Jousting with Peeps a new Easter tradition

Opinion

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This article was published 26/03/2016 (3474 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the Easter weekend, a time for family, a time for quiet introspection, a time for new beginnings, a time to force innocent sugar-coated candies to fight to the death inside your microwave oven.

At least, that’s what happens in my house.

What I am trying to say is that on Thursday night, for the 10th consecutive year, I staged a no-holds-barred, thrill-a-second Peeps jousting tournament in my kitchen.

By way of background, Peeps are those ubiquitous Day-Glo-coloured marshmallow chicks and bunnies that are packed with so much sugar they instantly send adults into a coma and have your average child bouncing off the walls faster than a rubber ball fired out of a cannon.

In my view, spring has not truly sprung until supermarket shelves are groaning under the weight of millions of these iconic Easter candies. The reality is, Peeps are much more than just a sugar rush at Easter — they are a cultural phenomenon with a huge and cult-like following on the Internet.

For instance, a search for “Peeps” on Google generates more than 31 million results, which is either evidence of the impending apocalypse or the fact most people have way too much time on their hands.

There are literally thousands of online sites wherein Peeps fanatics pay tribute to their favourite gooey treat, or, more frequently, try to come up with innovative new ways to destroy them.

I personally have visited sites offering photographic and video evidence of what happens when Peeps are subjected to everything from acid to office staplers to car wheels to explosives to a space-like vacuum created by sucking all the air out of a bell jar.

Online “researchers” have even staged experiments to see how many sugar-coated marshmallow Peeps a 50-calibre rifle can shoot through. The answer: a lot.

Even the venerable Washington Post newspaper gets in on the action with its 10-year-old Peeps Diorama Contest, with this year’s winner featuring a diorama of Republican presidential contender Donald Trump’s head, the inside of which is a command-and-control centre operated by Peeps. Which explains a lot.

The thing is, there are loads of Peeps on the planet. Back in 1953, it took the Just Born company of Bethlehem, Penn., 27 hours to make a single batch because it took so long for the marshmallow chicks to cool.

These days, with modern extruders, they churn out 5.5 million Peeps every day, producing more than enough of these sugary candies with creepy edible-wax eyes each year to circle the Earth twice.

What with being a crusading columnist, it quickly became obvious to me Peeps fanatics have way more fun playing with their food than eating it, which is where Peeps jousting tournaments come in.

The way the “sport” works is “trainers” arm their Peep knights with toothpick lances, place them facing each other on a paper plate and pop them in the microwave. As they heat up, the Peeps expand to the size of regulation softballs, and the winner is the first to skewer and deflate their opponent.

This year’s tournament in our kitchen pitted me against my buddy Bob, who also happens to be our publisher, his lovely wife, Lena, and his 17-year-old daughter, Linnea.

There we were for about an hour, totally caught up in the fierce competition, sweating profusely, hunched down in front of the microwave’s tiny window, watching bloated marshmallows trying to pop each other with toothpick lances.

Typically, you pit lavender-coloured Peeps against yellow Peeps, but I was only able to find the yellow variety, so it was not always easy to determine the winner of a bout, what with the plates spinning madly in the microwave and the fact both the winners and losers end up as a puddle of molten goo.

In Round 1, Linnea laid a beating on her mother and celebrated by tasting a microwaved Peep, which is arguably the hottest thing in the universe, much like a marshmallow supernova exploding on your tongue.

“Yuck! It feels like a mattress,” she declared. “It tastes like packing material. It’s a combination of cardboard and Styrofoam. You shouldn’t eat them after they’ve competed. It’s a bit like eating hot tar.”

In Round 2, I barely edged out my buddy Bob in our best-of-three battle, only because, for reasons we did not scientifically understand, the toothpicks held by Bob’s knight lurched uncontrollably towards the ceiling of the microwave.

The agony of defeat was written on Bob’s face. “AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGHH!” my pal shrieked as his valiant Peep popped. “What happened to his lance?”

In the end, Bob’s daughter and I went head-to-head for the championship, with my Peeps somehow squeaking out a narrow victory.

Despite her youth, Linnea was gracious in defeat. “I’m utterly crushed, Doug,” she told me, frowning. “My heart is broken, and I don’t know how I’ll recover. It’s too much for my teenage psyche.”

There wasn’t a trophy to hand out, so we just plopped ourselves down on the couch to unwind. Bob’s family bravely swallowed the bitter taste of defeat, although they said it wasn’t nearly as disgusting as the taste of a microwaved Peep.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca