershey, who is in charge of probably calling most of the shots at the Reese's company, and I did say Reese's, come at me. is they've for the most part like just passed the Reese's fast break to the wayside and here's the deal. If there was any injustice that Reese's wanted to like shore up, I mean this Halloween season it's a little late. Like they've shipped their candy, it's in stores.
If you want your Halloween candy it's there already. So this year is kind of not gonna happen. But it... In future years, know, Christmas is right around the corner. You probably have already got your Christmas candy ready loaded up. But then you got Valentine's Day and you just kind of ride the candy wave right into Easter until then you just stockpile. And then as we do, we approach Halloween with like, oh, sweet Lord, we haven't even messed up all of the Christmas candy from last year.
And then we dump out and reset and get rid of it. But. They gotta bring back this fast break. The snack-sized fast break needs to make a return. ah The fast break candy bar is the best Reese's candy bar that exists. It's better than the Reese's peanut butter cup. It's better than Reese's Pieces, hands down. And anyone who wants to argue that point can just go right ahead and try. But you're not gonna find fertile ground for that argument with me.
The Reese's Fast Break is just a phenomenal nougatty peanut buttery bar that is both chewy and savory. It's a delight. yeah, it's yummy. If you can find a bag that has the Reese's mix that has the Fast Break featured at least prominently, but if not passively, you're gonna wanna hit up that bag because that's gonna be a slammin' bag. um Next, my number two. I even know if it's number two. These might not be in order. Next would probably be nerds. And here's what I'm saying.
The Halloween nerds are superior to every other nerd. And here's why. Because when you normally buy a box of nerds, the box is just too big. You either get the movie-sized box that looks like a VHS tape with too many little round, hard buddies in it. Or you get the cassette-shaped box.
It's got the two flavors, but then you've also got too much going The Halloween version of nerds are perfect because they're these tiny perfect amount boxes because if you get one of the big ones you ain't gonna eat them all in one sitting. You shouldn't. And then they get weird. Like when nerds get stale they just kind of get not great. And so the little boxes are perfect. You're gonna be able to knock them out real quick. Not too many there to finish. It's good stuff.
I don't know if y'all remember nerds ropes. I don't know if they still have those, but it was like literally one of the worst ideas I've ever interacted with. Because you essentially have this like chewy, licorice-ish... get some pepper on that one. Get this like licorice-ish candy that you know should be this delectable chewy goodness but then we just got to coat that chewy rope with just the hardest most tooth shattering clusters so that way there is no happy middle ground.
You're either just yeah you're going for a soft bite and you just get this hard just in your tooth it's It's not great. It's a dentist appointment just waiting to happen these nerds ropes. Like, the whole point of nerds is that you know the dangerous tooth game you're getting into. That's just where it is. And when you've had enough fun dental work as I have, you know that nerds, you're rolling the dice on whether or not you're gonna be able to tooth these guys.
My third to return to the chocolate world is Milky Way Midnight. The Midnight Bar is the absolute perfect balance of sweet and edgy chocolate because the regular Milky Way is good. It's just fine. But there's almost like a sweetness overload that then they tried to counteract with the salted caramel Milky Way and to which I'd say, what are we even doing? Like if it's just salty for salt's sake, no, stop it. But the Milky Way Midnight Bar is the superior Milky Way bar.
And if somebody's cashing out these Milky Way midnights, that's a friend. ah You have found a partner both in crime and in chocolate. Fourth I think is gonna be something in the salty world. I don't know this is, we're talking candy, but like I know growing up you would get those like. those popcorn balls, you would always get the people that like handed out the weird like Knute's popcorn balls. And those are good. It just breaks up the like onslaught of sweet from the candy.
Yeah. And then last here on our list of highlighted Halloween candies, we'll get some on those H's. And this is a personal thing for me, our gummy bears. Now, I need to say upfront, I love gummies.
But these are last on my Halloween candies because although I prefer gummies to most of the candies that I've listed, when you get a gummy bear or a gummy worm in your Halloween haul, the deal is this, they come in this share size package and if I'm being honest with you, they're really not that great. Like the ones that come in small bags are usually harder They're not as chewy and they're just not as good.
