Simkin: Marshmallow peeps signal the spring

The snow refused to stop yesterday and there’s nary a blooming flower to be found, but I… The snow refused to stop yesterday and there’s nary a blooming flower to be found, but I assure you, spring is coming.

You can’t rely on fickle environmental indicators to gauge the passage of seasons. When you turn a corner in the supermarket and are confronted by a display of Marshmallow Peeps, however, that’s when you know winter’s about to end.

Of course, Peeps exist year-round — there are Holiday Peeps and Halloween Peeps. But do they taste the same as Easter peeps? I would argue that they lack that special significance — much like candy corn in April or candy canes in August. Furthermore, people will give you strange looks for enjoying them at other times, as I discovered the summer I tried to pioneer frozen leftover Peeps snacks with minimal success — and maximum gooey freezer messes.

Now is the time to enjoy Peeps without such unfortunate social repercussions. Available in six different colors and packs of five, 10 or 15, the fluffy chick and rabbit replicas will soon be lining the aisles of drugstores and groceries across the country.

The bewitching confections are manufactured from nothing more than marshmallows, corn syrup, magic, gelatin and carnauba wax. A mere five Peeps will provide a walloping 12 percent of your recommended daily carbohydrate intake and 34 grams of sugar, but not a single gram of trans, saturated, poly-saturated or mono-saturated fat … so that’s something.

A time-honored tradition spanning nearly six decades, Peeps might have gained some of their spring popularity by replacing the gifting of live animals for the Easter holiday, thus preventing the inevitable mistreatment and death of countless chicks and bunnies. So essentially this sugary snack fights animal cruelty.

In 1999, presumably very bored scientists at Emory University experimented with dissolving, burning and disintegrating Peeps with a variety of chemical agents including phenol, acetone and sulfuric acid. Sixty-five minutes later the majority of the mass of each Peep was reduced to slime, but the sugary eyes refused to dissolve in anything. Perhaps they stay in your stomach forever, like swallowed chewing gum? I suppose they’ll be keeping the cockroaches company in the event of a nuclear winter.

I mentioned my ill-fated frozen Peeps venture, but the Just Born company’s official Peeps website — oh, it’s a real thing — offers presumably better-thought-out recipes for Peeps Bunny Dips, Drizzle Pops, PEEPSicles and something described only as “Peeps Blue Raspberry Sparkle.” If you see it fit to try any of these, please let me know how it goes — my roommates have forbidden me from any such experimentation.

The implications of naming a candy manufacturer Just Born could be seen as sinister in a certain light, considering the encouragement to ingest (replicas of) newborn baby animals, but further investigation proves the name choice is not nearly so creepy: According to USA Today, Russian immigrant Sam Born, following the fine tradition of naming things after their inventor or owner, opted for a clever pun in christening his new business venture in 1953.

Despite the Eastern heritage of their inventor, Peeps consider themselves quintessentially American. For instance, I once had the good fortune of stumbling across the Peepmobile parked at the Musikfest in Bethlehem, Pa. A tour through its strange depths was like exploring an especially single-mindedly marshmallow-centric Wonka fantasyland, where dioramas displayed frolicking bunnies in psychedelic colors. As consolation for being forced to re-enter the real world upon the conclusion of the tour, I was given a package of patriotic star-shaped peeps, the likes of which I had never seen before nor have been able to find since.

Of course, considering Sam Born’s success, Peeps could be viewed as part of a stellar example of the American Dream. These lumps of marshmallow are capable of anything, so why are you still sitting here readings this when you could be out seeking sugary, delicious, Peeps?