Holiday Cheer

I was at the grocery store today, and, at the end of one of the aisles, there is a little place where holiday candy tends to be stocked. Now that Christmas is over, it's full of Valentines Day candies, including Reece's Peanut Butter Hearts. They're basically the same thing as regular Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, but they're somewhat larger, and the ratio of peanut butter to chocolate seems to be higher, so they taste different.

Anyway, they're currently going to $1.25 each, or 4 for $5. A little ways from this, near where the seasonal non-food items are normally stocked, are the leftover Christmas candies, including the Reece's Peanut Butter Trees. Those are now on deep discount, and are being sold for 39¢ each. The Peanut Butter Trees are pretty much the same thing as the Peanut Butter Hearts; only the shape is different. If one is a Reece's Peanut Butter fan, now is a good time to stock up. (They freeze really well.) Personally, I'm past the days when I could stock up on them, as, now that I'm an old man, peanuts are bad for my skin.

But it's interesting to see what the holiday theming does to the price of two items that are, for all intents and purposes, the same. Both are highly processed (and sweetened) peanut butter in a low-grade chocolate shell; they're the same weight and the same calorie count. Yet the vaguely-evergreen shaped ones are now one-third the price of the heart-shaped ones, simply because Christmas was a little more than a week and a half ago and Valentine's day is somewhat more than a month away. After which point, the cycle will repeat, as Reece's Peanut Butter Eggs replace the Hearts on stores shelves.

Of course, this is a common phenomenon. There's all sorts of random Christmas-themed bric-a-brac on store shelves right now that's past it prime sales time. But most of that strikes me as much more strongly themed that the Reece's Trees. Given the number of evergreen trees in this part of the country, one could likely get away with selling them year-round without most people batting an eyelash.

But to the bargain bin they have been moved, and it is from there that they will dwindle away to nothing so that the Valentine hearts may have pride of place for a while.