Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Penny Candy


I know. You are looking at the photo and thinking that I really like my M&Ms. For awhile, I'd grab a bag of them (gotta have the peanuts in there) at work for desert. Anyhow, I was at work one day when a co-worker brought up an idea that's been circulating which will get rid of the penny. My biggest issue with the idea is that someone will gain or lose more in every transaction while rounding up or down (when adjusting values to the nickel.) The co-worker was mentioning to me that it costs more to make a penny than it is worth... so why not replace it with something else, like an M&M, as they'd be cheaper to make.

Definitely on the crazy side, when it comes to ideas, as inflation eats at the value of our money but children would be tempted to nibble on your change when they find it. They also go bad, crack and break (as the blue one in the picture on the left.) Yet, that wasn't my response to him on the idea. I just asked him what we would do with the two-cent pieces.

He was kind of shocked when I asked it and said, "There aren't any two-cent pieces." I replied, "There would be. There are conjoined twin M&M's that occur fairly often." To prove this, I collected two week's worth (one bag per day) and they are pictures above. Yes, in ten packages, I had five of these anomalies. Whether our money gets adjusted in the future, I don't see it becoming candy.

5 comments:

Ken said...

I've heard the rumblings of doing away with the penny as well. It usually is in the same discussion as doing away with the dollar bill and replacing it with a dollar coin. This is the first that I've heard about replacing the penny with candy though...

Unknown said...

My comments:

Penny currently costs .014 to make, not quite enough to do anything about, however, it has also been said that the price of copper and zinc is going through the roof thanks to the building boom in China and by 2008 it could be up to about .019.

One Siamese M&M every other bag, thats better odds than having a Siamese twin baby. I wonder if it is the same ratio for other varieties of M&Ms. I see a scientific research paper here Martin.

Bar L. said...

I like your theory of using M&Ms as pennies but wouldn't that get a bit messy on hot summer days? They SAY they don't melt in your hand, but they do!

LoraLoo said...

If candy were money, I'd be homeless since I'd be eating it all. LOL

BeckEye said...

Too many hands on those M&Ms!