I know that Christmas was more than a month ago; however, I am just getting around to enjoying one of my presents.  I think I am a pretty simple and easy person to buy for. One of my sons gave me a Life Savers Hard Candy Sweet Storybook.  This is a gift that I have received off and on since I was a child and I have always been quite happy to receive it.

As a book, the plot line is rather thin and short. It is a rather contrived story about how the five fruity flavors of Life Savers had powered the reindeer on their trip around the world and saved Christmas.  Gee, I always thought it was Rudolph and his nose so bright that averted a December twenty-fourth crises.

I will enjoy the six rolls of five flavor Life Savers which, according to the nutritional information on the back, will yield 42 servings of Life Savers of 2 pieces or, in my case, about five servings of one roll.

Here I will risk sounding like the crotchety old guy that I am slowly but steadily becoming and say that the Sweet Storybook ain’t as good as it used to be. While this may be a familiar refrain from someone my age, in this case the assessment is indisputable.  First of all today’s storybook is one-sided with six rolls of five flavor Life Savers while the storybook of my childhood was two-sided with five rolls on each side.  That is a whopping forty percent reduction in the number of rolls of Life Savers.  Secondly, today’s storybook includes six five flavor rolls.  The storybook of my childhood had more variety.  If I recall correctly, there were two rolls of five flavor, two rolls of wintergreen, two rolls of pep-o-mint, two rolls of cherry and two rolls of butter run.  As a kid, I think I ate the five flavor rolls last because they were my least favorite in the bunch.  Pep-o-mint was probably my favorite.  Perhaps there have been production issues with pep-o-mint because the impetus of the crisis mentioned in the aforementioned story of the storybook is a lack of peppermints for the reindeer.

I do appreciate the gift and I will enjoy the Life Savers.  My teeth and my diet probably appreciate the fact that there are six instead of ten rolls.  Yet, I will still say that this is one item that ain’t what it used to be.