In a startling episode of last season’s Mad Men, ad executive Don Draper sabotages a pitch to Hersheys by explaining that their chocolate bar is so deeply linked to everyone’s idea of childhood that there’s really no need to advertise. For a Brasilian friend it’s Amor pacoca candies that remind her of childhood. They’re made from a mixture of ground peanuts and sugar that’s pressed into a block the size of a matchbox and wrapped in wax paper. The candy stays firm until it’s handled, when it crumbles like sawdust. It’s especially nice with vanilla ice cream and stays gritty and flavorful even after the ice cream melts, a little like the chocolate crumb filling in Carvel cakes.

The Amor colors (stop-sign-red, egg-yolk-yellow and bright white) remind me of two of my own best-loved childhood treats, Parle-G biscuits and McDonalds. But the Amor logo is super-modern, with the A-M-O-R in groovy, blockish letters, and the lowercase s-i-n-g-’-s below bouncing happily up and down. There’s a red A-M-O-R on each side of the block too, emphasizing its thickness. This candy can be handled like a board game piece, hidden in a fist, or slipped into a pocket. It might be the perfect size for a childhood treat.

August 20, 2013 by Nalina Moses

At the checkout at the Indian grocery I’m always tempted to grab some of the Parle-G biscuits they keep there to placate three-year-olds. The packages, the size of soap bars, have a bright red-and-yellow graphic with the face of a jolly baby. Parle-G’s are nice with black tea, more flavorful than Nilla wafers and less filling than shortbread, an everyday alternate to super-sweet, luridly-colored traditional Indian sweets. They’re the best selling cookie in India, which might make them the best selling manufactured food product in the world.

The cookies take me back to my childhood, certainly, when they were an uncommon treat, but what grips me now is the loony, eye-popping graphic. The combination of red and yellow and baby is endlessly appealing. Indians vary in skin tone from coal black to snow white, but none of them have the cartoonish pink glow of this child. Perhaps we ought to be up in arms about the Parle-G lass the way we are (or ought to be) about Aunt Jemima and Chief Wahoo. Yet the baby is appealing: she wants some cookies and waits patiently for them. Over the years the wrapper has become cluttered with blue and green emblems touting the snack’s (dubious) nutritional virtues, and now it’s made from tear-away plastic rather than the thick wax paper that it used to be. I’m just thankful Parle hasn’t updated the blissfully innocent graphic.

May 16, 2012 by Nalina Moses