The end of an era?

By Andy Young

The 100-year agreement designating the bunny as Easter’s official animal has just expired. Until recently it was assumed the continuation of the adorable cottontail’s reign as the holiday’s trademark was a mere formality.

However, determined digging by attorneys skilled in trademark law has revealed the 1925 contract included a clause allowing, after a century has gone by, a one-time opportunity for either of the involved parties to “opt out” of the agreement.

Bunny fans are concerned, and with reason. Easter’s original owners sold the holiday to a consortium of greeting card conglomerates, chocolatiers, and plush toy manufacturers in the late 1970s, and hammering out a new deal with a cartel consisting of a bunch of corporate CEOs is a lot different than negotiating with a genial pope and the Vatican.

Easter has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, and there’s no shortage of groups and/or individuals wanting a piece of it. Those trying to get Easter to re-up with the bunny have their work cut out for them. The competition is fierce, as plenty of animals are vying for what is a potential gold mine, not to mention a public relations bonanza.

“Who says bunnies are cuter than squirrels, chipmunks, or hedgehogs?” asks Avaricious Q. Farquhar, an attorney representing a variety of small animals.

American Avian Association president Harold Rapacious called bunnies “Yesterday’s news,” dismissively adding, “they’ve had their day.” The AAA represents groups advocating for both the Easter Parrot and the Easter Dove.

Adds Nestor Skroobawl, public relations director for a group touting the Easter Eagle, “When’s the last time a bunny laid any eggs, let alone the Easter kind?”

Ching-Ching Yeah, spokesperson for the Easter Panda Association declares, “The ugliest panda is infinitely more adorable than the cutest bunny.”

“What have rabbits ever done besides rob Mr. McGregor’s garden?” asks Conrad Eurograbber, head of a group hoping a lovable, drooling service animal, the Easter St. Bernard, will gallop in with a basket of Easter eggs each April and become the holiday’s future logo.

“It’s high time Easter ends their unholy alliance with these unseemly creatures!” huffs Eunice Priggish, who has campaigned for the Easter bunny’s excommunication ever since “Bunnies” became an integral part of the Playboy empire in 1960.

Attacks on the Easter Bunny aren’t limited to the Northern Hemisphere. “You call those hops?” scoffs Laughlin Downunder, spokesperson for an Australian group bidding to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Kangaroo. “Compared to one of our ‘roos, bunnies don’t hop; they limp!”

Individuals or groups pushing to replace the bunny include proponents of the Easter Elephant, the Easter Tiger, the Easter Flamingo, the Easter Weasel, the Easter Jellyfish, and the Easter Giraffe, among others. “Sure, we’re a longshot,” says Spiros Noncomposmentis, who represents a group trying to install an unlikely holiday animal. “But if we don’t point out the attractiveness of the Easter Jackal, who will?”

Says one industry insider: “Those rabbit people have the toughest job this side of selling pork in Saudi Arabia.”

The Easter Bunny’s spokesperson, Virtuous D. Fender, vigorously defends her client. “Rabbits in general and the Easter Bunny in particular are inherent parts of society. Who’d watch a movie called ‘Who Framed Roger Raccoon’?” she asks rhetorically. “And seriously, could Bugs Beaver have dominated Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam? Buck teeth aren’t everything; long ears matter, too.”

Ms. Fender admits, though, that with billions of Easter industry dollars at stake, she and her leporine clients are facing an uphill battle.

“There’s no question it’s dog-eat-dog out there,” she says of the current competition for official Easter animal status.

She’d better hope it’s not jackal-eat-bunny. <

Insight: And away we go to Candyland

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Did you ever hear the one about the kid in the candy store? Well, I’m certainly no longer a kid in terms of physical age (although some family members will disagree with that assessment in terms of mental maturity) but I did find myself last week in the Easter candy aisle of a big box store and my how things have changed. 

When I was small, the size of jellybeans was almost about as large as a prospector’s gold nuggets and the plastic bags they were sold in appeared to contain about 50 percent of black licorice-flavored ones. Now there are so many kinds, shapes and sizes of jellybeans that it makes it a difficult choice to select one specific kind or brand.