And this is especially true when we start talking about our topic this week, which is Haribo gummy bears or as they are rightfully called, gold bears. This week on privy, we're talking about the Haribo disaster. Haribo is a German confectionery company which just fancy for saying they make delicious treats and sweets called candy founded by Hans Riegel and it began in... okay there's gonna be some German names here that I pretty sure I'm butcher but it began in Kessenich-Bahn Nope.
The name Haribo is an acronym from the names Hans, Regal, and Bon, Bo. The company created the first gummy candy in 1922 in the form of these little gummy bears called Gummy Barkins. Which is, let me just say, what a swell name that is, Gummy Barkins. It's fun to say, Gummy Barkin. The current headquarters of Haribo are in Graf... No, wait a minute. Graf Shaft? If you speak German, please solve this, but I'm getting Graf Schaft on this one.
Graf Schaft Germany is where Haribo headquarters are located. The company got its start and before they invented their now famous gold bear, they actually invented a gummy bear called the Tanzbar, which Tanzbar translates to the dancing bear. The dancing bear was named such for the... m Wiggly motion it would display. Or it's dance if you will. What a funny guy. You might hear that and go, well like, okay. Like how much stank is this gummy bear getting on this wiggle? You know what saying?
Like when I eat a gummy bear, it barely gets going. But you see this gummy boy, he was much bigger than the gold bears and their other traditional gummy bears today. ah It was much taller and much more slender. And honestly, it kind of looks like a bear-shaped reddish-purple turd. If I'm... If I'm being completely honest... The tans bar dancing bear kind of resembles a turd. You can see the bear in there, but we definitely are turdy in association.
Like, imagine you ate too many beets, like, and then you, you know, you know what beets do. I ain't gonna explain it. But then you like, went to the bathroom. I could see somebody taking a picture of that beet turd and being like, holy crap, my log looks like Yogi Bear, hey pooh pooh. You see, because, nevermind. They're called dancing bears, not for the maneuvers they make you do, but again, because of. the wiggly motion they have.
This is also, again, this wiggliness of the dancing tansbar bear is exacerbated by the use of gum arabic uh instead of gelatin which is much more commonly used today. Most bears today were using gelatin in them. This used gum arabic and there was a little more wiggle to the bear. And as we're gonna learn, This is not the first time that Haribo learns they need to change their ingredients. If we can learn a lesson today, it's this. Sometimes you have to change your ingredients.
The company itself grew ah from a localized family-run operation to a worldwide company with factories all over the world. And as of 2013, they had 16 different production factories that produced over 100 million gummies per day. That's too many gummies. That's not too many. That's a lot of gummies. Like, I could probably eat half those gummies. In fact, they are currently building another factory here in the United States. It's gonna be in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin.
Not too far, I don't think, from Kenosha. And building on the project was scheduled to start in 2020, of course, with what we shall call the unspeakable disaster that has been going on for too long, things have been slowed, but it is still in progress and making good progress. This will add to further production of the over 100 million gummies per day. That's a lot of gummies. But the gold bears didn't arrive on the scene, these gold bears. They didn't arrive on the scene until 1967.
And let me tell you, people love these little bears, which, as noted, again, they're called gold bears. And they did this, they named them the gold bears to distinguish themselves from the competition. boy, let me tell you, there is some competition. Big names like Trolley and Black Forest have made their mark. ah trying to edge out the competition with these delicious chewy bears. But here's the deal. In 1983, a man by the name of Scott changed the gummy bear game. That's all there is to it.
He started making what he called, quote, the world's best gummy bears. And here's the deal. Mr. Albanese is kind of right. These Bears, the Albanese gummy bears are so good. They're so chewy and soft, just like every sweet little bear should be. But we're not talking about Albany's bears today. We're talking about Haribo's gold bears. And more specifically, we're talking about a very, very specific type of gold bear.
In fact, the addition of this bear was a dark and spooky, welcome back to Halloween, story best told by an Amazon review. Many of them exist, but we're going to take a look at one very, very, very good review. In fact, I would love to share that review with you now to give you an idea of the spooky disaster that these bears have performed on humankind. This Amazon review comes from someone named Luke and they gave the Haribo sugar-free bears one star out of five.
