Toffee Apples: a review

It’s amazing, in this occasionally depressing, and near-continuously stressful world, just exactly how much joy can be contained in a toffee apple. It’s so perfect. Less than $2 buys an apple on a stick, coated in the shiniest, reddest toffee ingenuity can devise. They’re red, they’re shiny, they’re round, they come on a stick, they’re sweet and they’re fruit. They conjure up festivals and easter shows and circuses with lions and tigers and acrobats, and trips to the seaside and so on. All those places that were so wonderful in childhood, and which you probably only read about in their ideal form, which adult life has tarnished, a toffee apple can recall with crystal clarity. Perfect. Even better, by a narrow margin, than fairy floss on a stick (which is the best kind of fairy floss), because it’s not overpoweringly sugary, it feels healthy, so you don’t have to feel guilty, and it’s shiny and compact and cheap.

They have amazing powers, actually. Today we (Cat and I, obviously) went shopping, and on a whim, bought toffee apples, and due to our benevolent saintliness, we got 3, so Felix could have one. Had a truly amazing effect, a fairly quiet Scotsman reduced to a 5-year-old in seconds flat. He was just about jumping up and down in excitement. (Rather amusing in itself, really)

It’s funny how most people will be reduced to giggling children at the mere promise of a toffee apple. I think they might be the best ‘thing’ in the world (discounting people, obviously. Well, the sort of people who read this blog, anyway). Proof: If I were to call Cat at home, say, from the shops, and say “I’ve just won the lottery, and I was thinking, let’s buy the house, and live there rent-free, and not have to worry about getting evicted at the end of the year.” She’d sigh and not believe me. If I was to call and say “I’ve bought toffee apples, yours is red and has one of those big platform-y bits where the toffee has spread out to give you a crackable ledge at the top of your apple, and I’ll be home with it in 20 minutes” she’d be highly excited and forget about her essays and exam for a while.

In short, toffee apples: highly recommended as a solution to most of life’s problems. It’s as good as, maybe better than, giving a gerbera to the bus driver and saying “thanks for the lift”, for solving the creeping stress and lingering depression of early winter exams.

Five stars.