Today is 12/3/12, there are 21 shopping days left until Christmas, 28 days left until 2013, and 18 days until we all die according to the Mayans. Here’s what’s going on today:

The Jokes:

Mitt Romney recently paid a visit to Disney World. He headed to fantasy land to pretend he was still relevant then got kicked out of the Hall of Presidents when he tried to debate the animatronic President Obama. On the plus size, Romney was the able to afford the large soda at the refreshments stand. 

The so called Fiscal Cliff is getting closer by the moment. I always thought the Fiscal Cliff was when that mailman on Cheers refused to buy his buddy Norm a beer.

Minnesota is letting people buy lottery tickets from gas pumps now. It’s hard to say whether it’s the gas or the lottery tickets are the bigger ripoff.

Missing Food:

American’s are still in mourning after the loss of Twinkies last month. But that’s the only snack we’ve lost over the years. Here are just a few more:

Jolt Cola 

Sure, you might think you still see Jolt Cola in the fridge at the local bodega, but that’s not the original real “x2 the caffeine” soda we used to know.

There was a time when Jolt Cola came in plastic bottles just like PepsiCola and CocaCola. Unlike the latter two though Jolt boasted it’s extra energy by claiming it had all the sugar and extra caffeine. Before a world of Monster Energy Drinks, Red Bull and 5 hour energy Jolt Cola was the favorite of self sleep deprived teenagers and computer nerd (it was even featured in the movie Hackers).

Jolt never had the success has pretty much any other cola on the market, but it had it’s loyal following. But that wasn’t enough for the people running the soda. When energy drink began becoming popular, Jolt tried to follow the trend. They redid their formula, sold the drink in bottles that looked like batteries and tripled the price. It didn’t work and the company folded.

The Jolt Cola you see on the market occasionally now is actually made by a completely different company who just purchased the name.

Surge Cola 

In the late 90s another soda claiming extra energy hit the market. Unlike Jolt however, it had the huge marketing power of creator CocaCola behind it. Also unlike Jolt, rather than a cola, Surge was a citrus flavored drink.

Even though I never appreciated Surge as much as Jolt it had the advantage of being on store shelves everywhere Coke was sold, which is pretty much just everywhere.

The drink only lasted a couple of years until CocaCola phased it out. However a few years later Coke introduced something called Vault, which claimed to have the power of an energy drink with the taste of a soda. Actually, it seemed to have the taste of Surge. Coke, like Jolt, must of thought there was opportunity to get in on the energy drink market and since they already had the recipe hanging around, they thought they could turn their past failures into gold. But they thought wrong, since Vault is now too defunct.

 Reese’s Bites

At some point in the late 90s candy companies decided everything had to be bite sized. M&M/Mars introduced their Pop’em line, where they took practically every candy bar they sold, broke them into bite sized pieces and stuck it in a resealable bag. Hershey did the same thing with their candies and called them Bites.

On the whole it was pretty unremarkable. Sure it was nice if you like scooping your candy into your mouth instead of biting pieces off it in bar form. I suppose that’s nice, but I don’t find myself to often eating something and wishing it was smaller and in little pieces.

Reese’s Bites was the exception however. The candy was little balls of chocolate with peanut butter inside. I enjoyed popping a few in my mouth at a time and then washing it down with a glass of milk. It was candy perfection. But like everything nice in this world, it ended. Hershey discontinued their Bites line, just as M&M/Mars would end their Pop’ems candies.

The world just wasn’t ready for tiny candy… until now.

Hershey’s has introduced their Mini’s line, included Reese’s Minis. Rather than being served as little balls they are now little versions of the shape of regular Reese’s Peanut butter cups. They’re not exactly the same but close enough.

 Bananas

I know this one is just confusing. You think Bananas still exist. Well, you are only kind of right. The kind of banana Americans used to enjoy was known as Gros Michel or ‘Big Mike’.  It was actually pretty much wiped out of the United States during the 50s due to disease.

Now we eat a less tasty banana known as the Cavendish and some people theorize that

disease may wipe out even this banana in the next 10 to 20 years.

All is not lost, as the Big Mike banana is still grown in some Middle American countries. Perhaps one day we will see it’s return.

Real Twinkies

Speaking of bananas, while everyone in the country is overreacting to the loss of Twinkies this week, they are not even grieving over the loss of the real Twinkie.

When the Twinkie was first introduced in 1930 it was filled with banana not vanilla cream.  However during World War II bananas were rationed causing the need to switch over to vanilla. I’m not sure why bananas were in short supply, were we sending them to the troops? Using them to build aircraft carriers? Using them to fuel atomic bombs?

In 2005 Hostess temporally brought back the banana filled variant as a tie in with the newly released King Kong film. It became popular and by 2007 it was being produced permanently. Or least was until last month.

Any other food you miss?