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How did your life collide with the headlines in 2007?
Iraq, the subprime crisis, Facebook, immigration, oil prices - 2007 had no shortage of hefty headlines. We'd like to hear about how these and other major news events of the past year affected you. Where did your life collide with the news in 2007?

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Open Letter to Cadbury Crème Eggs April 07, 2007E-mail this story E-mail this story
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Judy Minor noticed something disturbing this year. Each year the Cadbury Crème Egg starts showing up on grocery store shelves earlier and earlier. That prompted her to write this letter. It's part of our series: Open Letters to People and Entities Who are Unlikely to Respond.

Judy Minor's Open Letter to Cadbury Eggs
Dear Sir,
I remember the original ads the way one remembers a first kiss.

"Bok bok" A twitchy-nosed rabbit making clucking sounds hopped around. Her movement revealed the eggs glistening in red, blue, and green foil wrappers all cozy in their confetti nest.

"You're looking at a very unusual kind of egg from Cadbury that's only around till Easter. The shell is pure thick Cadbury's dairy milk chocolate. But inside sits a sweet creamy yellow yolk surrounded by delicious white filling."
The ad bore itself into my being. I had seen God. Cream eggs from Cadbury. Why, they're the best thing to come along since the Easter bunny. But you, Sir, have shattered the sanctity of that memory.

It started this year on Valentine's Day night. I stopped by a drug store to see if the sale on heart-shaped chocolate had begun. Just past the Russell Stover, section I froze. My eyes locked; my heart raced. My palms began to itch; the store disappeared. All that remained were I, and the Cadbury Crème Eggs. This was February fourteenth. TWO MONTHS BEFORE EASTER!!

Have you no sense of decency, Sir? No sense of decency at all? So far away in Britain, it is no doubt easy for you to limit your marketing concerns decisions to the bottom line. Still, couldn't you show some restraint, for those of us who have none?

See for the most part—I like to think I am savvy enough to avoid manipulative holiday commerce. But when it comes to your eggs, all rational thought dissolves, and soon I'm no more balanced than a junkie pulling tv's off a truck. That's why I panicked that February night. I thought I had more time. Maybe a few more weeks to step up the workouts, perhaps do a master cleanse.

It's all so hopelessly naughty. I buy and consume the eggs alone. I even have a ritualized way to eat them. I bite off the top about one-third of the way down. My tongue laps up the crème. When I choke on the richness, I like that. It feels decadent and wicked.

Occasionally I'll open a dried-out egg. The crème filling is pasty and bland, stillborn. I mourn the death, then still eat it. Jesus didn't rise so we could waste.

It's an addiction.

And thanks to you, as of today, on the eve of Easter, I've consumed close to 30 eggs already this year. And that's before the post-holiday sales.

So I beg of you, in the name of mercy: find some one else to pick on, in some other industrialized nation. Move your drug mules away from my schoolyard, at least until late March. I think I speak for my jeans when I say we'd all feel a lot better.

Sincerely,
Judy Minor,
West Hollywood, California.