Monday, June 28, 2004

BIGGER THAN LIFE

I buckled and bought a GiantKat today, or a MegaKat, or some other [modifier meaning big, perhaps even “big” itself]Kat. This MamoKat is a Kit Kat bar, but, as the modifier implies, it has been big-ified. I saw it sitting in the vending machine when I stopped to make copies today (note to office planners: putting the vending machine next to the copy machine is a brilliant marketing strategy, if morally suspect). I managed to make several copies before I caved.

I must admit that when I made my purchase, I did not really know what I was getting into. I just saw the label and figured it maybe contained more of those little bar pieces than usual, or perhaps the ones it contained were longer. It was hard to tell from the packaging. Upon opening the wrapper, I discovered that I had been in error. All my guesses were wrong. The MassiKat turned out to be a single bar, one huge piece of Kit Kat. That whole advertising jingle that they did, you know “break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar” has no bearing on this goliath. It is a huge, unified whole. It’s as if someone did break off a piece of the kit kat bar but instead of eating it, they hit it with the same concoction of radiation and gene therapy that led to The Hulk. I treated it very carefully. I really didn’t want to make this thing angry, afraid it might get bigger.

After I recovered my initial shock and remembered that it was a candy bar and that candy bars, as a rule, do not generally get angry, I was overcome with joy. I love Kit Kats. Finding this one was like finding a dollar bill in your pocket and then realizing that you had misread the numbers and discovering it was actually ten dollars. So I ate it.

Turns out Kit Kat bars don’t scale up very well. Perhaps something was off in the ratio of smooth chocolate and crisp wafers. Perhaps that much Kit Kat in one place upset the balance of nature and warped reality. Perhaps the gods found it offensive that mortals would dare toy with such forces and cursed the monstrous candy bar and all who gazed upon it. I don’t know. I just know that my dream became a nightmare, the ten dollar bill turned out to be Monopoly money after all. I am, several hours later, still regretting my decision to purchase the MonstroKat. I’m thinking I should have gone for the MegaCrunch instead.

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