I do believe you are allowed to give a zero star review. So I would like to highlight that after all this, Luke said, you know what? I'm still going to slap a one star on that boy. 1.0 out of five stars. They say, see you in hell Haribo sugar free gummy bears. This was reviewed from the United States, June, 2015. Luke writes, it was my last class of the semester and the final exam was worth 30 % of our grade. have a college student here.
After a late night study session, been there, I felt confident, but I had to decide between sleeping or cooking breakfast. My eyelids chose sleep. My stomach later regretted this decision, and after several uncomfortable stomach growls, I finally decided to make a quick stop by the campus bookstore and grab a snack before my test.
Since the semester was ending, and everyone was going to be going home for the summer, a lot of items were on sale, including the snacks and candy that they kept up front. Being in the hungry state, I was in, it felt only logical to pick the largest and least expensive candy in order to get more bang for my buck. And there they sat, two bags of Haribro sugar-free gummy bears, buy one get one free. What a deal, I thought, naively. I would eat one bag before my test. and one bag afterwards.
Way to divvy it up, Luke. As I walked to class, I gleefully chewed on those abominable little... deviants... edit by me there. Unaware of the utter mayhem that they would soon unleash on my poor, anus, I sat down at my desk as the professor informed us that due to issues with cheating in the past, restroom breaks would be prohibited until the exam was complete. I will give you ten minutes... to use the restroom now and this will be your last chance. Any takers, the professor says.
The demon bears hadn't released their unholy necromancy upon my stomach yet, Luke writes. So, in my moment of ignorant foolishness, I remained seated, still munching on those miniature bear-shaped booty bombs. After the students, wise enough to take the professor's offer, had returned, the professor handed out the test. and I was six questions in when it happened. It started suddenly at first, almost like a slightly tingly sensation in my lower abdomen. I thought nothing of it.
Assuming my intestines were just doing their thing, little did I know that my intestines were trying desperately to warn me of the horror on the horizon. By question nine, It happened again. But this time it was followed by a sharp pain as if those infernal hellions had orchestrated an attack on my colon. I fought to contain the ground that tried to escape my lips. It was at this point I began to panic.
Something was going horribly wrong and I needed to get through this test before it got any worse. Question 14, my worst fear was upon me. The Satan Bear burning hot liquidy dark magic crashed against my anal sphincter like a tidal wave. I was able to close the hatch just in times, but those relentless toxic bears beat against it like orcs breaking down the doors of Helms Deep. I knew I wouldn't be able to so much as shift in my seat without risking a breach. And nobody wants a breach.
At this point, nothing mattered except expelling this ungodly presence from my bowels. With 15 questions left, I promptly wrote C for every answer and ran out of the classroom. My professor yelled something, but I was too preoccupied with the volcanic eruption that needed to take place before I could find sweet, sweet relief.
I burst into the restroom like the Kool-Aid man, and behold, the handicapped stall was empty, sun rays from the adjacent window shone upon it as if it were a gift from God himself. It took me less than .5 seconds to undo my belt buckle, pull down my pants, and finally relax my weary buttocks upon the toilet seat. It took absolutely no effort to expel the demon.
Almost immediately the floodgates of hell opened up and the damned, liquefied souls of an entire bag's worth of gummy bears cried as they burned through my sphincter and into the watery abyss below. I had never felt such simultaneous relief and anguish in my life. After 30 minutes of this, I immediately went home, dug a hole in my backyard, and burned the remaining bag of gummy bears. I leave you with this. Do not, I repeat, do not eat these spawns of Satan.
Not only did they cause me to fail my final exam, but the anguish I experienced is something I wouldn't wish upon anyone, not even my worst enemy. The only place these godforsaken hell-bearers belong are buried deep below the earth's 15,385 people found this helpful. And what I want to say is this, this is now me, not Luke. Thank you Luke for your very prompt Amazon review. You really painted a picture for us. And we can get behind that type thing here on privy. But here's the thing.
This is one review. The internet is rife with these guys. So what's up? Why did Harrybo do this? And better yet, how did this happen? Harrybo made their sugar-free gummy gold bears, pardon me, forgive me lord, gold bears, with a sugar replacement called lycasin. Lycasin? Who knows? But this lycasin, lycasin is largely made of a compound called malatol, which is a human engineered compound based on maltose sugar.
