Sad news today, folks, in the world of local and food-related items. (Mark, I know you'll especially not like this one.)
The York Peppermint Pattie, which used to be made in York but was most recently made in Reading at a Hershey plant, will soon be made in Mexico.
I'm definitely disappointed. I am not someone who is categorically against production moves if they keep a company afloat economically, but this one hits pretty close to home.
It's been a while since I posted about Showbiz Pizza and other former York County pizza places, like Pappy's.
But while doing this week's promised clean-out of e-mail, I found a couple of Showbiz comments, both of which were too good not to share.
New commenter Kevin said he was a huge fan of places like Showbiz. He wrote: "In Minnesota, we had Circus Pizza, which I'm almost positive was from the same company. Same band, same games, everything." Despite liking the pizza, he said the band "still haunts my nightmares to this day." Now, here's the scary part. He wrote a very interesting blog post on the most awful bears - and the Showbiz Pizza band makes up a lot of it.
He's right, they ARE kind of creepy.
Now, that brings me to another first-time commenter, Chris. Now Chris is a lifelong Yorker like me, it looks like, judging from his comments and his bio on his Web site.
He remembers Roll R Way burning down, and also Pappy's Pizza and Showbiz. He said he's still friends with the former manager of Showbiz and also with Aaron Fechter, the co-founder of Showbiz in the 80s.
Now, this is where he really got me. He wrote: "I loved Showbiz pizza so much, I even bought the animatronic band off eBay! Too bad kids these days don't have cool places like that to hang out at."
OK. Animatronic band purchase on eBay. That definitely makes you a fan. Interestingly, if you check out Chris's site, he's very into making Halloween displays. Now, I'm editorializing here, but I happen to think that creepy band would be MUCH more suited for a scary Halloween display than it would be for a fun kids' amusement. Creepy!
