Today, for the hell of it, I enjoyed a controlled substance: Roadkill Candy from Kraft Foods. From this example, we get to see the new form of censorship and control in our world, which isn't 1984-style threats from a single powerful entity, but the post-1990s "politically correct" threats from those you have offended.

It's an unsubtle way of letting the crowd nix anything that might bring to mind unpleasant truths, and its only rule is that if someone finds something distasteful, they must construe it as attacking some aspect of their personal being so that they can claim to be injured. At that point, the manufacturer or publication is facing boycotts, lawsuits, demonstrations, etc. and for the sake of its stock value has to back down. This is slicker than sending in the goon squad to tell you what you cannot do, as it requires no government intervention. Your fellow citizens, drugged on their own self-importance, apply these rules to you and keep you in line via threat of social exclusion. This leaves government to the more important tasks such as graft, war, famine, sodomy, etc.

This economic censorship process is what happened to Kraft Foods. At first, they tried the logical response, e.g. "Are you kidding?" when the New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals threatened action. As pressure intensified, Kraft considered the possible ramifications of a hostile media running with the story, and quickly dumped the candy, thus making it a cult icon. Of course the corporate trolls tried to spin it off as they always do, with simple profit interest - they do the same thing for porn. "If you look across the Gummi category we certainly have many products that are offbeat, and that's what we were doing in this case," Kraft spokesman Larry Baumann said. "We didn't mean to offend anyone." These candies are no longer manufactured.

So how is the candy? Well... it's about like any other gummi candy. Sweet, gunky, sticky, springy. Sprinkle sugar and artificial flavoring on some foam rubber and you get the general idea. Each colored animal has a different taste, corresponding to the hue, so that whatever is green tastes like lime, the red tastes cherry, etc. This in itself is not terrible, but I found myself wondering the inevitable: why not make it taste like roadkill? A dry, slightly rancid meat taste plus all that sugar would be unforgettable. As it is, it reminds me of most of the products of industrial society, in that it's without any real distinction. The taste isn't great, but it isn't bad. It suffices. You can feel the sugar burn into your tongue. And that's about it.

Still, it's probably enough to gross out your parents. These animals are definitely squashed looking, which clearly could piss off an animal rights group, although one wonders why they don't simply boycott cars. The candies are shaped like either chickens, snakes or squirrel-otter type things ("assorted rodents"). What they've nailed with this one is the texture, which I think may have inspired the name "Road Kill" from the beginning, because it's very fleshlike. Not too soft, like some sick imitation of a French desert. Not too hard, like Swedish fish, which are still excellent and probably actually taste better than this stuff, but at the end of the day, it's all flavored sugar and -- who really cares?