Monday, July 13, 2015

The Wonder of the Yowie



I found these oddities in the aisle of my local Walmart near the checkout lanes. Foil wrapped candy in today's world is a rarity and for some reason, their cartoony demeanor grabbed my attention. They were big, seemed hollow and brought upon a feeling of 1997 to me. Only one product has done the same; Nestle's Wonderball.







The Nestle Wonderball was a shell of chocolate wrapped around a plastic sphere that contained a surprise toy. When I was buying these in the late 90s, they seemed to have a Disney partnership so you could find a PVC Disney character in it. The one that sticks out the most for me was Simba from The Lion King. 

Children started to choke on the toys and Nestle quickly disbanded the toys in favor of hard tart candy. Much like a Sweetart. While I was sad about losing out on the toys, I found that the powder from the tart candy actually made the chocolate taste fruity and kinda awesome. 

(Research tells me that Nestle "Magic Ball" had the PVC toys and that the Wonderball was just candy.)

Nestle eventually pulled the Wonderball from shelves and had been long gone. Well, until I found a Yowie on the Walmart impulse buy shelf. 

I bought the original one last night and opened the foil. The chocolate shell has a line running down the verticality of the sweet edible product. There seemed to be a plastic shell under the chocolate peeking out of the separation. I naturally got excited and tossed the chocolate into my mouth to gain more about this discovery.

Yes! There was a plastic shell with something rattling around in it! I tried to pull, push and shake the plastic container apart. I then found instructions faintly on the item to squeeze the plastic compartment and POP! It opened!

Inside was a small PVC toy of a polar bear with a tag. The tag states information about the polar bear species and how endangered it is. It is kinda like Wonderball met Zoo Books. I dig it. 

So for the sake and excitement of this blog, I bought two more tonight so I could write about my discovery and share it with you all. 

Let's discover the joys of Yowie together. Each Yowie has a name and rules over the biomes of the natural world. You can find out more at Yowie World

This one is Boof and rules over the rainforests and mountains. 




FOUND HIM! haha couldn't resist...



The cool thing about this Yowie confectionary is that there is something pure marketing genius about it. There is no "checklist" or really advertisement on this thing. I went into with speculation and got something awesome. There is truly something magical about it because it is a surprise. I never knew it was a toy about cool animals and I am digging it.

I would like to see what else people pull as for animals out of their Yowies so if you do happen to get one, please tag me in it on instagram (Heroic37) or post a link here so I can read of the discovery.

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