Response from Willy Wonka

Case ID: 17118348

Dear Mr. Hesse,
Thank you for contacting Wonka® Laffy Taffy®.
We are no longer accepting jokes for the Laffy Taffy wrappers. The jokes that appear on the Laffy Taffy® wrappers actually have been submitted by children. I would like to assure you that I have reported your comments regarding the accuracy of the answers to the jokes on the Laffy Taffy® wrappers as well as your inquiry about submitting jokes to our Marketing Personnel.

We appreciate your interest and hope you will visit our website often for the latest information on our products and promotions.

A letter to Nestlé

Today I did a little investigating on Wonka and his “Laffy” Taffy (note the sarcastic quotes around the Laffy). The Wonka website didn’t have any helpful information about Laffy Taffy. They talk about their flavors, but don’t have a complaints department, or really any contact information at all. I didn’t even see where/how one could submit their jokes. How did Brandon even get his stupid joke to Wonka in the first place?

I did find a “Nerdoodler”, where you can make a lovely artistic picture by pouring billions of Nerds on the ground. Making a mess is fun!

After pouring Nerds on the ground for 45 minutes, I decided to move the ladder and go directly to the Nestlé website. I looked over their job opportunities, both in the US and in Switzerland. They had a Labeling Specialist position open, but the description was more about working on nutritional information, and not so much about copy editing their Laffy Taffy jokes. I did find contact info on the Nestlé site, and sent them the following email:

I have some questions about your Laffy Taffy product, and could not find any contact info on the Wonka website.

1- How can I submit my jokes to Laffy Taffy?

2- Do you have a proofreader or copy editor for these submissions?

The second question is important to me because I have recently read some Laffy Taffy jokes that I found quite confusing. For example… (jokes from last blog)

If you need a good proofreader for your Laffy Taffy jokes I would like to apply for that position. It hurts my inner child to see these kind of mistakes associated with the good Wonka name.

Worst Laffy Taffy Joke EVER

From my banana Laffy Taffy wrapper:

Question:

Answer:

WHAT?!

The setup is fine. I was looking forward to a clever response after the setup. "Which garden has the most vegetables?" Hmm. That's a good one. I don't know. I'm sure the answer will be quite comical!

And"Flash Garden" itself could be a good punchline to a joke, because it sounds a lot like Flash Gordon.

But together? No, Brandon. Your joke = fail. Just off the top of my head I can think of several better setups for that punchline:

Q: What did the gardener call his garden after planting all the flower "bulbs"?

A: Flash Garden!

Q: What did Eve say to Adam after she ate from the Tree of Knowledge and saw Adam walking around naked?

A: What is this, Flash Garden?

I can also think of a better response for that setup:

Q: What garden has the most vegetables?

A: An Olive Garden full of comatose patients! ... because there are vegetables at Olive Garden, and people in comas are "vegetables." Get it?

Of course you do. Because it makes sense, the way dumb Laffy Taffy jokes are supposed to make sense. Willy Wonka, how dare you print Brandon's joke. HOW DARE YOU!

Better than Work on Monday, Item 1

In a few weeks I'll be changing my work schedule to work 4 days a week instead of 5. No more Mondays! I'm excited. An extra day to sleep in, run around outside, run errands, read, do some writing, play games, watch DVDs... all better than a Monday in the office.

And while thinking of things that are better than work, thoughts of a little known, but fantastically amazing, cartoon popped into my head: THE TERRIBLE THUNDER LIZARDS! Does anyone else remember this show? Basically it was about some dinosaur mercenaries that were after two stupid little cavemen, Bill and Scooter. Scooter would accidentally invents things like the wheel and bowling while Bill would always get set on fire, struck by lightning, stung by bees, hit by rocks, etc. It was a great show, and I want to watch it again right now!

Prepare to Die

For Halloween I took a "Hello, My Name Is:" name tag and wrote "Inigo Montoya", slapped it on and went to work. So far about 98% of my coworkers have not understood the reference. I have spent much of my day explaining that "there's this movie with this character that says this line...". I've also had some fun interactions with the few people who've heard of Inigo. Some of the conversations so far:

"But, you don't have the boots... or the sword... or the puffy shirt and vest... and you don't really look like him at all."

(Coworker looks at name tag, without getting any explanation about costume):

"Oh, you're a Spanish guy? Are you going to speak Spanish all day?"

"He wears a name tag in the movie?"

Dave: "Maybe you should have referenced a more popular movie."

Ben: "The Princess Bride actually is a pretty popular movie."

Dave: "Well, maybe you should've done something from Star Wars. I've heard of Star Wars. Like, you could have a name tag that says 'Hello, my name is Chewbacca.'"

Zombie Wrasslin'

Zombies are kind of a big deal these days. I recently finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I've heard good things about Zombieland, and zombies don't get hiccups. Zombies are just the bees knees right now. I like zombies.

You know what else I like? Wrestling. (Or at least I used to. I haven't watched any WWE in quite a long time, but I used to like it a whole bunch.)

So what do you get when you combine these two awesome/nerdy things? River of Darkness! That's the title of a zombie movie that's in production right now that's going to star my all-time favorite wrestler/Olympic gold medalist, Kurt Angle. Angle was such a hilarious tool on the mic, and he was a crazy-entertaining wrestler too. In the movie he'll be playing the role of a sheriff of a small town that has to fight zombies.

"So what?" you say. Yeah, this story doesn't sound super original or anything, and even though I think Kurt Angle is hilarious and awesome, it's not like he'd make a better zombie fighter than The Rock or Woody from Cheers. But what I really dig is that the zombies are ALSO going to be played by wrestlers! HA! (There's a bunch of wrestlers in this movie that'll be zombies, but the only other name I recognized was Kevin Nash).

You think they're going to hire a bunch of wrestlers to play zombies just so they can walk around slowly and groan? Hell no! Those zombies are going to be choke-slamming and clothes-lining innocent civilians, and Angle's going to hit them with chairs and make zombies tap out of the ankle lock! I'm more excited to see this than just about anything ever. And that was before I saw the poster:

You can't arrest the dead! NO YOU CAN NOT! Not when they're zombie wrestlers! You half-nelson them all the way to Hell!

Get your popcorn ready!

I've been getting e-mails form iUniverse ever since I self-published with them 2 1/2 years ago. They send me e-mails with deals on book orders, new author news, marketing materials, etc. Mostly I take a quick glance then delete them and forget about my book for awhile until the next e-mail or small royalty check shows up. The last e-mail though was about their latest marketing tool, the Hollywood Book Trailer. "Professional film makers will create a live-action book trailer of your iUniverse title." Then they get an agent to look at the trailer and the agent tries to sell it to Universal, Time Warner, Sony, etc. Cool.

I don't need to see my book made into a movie, but it'd be kinda fun to see how they'd condense "Memoirs of a Gaijin" into a 60-90 second clip. Hopefully they'd capture all the comedy and pain of teaching kids' classes somewhere in there (I see two Japanese children hanging from the top of the door while a couple other kids violently swing it back and forth, and in the background two more kids choke each other in the window blinds. The American frantically tries to save them from death, they drop-kick him, their parents watch and laugh. ACTION!).

How much? O, only $19,990!! Yowza. Okay, maybe no Hollywood book trailer for me. At least not until I'm an eccentric billionaire with money to burn. But if you're looking to invest in a big-screen adaptation, I'll gladly accept donations!