Cash-Wrap Candy Prices on the Rise

So it's something I've noticed for a while now. It's just one of those things you really pay attention to when you're on the road. When you don't have a kitchen and you get your addiction-fixes from around the cash wrap of the gas station or grocery store, it's something you pay attention to. Candy prices have been on the rise from sea to shining sea for a while now. I guess for the six years from 2001-2007, I didn't buy too much cash-wrap candy bars, but I feel like it's been something that's been going on since 2007 when the economy began to go into a tailspin.

I like a bit of chocolate now and again. But walking around a suburban grocery store it's almost like I'm in a pinball machine as I bounce around from station to station unwilling to pay the exorbitant prices for a regular candy bar but uninterested in paying slightly more for double the candy.

A quick look over the attached photographs shows exactly what I'm talking about. Butterfinger: $.93. Twix & Three Musketeers $1.09. Peanut M&M's $1.03. Then, if you look at the bigger, "double sized" candy bars like the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or Kit Kats; you can get a "double" for $1.79.

The only relief seems to be to go to those "value packs" of individually wrapped candy which are perpetually on sale. So instead of a wrapped eight candy bar Kit Kat you can pay $.30 less for four individually wrapped Kit Kat 2 packs. But those are smaller and anyway; that gets me back to my original objection with the "double sized" packs; I don't want to eat that much candy. I guess I would eventually eat that much candy; it's just I don't want to purchase it and let it sit for days or whatever.

I feel like it wasn't too many years ago when you could go out into a major grocery store and get a candy bar for $.45. Maybe $.50 or $.59? Right? I mean am I that old that I'm already saying things like, "I remember in my day..." Have I become a cliche? Or has the garbage economy, the sad and sagging value of the dollar, and inflation ruled the day?

I hope that it's the latter because if 100% inflation over 5-10 years is what we're going to have to endure every 5-10 years; I don't know how I'm going to be able to feed myself in the years to come, let alone whatever family may follow me into this world.

Maybe I should just give up candy, get a stable address, and let my wife cook cakes and pies and luscious breads and cookies for me instead.