The movies for foodies

Tonight I did a bad. It's not the first time it's happened in recent weeks. Congratulations to Cadbury who, despite the doom and gloom of the Kraft takeover, have managed to reinvent the wheel (so to speak) with a new edition to their snack bag family - the Caramel Nibbles. The fusion of giant chocolate buttons with the original caramel chunks is ingenious and yet dangerous for bloaters such as myself. The 'bad' i spoke of earlier, is my ability to fight through the dress size barrier and chow down on a whole bag of these things. So, if I were Carrie SATC (or Gok Wan for that fact) I might say - and I kinda got to thinking - this whole bag of Nibbles thing made me think about cinema sweets. Which is king? It's tricky. Tricky tricky tricky.

On Friday I'm off to a Wayne's World night at the Lanes in Bristol. Part of the lure lies with their promise of strawberry licquorice to complement the film. If I ever let myself loose with a scoop in the cinema,  I load up on them. I don't think Wayne and Garth's were as tampered with as the ones I favour: the red outer skin is purely a casing for white sugary chewiness - almost like some kind of strange bone marrow. Oh god, it's the pick n mix equivalent of a dog chew. This may hamper its chances of winning uber movie snack now... Time to move on.

Clear contenders are the pre-Nibbles chocolate bag options. The three M's primarily: Maltesers, Minstrels and M&Ms. And for those brave enough to take on the "noooooo, not the coffee one" chocolate roulette, Revels can add some sad strange excitement to movie night. The fear here is that despite the change in packaging over the years; the seal, the matt effect, the foil inside - nothing can prevent the inevitable sweaty hand/melty chocolate fusion. Before you know it, the heat of the cinema has transformed your perfectly crafted chocolate snacks into sticky brown blobs all over your fingers - not pretty. The likliehood is, whether through guilt for the amount you spent on them by buying them at the cinema, or through sheer determination, you'll battle on through and almost certainly end up with a feeling of bloated dehydration and slight sickness. It's not pleasant and it's certainly not one for date night. 

Savoury is out. Sorry. Rubber hotdogs and stale nachos only serve to stink out the cinema and leave you with more enemies than friends/successful dates at the end of all your chomping/ketchup spilling/cheese repeating burps under your breath. 

So, we're left with popcorn. Humble though it is, let's examine whether its merits can cause it to be a true movie snack contender.  Sweet or savoury? Either way, not being loaded with tomato sauce, mustard or jalapenos wins points here. The smell here will only serve to improve the experience for your neighbour, intensifying the cinema experience. Imagine going to your local Odeon and not being able to smell any popcorn - denied! Popcorn is made for cinema fights, sharing, flirting/feeding/wooing your date and a perfect prop for a horror flick JUMP. But the best thing of all is that a bucket of Popcorn feels endless. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have ourselves a winner.