A NIGHT WITH MY PEEPS

Holidays! We love 'em! In their neutered, secular state, they are reliable opportunities for good food, cosy traditions, possible gifts and, best of all: seasonal drugstore displays.

With their slick colour themes and easy symbols, Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween and Christmas all lend themselves especially well to dime-store merchandising. Weeks and sometimes months before the special day, local shops become make-shift shrines of cheap candy, stuffed animals, cellophane-wrapped novelties and futile tchotchkes. What would Valentine's Day be without conversation hearts? Halloween without candy corn? Christmas without candy canes?

Which brings us to Easter, the holiday drugstores buck themselves up with once they've cleaned out the satin hearts. Easter comes late this year (April 12th), so we have plenty of time to soak up the sugary bargains.

All seasonal displays have at least one thing in common: no one would buy this stuff after taking a moment to think about it. Therefore they must:

1. Appeal instantly and powerfully to our visual appetites;
2. Stay appealing long enough for the time it takes to get to the register and whip out a wallet.

Hence, plenty of sugar and bright colours. The Easter drugstore aesthetic is not unlike Midwestern casual apparel circa 1987, filled with pastels, baby animals and references to Jesus. Fluffy bunnies and just-hatched chicks come as colouring books, pinwheels, picture frames, candles, barrettes and bobble-head figurines. Manufacturers clearly abide by a simple holiday marketing formula with two primary modes:

1. Turn symbols into candy;
2. Turn candy into symbols.

To satisfy the first, we've got chocolate praying hands (three inches high, with attached religious card), an enormous solid chocolate cross, candy cross bracelets, lollipops printed with "He Lives" and chewy candies shaped like sandals, called "Walking With Jesus" Gummy Treats.

The second category includes the usual holiday favourites: carrot-shaped bags of orange M&Ms, foam cartons full of malt-chocolate eggs, hollow chocolate bunnies and marshmallow Peeps in lurid colours. The cutie-pie marshmallows appear to be the most irresistible: Just Born, the company that produces Peeps, reports annual sales of $1.5 billion. There's even a sugar-free version.

As with most economic activities these days, browsing is better than buying. A walk down your drugstore's "Seasonal" aisle is a visual feast, like a Christmastime stroll down Fifth Avenue. Plus, it's only a matter of days before the Easter goods receive their 75% post-holiday markdown. Edible Easter Grass and Yummy Vanilla Milk Flavored Ducky enjoy a reliably long shelf-life.

~ MOLLY YOUNG

Picture credit: L. Marie (via Flickr)