Saturday, April 19, 2014

Invasion of the Pod Chicks

I'm not a big fan of Easter-- all pastels and lilies and lambs-- too innocuous for my taste. Give me weird and creepy any day.

Perhaps the home economics teachers who contributed to the New Holiday Cookbook (1974) had to try to get their similarly jaded students interested in holiday prep. How could they do it? Maybe take something traditional (Cute fuzzy chicks!) and make it, well....


Weird. Apparently these long-necked, dead-eyed creatures are emerging from pods like the one in the background. Perhaps they will peck us bloody with their out-of-season candy corn beaks, or maybe they will sneakily infiltrate our homes, biding their time under our beds and in cobwebby corners until they get the signal from their leader.... Or maybe they will just sit in the coconut and candied almonds, immobilized because their heads are the same size as their bodies and they have no legs or wings.

In the days when only the most privileged had microwaves so they could give marshmallow Peeps toothpick swords and force the sugary confections to fight to the death, making scary "chicks" was about as much of a thrill as budding juvenile delinquent could hope for in home ec.

Hey, it was something.

If you'd like to make your own creepy chicks now, you're out of luck if you want them to be authentic:


The Fancy Crest Cakes are no more. Maybe you could experiment with Nilla wafers. Or maybe you'd be better off with the Peeps and toothpicks. Your '70s counterpart would be soooooooo jealous.

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