I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who hates Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  You would have to hate candy in order to hate that movie, and I don’t see how that’s possible.  You would also have to hate Gene Wilder, which is also not possible.  He may have been in some weird movies sometimes, but I think he really was the Johnny Depp of his time.  Minus the sexiness.  Gene Wilder was just plain not sexy.

Have you ever noticed that the candy packaging is what makes the candy that much more appealing?  Like in the beginning of the movie, Charlie goes to the candy store to buy a chocolate bar.  The candy packaging in that store really is eye candy.  The kids are basically going crazy over everything they are seeing.  The explosions of color and dimensions and textures that all make the back of your throat start to tingle and your fingertips start to itch.  Which one do you choose?

The candy packaging conveys what you can expect on the inside.  Lots of bright colors and fun shapes speak of a mysterious concoction that is just as imaginative as it is delicious.  Like the box for Nerds.  The outside is flamboyantly decorated, with some happy-go-lucky, lumpy cartoon versions of the candy having a good time.  When you open the box you have a pretty good idea that you are going to get some small, rounded treats of the same colors.  And then you do!  With a coin he found in the gutter, Charlie wanted a chocolate bar and he went with the most obvious choice: a rectangle covered in a brown paper, accentuated by low-key colors and giant font.  What did he find inside?  Pretty much what was on the outside: a brown rectangle.  Oh, and a golden ticket that wound up changing his life dramatically, but I’m talking about the candy packaging.

I’m not sure why no one has caught onto Willy Wonka’s amazing idea.  The closest anyone has come is probably McDonalds with the monopoly game that they bring out every year where you can win anything from a free hashbrown to a million dollars. If someone said that they were releasing ten tickets in their product, worth however much, they would get bought out just as fast as Wonka did.  Guaranteed.  And they would wind up making way more in sales than they would be giving away.  Of course they would probably need to include a disclaimer that no one would actually be inheriting an entire chocolate factory…