I, Mark Andrew McCarthy, Staff Writer for the Impact News and only person on earth with a brain, hereby cast my endorsement for dulce de leche (creamy caramel) as a returning flavor to the Dum Dum lollipop brand.

I also condemn pink lemonade, the flavor currently winning the voting gauntlet, on the grounds that I don’t like it. It probably colluded with the Russians, everyone seems to be doing that nowadays.

On a side note, did you know that you can vote for lollipop flavors?

Seriously, why no one told me this sooner is beyond me, but I plan on making up for lost time. Already voted, and everything I picked is losing. Dum Dums lets you know who’s winning the vote after you cast it, and nothing that I like is winning.

I voted for lemon lime, fruit punch, caramel apple (Don’t ask how they would pull that one off), and dulce de leche on the grounds that I never had them before. Yes, I’m aware curiosity killed the cat, but I’m not a cat so I get an exemption from the rule. And it’s not like these are the weirdest flavors the brand has ever put forward before.

I know because they proudly list their past acts of depraved flavors. Like they list every flavor created, discontinued, and returning flavor by the year.

It gets weird if you were a fan of either chocolate, banana, or raspberry since those three got discontinued and renewed without warning back in the early days. Oh, and to the guy who thought no one would miss popcorn as a flavor, you were wrong and I’m coming for you.

Anyway, the timeline lists some weird ones like milkshake and bacon, not that I hate the idea. It’s just that a man needs to one day accept the fact that bacon can’t be put into everything. I learned that the hard way with bacon flavored popcorn, god may my taste buds and colon rest in peace after that endeavor.

As for milkshake, its less about the flavor itself and more that you just did a plain milkshake. Seriously there are some weird yet fascinating flavors out there and you only have the stomach to make regular a flavor?

Oh, and don’t think that your too high and mighty to make a weird flavor, I saw pizza on that timeline you snakes!

Pizza, really!? We had to turn that into a fricken lollipop? Must we turn every dish into a fricken pop?

Is brunch going to get its own pop at this point? What about a burger with ketchup or the whole Thanksgiving turkey while you’re at it! Ya shameless animals, dropping popcorn for this garbage.

YES, I AM STILL HUNG UP ON POPCORN GETTING DUMPED. BECAUSE WE LIVE IN A WORLD WERE PIZZA GOT THE GREEN LIGHT.

“But Mark, all the cool kids are turning pizza into a flavor for everything, we just wanna be like the cool kids. Don’t be a stiff.”

Well if all the cool kids moved into their mother’s basements and developed stage 4 neckbeard, would you still do it?

No, thought so.

And just as a general rule of thumb, “pizza-flavored” doesn’t mean they made a pizza and turned it into a powder for consumption, often times it’s just a fancier type of cheese flavoring.

So yeah, the stuff I voted for isn’t that weird, but it’s still going to lose the voting gauntlet.

Blue raspberry, cotton candy, and pink lemonade are all winning in their respective categories and it annoys me to no end.

Why can’t Dum Dums sell custom made flavors, like why can’t I just order online the flavors that I want in the assortment that I want. I’m more than positive that they keep all the recipes for their past flavors, so remaking them wouldn’t be that hard.

Hell, I just looked up a gourmet popcorn company before doing this story, and they had a much wilder range of flavors than what Dum Dums was running.

We live in the age of customizing everything and anything, its time for every company to get with the times so I can live out my demented tastes.

Or, and this is just a crazy idea, everyone can go to the link below and help knock the three frontrunners off their stupid throne so we can get something interesting.

Seriously do we need cotton candy as a flavor as half the fun comes from the texture and less from the flavor. No one would miss it, except for all the people who voted for it but since they have different tastes to me they don’t count.

And blue raspberry comes back far too often for its own good, it’s too basic for a vote. If it doesn’t come back this year than it will return the next year.

And pink lemonade, oh god, the teenage years are flowing back to me. Its one of those flavors you like as a kid then grow out of when you realize it isn’t special. It’s just lemonade with either strawberries, cranberries or raspberries added to it. And don’t get me started on its origin stories.

That’s right, stories as in multiple, because no one knows where it truly came from. How could we drink something that we don’t know where it came from? It might be poisoned with that their fluoride stuff, or whatever chemical is currently hated by the masses for no real reason.

So yeah, do me a favor and vote. I gave up on trying to get people to vote for important stuff like presidents and Congress years ago, so this is the next best thing.

(Link below leads to the voting site)

https://www.dumdumpops.com/vote-for-flavors