So, this maltose sugar compound is a compound made of two rings of oxygen and carbon atoms. Now, I'm not a chemist, I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a doctor. I've said it before, I'll say it forever. So, you can tell me I got it wrong, but I'm just trying to do the research. The chemists break one of those rings, and so, in your breaking it, your tongue experiences the chemicals as sweet, but the other broken ring slides right through you and does not get absorbed as sugar.
But when those indigestible parts of malatol get into your guts, your tummy, it draws water into the digestive tract. And if you remember on our episode about laxative, this is called an osmotic. And osmotics, they get the brown moving. On top of this, our tum tums can't break down malatol well. He doesn't play nice with our tummies. And so, malatol attracts tummy bacteria, which in turn produces air, which in turn results in what the kids these days are calling strangling daffy duck.
Gas, if you will. And lots of it. Farts, flatulence, toots, poots, squeakers, honkers, rumblers, bootyquakers, anyway. Too much gas, though, will give you a tummy ache. because it is estimated just based on the weight of the bear and the amount of malatal scientists know it takes to get you pooping generally that you would only have to eat about 15 to 20 of these little buddies to have the full effects of taking an osmotic laxative. And if folks like Luke ate the whole bag, but here's the thing.
Who hasn't eaten a whole bag of gummy bears, if we're honest? Like, we're not trying to prove anything here. Dang it. It's Halloween. We're all eating too much candy. So, we've all eaten way more gummy bears than we should have. Recommended serving size, nine bears. Get out of here. Nobody's eating nine bears. Forget it. Eat the whole pack or eat nothing. Get out of my... get out... anyway.
We have a good idea then why these sugar free gold bears will have you running for the white throne of destiny. Because I regularly eat more than 20 bears. Like... You can't blame that. Haribo did, however, have a label on their bears saying that it could cause some unwanted side effects. Now here's the thing. I imagine if you're eating a food product and you read on the label, hmm, couldn't have unwanted side effects. You're not going to expect that to give you raging fire diarrhea.
Like, that's a different beast all on its own. But the thing is, is it wasn't until the internet was all a spray with comments about it that they finally removed the products from the market. You cannot buy Haribo sugar-free gummy bears. They're not for sale. and now you can't buy them.
Which is a bummer because here's the thing, when I originally planned this episode, and it's been in my notes a hot second, I had fully planned to succumb to the throws of these devious bears for the sake of podcast glory. I was gonna eat a bag of these. And having looked at the research of what happens to you, I'm kinda glad they're off the market, and I have been spared. Shoot, can't, huh? But again, I have enough diarrhea problems without laxative. like bears. I don't need lax bears.
Don't. I have the I have the bathrooming situation already on lockdown without these bear buddies to help me out. As you enjoy your Halloween candy this year, hope you get a good haul. I want you to keep a lookout for those sugar free candies. And if there is a concern, if you find a sugar free buddy, know this. They exist for a reason. Some people have to have sugar free and that's fine. That's good. But if you're concerned, if you find a sugar free bear or sugar free whatever, just look it up.
Get on the internet and look up what the sugar is and what the sugar substitute is and how it's made. And see if it contains something that's gonna make you brown yourself silly. Because Haribro Golden sugar free bears gave people brown undies at one point. Somebody ate that first bear and was in for a wild ride. Bless them. You've made it to the end of another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining us. We've loved having you.
As always, we're gonna try to read some ah responses on the show one day when we get enough of them built up here. But if you could connect with us on social media, we are at Privycast on all the social medias and see what we got going on over there. We got highlight videos, we got ridiculous pictures, sometimes there's... pictures of things that people wish weren't on there, but here we are. I digress. Yeah. Follow us on social media, share those social medias, join the community.
Feel free to email us privycast at gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. Share your Halloween bathroom disasters. I imagine that you could get into a, I imagine you could get into a costume and like not be able to get out of the costume and have some pretty wild accidents go on because of. Yeah. We'd like to thank Kevin MacLeod for the use of Barroom Ballet as the intro and outro music.
You can find Kevin's music at incompetech.com and his music is licensed under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0. Thanks, Kevin. We would also like to thank Pottington Bear for the use of Allsauce as the background music this week. You can find Puddington Bear's music at PuddingtonBear.com. Thanks, Puddington. This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining us. And now, as always, don't forget to flash.