There are Starburst jellybeans in mini and regular sizes, Jelly Bellies in specific flavors, jellybeans the size of Chicklets chewing gum and even SourPatch Kids and Warheads jellybeans. Not to be outdone by the competition, apparently this year there are new marshmallow Peeps jellybeans, Lemonheads, Jolly Rancher, Lifesavers and Sweetarts jellybeans up for grabs.

And as an aside, can anyone answer why jellybeans are not affected by supply chain shortages and manufacturing delays like many other grocery products? This year it seems there is so much Easter candy available in a post-pandemic economy rife with inflation and rising food costs that it may leave you scratching your head.

Last year my Easter candy shopping excursion for our 2-year-old granddaughter Olivia in Connecticut was a major hit. Along with a few of the other treats that made it into the shopping cart was something called “Krabby Patties” which sent her into a sugar-rush Nirvana being an avid SpongeBob Square Pants fanatic.

I decided to see if any other Sponge Bob-related Easter candy is available this year and hit the proverbial jackpot at the store I visited.

This year Olivia and her new baby brother Leon (although at just five months old he’s much too young to appreciate Easter candy) will soon enjoy a multitude of Sponge Bob sugary delights when the package arrives in the mail.

For 2022, along with Olivia’s favorite Krabby Patties, I found her Sponge Bob peanut butter eggs, Sponge Bob milk chocolate eggs, Sponge Bob gummies and something called Sponge Bob gliders which resemble small cheeseburger sliders except made up of marshmallow and chocolate layers.

When I was a child growing up in the 1960s, it used to be such a treat to find my Easter basket included a Cadbury cream egg. Now Cadbury has been joined in the Easter candy extravaganza by Reese’s, who are offering white and dark chocolate peanut butter-filled eggs in various sizes and Snickers, Almond Joy and York Peppermint Patties who are also selling candy shaped like Easter eggs. At the store I visited, the intricate and detailed box that “Star Wars, The Mandalorian” Easter eggs comes in caught my attention and surely will be a collector’s item someday.

As a kid the best part of my Easter basket always turned out to be the solid chocolate bunny but on this shopping trip solid chocolate bunnies were impossible to locate. I did see a plentiful assortment of hollow milk chocolate bunnies including such monikers as “Bunny Big Ears,” an “EB Hopsalot” or “Binks” and even “Peter Rabbit.” I did find it curious to see a Fred Flintstone Fruity Pebbles cereal bunny and wondered if the Easter Bunny existed way back in Stone Age Bedrock.

Among the most unusual Easter candy I looked at this year were Dunkin’ coffee-flavored jellybeans; Kit Kat and Chunky’s soft caramel popcorn flavored eggs (also comes in cookie dough flavor); something called Whoppers’ Bunny Tails; Jelly Belly’s Sparkling Bunny corn (rainbow-colored easter candies shaped like Halloween candy corn); and Pancakes and Syrup Marshmallow Peeps.

For fans of the music of Prince, Brach’s is selling bags of Tiny Purple Jellybeans, and Brach’s also has bags containing nothing but red jellybeans. Butterfinger, Tootsie Roll, Skittles and Swedish Fish and Oreos also had egg-shaped products in plentiful supply in the Easter candy aisle for sale on the day I made my visit.

After some concerns about potential pollution and a nationwide shortage during the pandemic, plastic Easter basket grass is back in an assortment of colors in 2022 much to the dislike of environmentalists. They recommend using colored shredded paper as Easter basket lining instead of the plastic variety that they say ends up polluting the ocean.

I picked up and looked at a package of pink-colored paper Easter basket grass and was unaware until I read the label that it could also be used as confetti for birthday, anniversary and graduation celebrations.

Of course, there were baskets of Easter candy ready made for those who find it challenging to select individual candy items from the vast variety available. I like to pick and choose what goes in the grandkids’ Easter basket and prefer doing it that way.

My mother had a tradition every year where she would buy a Paas Easter Egg coloring kit and our family would dip hardboiled eggs in colored dyes at the kitchen the night before Easter. Ah, those were the days. <