Think about it. Once a year a bunch of impressionable young children come to your door and give you their undivided attention. This presents the PERFECT opportunity to proselytise. It’s like a reverse Jehovah’s Witness-type situation. While many of the world’s other religions are clever enough to take advantage of this amazing opportunity, Hindus are left behind (mostly due to a lack of creativity it seems). Beliefnet has a great feature that gives us a tasty sampler of some of the divine candy out there, and also provides us insight into why Hinduism faces an uphill battle when it comes to creating converts of the young:
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First up is the Christian “Scripture Candy:”
Once you pop, you can’t stop! These scripture-wrapped mints are downright addictive. Not too minty, yet soft enough to melt in your mouth. According to the maker, these mints were created to turn “a pagan holiday into something to glorify God…” [Link]
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Why can’t someone make candy with Gita passages? |
Next we have Star of David pops:
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I’d eat a chocolate Hanuman pop if it existed. I’m just sayin’. |
Even Buddhists get in on the action with some cool candy:
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Does it mean I’m Evil if I think biting that head off would be fun? |
Christians have multiple options just so you know:
Available in traditional mint flavors and fruit flavors, these candies are covered with bilingual biblical sound bites. [Link]
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Mintyness is next to Godliness |
Even Muslims get a crispy treat in some provocative packaging:
Some panelists found this treat to be “Islamalicious”; a few felt there was “something slightly off” in the flavoring and cited a faint aftertaste. “As a fan of kosher marshmallows, I’m happy to see that Muslims are embracing marshmallows as well,” a Jewish taster noted. [Link]
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Does that look like an explosion on the package? |
And what do Hindu’s get? A chocolate Om. Its just not very inspiring in comparison if you ask me:
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Doesn’t quite inspire me to convert. |
Luckily we DO have one cool option. It’s not cheap though and isn’t small enough for mass distribution. Devout Hindus will just have to stand by and watch as rival religions attract new members through their candy this Halloween.
By the way, if you’ll remember back to April Fool’s Day a couple of years ago, I did enter the Hindu candy market myself at one point. It was just a brilliant idea way ahead of its time:
first I am your fan. and of hanuman and chocolate
Abhi, I would pick a chocolate Om over Testamints or other such candy any day! Not sure about Hanuman, though 🙂
Surprise surprise, that website has chocolates none of which is made in the image of Jesus Christ.
Don’t worry Ram. If it is a chocolate Jesus that you crave, I can be your pusher. At SM we try to satisfy all our customer’s peculiar needs.
i was listening to personal jesus and the lyrics started carrying a different meaning after that. how apt.
Oh please! Chocolate has got NOTHING on Indian Mithai. Give me some gulab jamuns, rasmalai, jelebi…anyday! But the Hanuman bar was quite creative. Masala Goodness indeed!
I don’t know about that. Kids seem to prefer chocolate over mithai for whatever reason. It’s only once they grow up thus the light shine through.
The chocolate Om looks cool actually, wonder if anyone will eat 108 of those.
Happy Halloween everyone!
Depends on mithai. Given a choice between chocolate and a tirupati laddu, what would you choose ? I could spend the whole day trying to solve this conundrum.
Hey we have Choclate Ganesh too. There is Krishna too, but I just prefer Ganesh. More confusion.
“Reach chocolate Nirvana, with the candy that’ll make you go Ommm-mmmh!” 😉
Can we host a halloween party in the bunker Abhi? Please!
Happy Halloween everyone.
On following the link to the Ganesha chocolate page I found an entire story there, lifted right out of my book, The Broken Tusk, with no credit given, no permission ever requested that I know of, and the story title changed. Thank you, voiceinthehead (#9) for that link, and not because I’m going to be buying chocolates. Needless to say I’ve been on the phone with my publisher who is I hope going to be on the phone shortly with the good people of Chocolate Deities. Sorry for the interruption and now back to your regular programming.
I din’t think Hindus are particularly interested in conversions. If people come to it voluntarily, that is a different matter. Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, was impressed with the idea of the world as illusion (maya). An Indian philosopher who was once asked why he ran away from the mad elephant if he thought material reality illusion answered that his running away was part of the illusion as well– a necesssary action dictated by the accidental circumstances of the material world.
Hi Uma, I read that story and i’ve heard the same (maybe with slight variations) many times growing up. A little googling brought up quite a few links with variations of the same story.
I agree…it’s a pretty generic story that’s been told countless times. I bet most versions you find won’t be much different than the one Uma published…but maybe it’s word for word or something. the same version was on some other seb-sites as well.
“Testamints” are so incredibly, unbelievably lame. So are “old-fashioned Scripture mints.” Kids don’t want breath mints, they want CANDY, fer crying out loud!
Chocolate Om vs. Testamint = clear victory for Hinduism.
The chocolate Ganesh is awesome! Unfortunately, at $29.99 a pop, I’d go broke on Halloween with the number of kids who come to my door. We do have a Kali-Ma jack-o-lantern this year, though, which looks fabulous.
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Love the chocolate Om’s, as did our guests at the wedding. We had tons of mithai but we also had special engraved chocolate Om’s with our names on them in our favor bag and not a single favor bag was left behind. There was however tons of Mithai left!!!
Derick (#14) and penguin (#15), it was word for word, barring a couple of typos. Of course the story itself is in the public domain but retellings can still be copyrighted.
what about some brown oM&oMs?
If one can imagine it, there is a website for it. For Halloween, I also posted chocolate Aum in the aum blog that I maintain. There is of course, Om Organics and H2Om water and Om Cakes! Nourish your soul and by nibbling on the Om, you nourish your body too!
Hi Uma, how’s it going? Gah. I can’t believe they printed your exact copy. Go get them!
Perhaps Kaavya Viswanathan got an internship at the candy company.
Ack! That was me. My handle is not “whitey.” Sorry!
julia roberts had individual ganesha-shaped chocolate cakes at her wedding…
‘masala goodness’ might one day inspire me to create a desi line of my own : chili dark chocolate filled with bhel puri; fermented rice (i.e. idli) power bars with a chutney centre; corn-flavoured white chocolate with a saag nougat. the list can go on and on….
lol. did you know that chocolate was banned in switzerland for many years. read this