The other day here, I told about two guys who I spotted in a local supermarket, denuding the shelves of every kind of solid chocolate they could find. I had no idea why they were doing such a thing and neither did the employees of the market. I appealed to you here for theories and you folks supplied many…
- Nick Varga wrote, "My thought on the chocolate puzzle is the it might be something like Dinner: Impossible from the Food Network. D.I. is a show where the chef needs to put together a unique gourmet menu with limited time and resources. But they would've had cameras around filming them, or at least to catch them coming out of the store with all that high-carb stuff.
- Dave Lowe says, "My gut feeling is they might be some P.A.s or prop people buying chocolate for some gag or set decor. I know in my work, I've had to do similar and felt the odd stares from fellow shoppers. Case in point, years ago I worked on a Nickelodeon game show and would have to clean grocery stores out of whipped cream for pie fights or apple sauce and green food coloring for "slime" making.
- Bryan, who asks that his last name not be used, suggests, "The only thing I can think of that would have those guys buying up chocolate is that I've heard that (some of) the candy industry is wanting to change the formulation of the stuff. If that were about to happen, maybe these guys are planning to hoard the old stuff and eBay it.
- Jim Guida just asks, "Why wouldn't someone buy that much chocolate?" Good point, Jim.
- Patrick Shaughnessy thinks, "They were stoned." And Alex Ness had much the same idea: "They were hippies who were planning to smoke much dope and needed to acquire predope munchie material."
- Nat Gertler points out, "When this has happened in the past, this has ended up with (a) the purchaser being investigated for terrorism or (b) the purchaser getting a golden ticket, but still being beaten out by Charlie and his Grandpa for the real prize, inheriting the factory, oompa-loompas and all."
- Edward Douglas also went the Wonka way with it: "I thought it would be pretty obvious that those guys were planning a trip down to Loompaland where they'll be living like kings for the rest of their natural lives."
- Joe Frank's thought is that, and I quote: "Maybe they're trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records under the Biggest Zit category."
- Someone named Frank theorizes, "My guess it's for a college/frat/charity Halloween party for kids." And Buzz Dixon offers, "My guess would be a college fraternity initiation prank" while Michael Schlesinger has two guesses — "College initiation ritual or really deranged scavenger hunt."
Well, your guesses are as good as mine…better, actually, since I don't really have one. But there were no cameras in evidence and the guys didn't look like dopers. Then again, neither have most of the dopers I've known. I will add one more piece to the puzzle, though: Until one e-mailer mentioned it, I forgot that we're approaching Halloween…and one of the reasons I didn't figure that into the possibilities is that when I saw the guys' carts, I didn't see any Halloween bags of candy. Maybe I missed them but I'm thinking they hadn't grabbed up the big bags of miniature Hershey bars that were for sale there in Halloween packaging. Maybe, as Ellery Queen would say, that's a clue.