Back in the late 2010s, my wife and I took our kids to Los Angeles for spring break. Being the good little tourist family that we were, we used the occasion to visit Universal Studios Hollywood, which included a Wizarding World of Harry Potter sub-park at its far end. This was back when my kids found Harry Potter interesting, and right as Potter author J.K. Rowling was committing herself to becoming a culture warrior of the most tiresome sort. We enjoyed all of the magical offerings that Potterworld had on display. The virtual roller coaster (Universal has a lot of them). The actual roller coaster (underwhelming). Ollivanders Wand Shop (endless line for what was ultimately just a gift shop). It was a good time, but hardly a memorable one. What was memorable, however, was the butterbeer.
If you know your Potter lore, and I do to a casual extent, you know that butterbeer was served at the pub in the town of Hogsmeade. I loved beer, and I loved butter, so the second that I saw the word “butterbeer” in the books, I wanted one. I could taste it just by staring at that word for seconds at a time: thick, foamy, sweet like butterscotch. When I’d finished the entire Potter saga, the desire hadn’t abated a whit. I said to myself, “Fuck me, I’d love to drink a butterbeer.”
Thanks to the wonders of IP exploitation, the amusement park had butterbeer carts stationed all around the Potter attractions. The cost for one was nine bucks, but I was already in a place where everything was a ripoff, so what was one more fleecing? I got myself a tray of frozen butterbeers for the family and EXPECTO GLUTTONUM, the real butterbeer tasted exactly like the one I’d imagined. That shit was delicious, so much so that I was like Hoo boy, good thing they don’t sell any butterbeer stuff at the grocery store, otherwise I’d be fatter than Dudley Dursley!
I think you know what happened after that. I was at the grocery store on Sunday when I rolled past a special end-aisle display for Butterbeer Goldfish. As all parents know, Goldfish now come in three types: normal, Flavor Blasted (that means they lacquer each fish with six coats of Cheeto dust), and cookie Goldfish. The cookie Goldfish are dangerous business. They’re not like plain cheddar Goldfish, where you can eat a couple of handfuls and still feel like you’ve snacked responsibly. No, these are Goldfish loaded up with the choicest polyhydrogenated fats and designed explicitly for you to house an entire bag of them and then swear off looking at a full-length mirror for an entire week after. You can’t buy those, I thought to myself.
I bought them. The bag was gone by the next day.
My 12-year-old got his share of the butterfish, but really I was the main culprit here. The second I got my first taste of those bad boys, I knew that it was game over for me. I told my wife, “Don’t let me buy those again.” This was an empty request, given that I usually go on grocery runs by myself. If I cross that display again on my next trip, there’s no telling what I’m capable of.
For this is only the beginning. In celebration of butterbeer season, which is apparently a thing, BIG SNACK is rolling out butterbeer-flavored Pocky, Fudge Stripe cookies, popcorn, and Hershey Kisses. If we use the lifespan of the salted caramel fad as a guide, this means that we’re a scant two years away from butterbeer ice cream, butterbeer yogurt, boutique butterbeer cupcake shops, butterbeer IPAs, and butterbeer loco tacos from Taco Bell. This is already a deeply unsafe world that you and I live in, and the emergence of a full butterbeer aisle of products only makes that danger more acute. I love butterbeer, but I also don’t want to die from spontaneous aortal detonation.
So if you see me at the grocery store anytime soon, tell me to put the butterbeer salsa back on the shelf.
