Totally Tubular, Dude.

What: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Candy Sticks with Tattoo
When: Apr. 3, 2008
Where: Hamilton, ON
Cost: $0.99

I never really noticed the sneaky ways in which cigarettes are marketed towards children. Cheap, grape-flavoured cigarettes? Those could only be enjoyed by someone young enough to need to pay the neighbourhood hookers to buy cigarettes for them. Too young for that even? These "Candy Sticks" should do the trick.

Raphael and his sai immediately caught my attention in the store. There was a picture of Splinter on the other side and it was the only package left in the display. I bought it, hoping the combined nostalgia of TMNT and coolness of the faux-cigarettes would earn me points with the band.

Despite my frantic posturing I don't think it worked. They don't look like cigarettes at all. They look like skinny sticks of chalk, without even the little bits of red at the tip that I remember from the Popeye Sticks of my childhood. They did taste the same as I remembered: dried sugar paste.

Then our friendly soundguy, Brad, showed up wearing a TMNT sweatshirt, thus obliterating all hope I had of impressing anyone.

The worst part? There was no tattoo. I ripped the package apart to make sure. There weren't any whole sticks in the box, but I carefully poured the broken shards into the outside plastic wrap first to preserve them. These were subsequently tipped onto the floor, and I think a little part of the kid inside me finally gave up and died.

Childhood is overrated anyway.

4.3/10

HR