Bubbly Goodness

When I was young, there was a candy we all loved (at least, in my Bronx neighborhood we did) called Orbits.

Orbits, for those of you not in the know, were tiny pebble-sized sugar dots that came in a small box for maybe, 10cents. The boxes also came with a straw, the type that they give you with drinks at a bar, so that you could suck up the candy in the box with the straw.

Kids being kids, we all very creatively found a much better use for the candy AND the straw.

Pellet shooting.

I mean let's face it, they were absolutely perfect for this; tiny pellets, spherical, that came with it's own projectile launcher. They SOLD it to us, we'd be remiss if we didn't take full advantage of it. Who needed paper spitballs when you could literally shoot someone's eye out with sugary goodness? It came WITH the pea shooter, for christ's sake! This, to a child's mind, meant it was LEGAL!

When you shot someone with an Orbits pea, it was practically government sanctioned!

I bring this up, because there is a phenomenon that, admittedly, I do not see the appeal to. Not in the normal, sane-member-of-society sense, anyway.


We're talking about bubble tea.

To the typical American who has no idea what the freak I'm talking about, bubble tea is an asian - Taiwanese, to be specific - import that has overwhelmed the chinatown areas of our major cities. The abridged version of the Wiki description is as follows:

The distinctive characteristic of bubble tea is the presence of chewy translucent balls of pearl tapioca (that sit at the bottom of the glass). Cooked, large pearls have a diameter of at least 6 millimeters. The pearls are prepared by boiling for 25 minutes, until they are cooked thoroughly but have not lost pliancy, then cooled for 25 minutes. After cooking they last about 7 hours. The pearls have little taste, and are usually soaked in sugar or honey solutions.

Bubble teas are generally of two distinct types: fruit-flavored teas, and milk teas. However, some shops offer a hybrid "fruit milk tea." Milk teas may use dairy or non-dairy creamers.

The original bubble tea consisted of a hot Taiwanese black tea, brown large pearl tapioca, condensed milk, and honey. As this drink became more popular, variations were created.

Today one can find shops entirely devoted to bubble tea, similar to juice bars of the early 1990s. (They are served with a straw.) The straw may be brightly colored, and is oversize, large enough for sucking up the pearls.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

So. These drinks come with rounded, tasteless wads of sticky gluten. And a fat straw.

Why am I the only one who seems to see the dangerous applications of this?

I have to tell you...these straws and tapioca balls are perfect for spitballing. Per-fect. I wish they'd had these when I was growing up!

Forget the drinks they come with; I could pour snapple over beheaded gummi bears and come up with the same flavor. The draw, to me anyway, are the wonderous projectile applications of these tapioca balls! Why aren't there more kids being suspended or given detention in school for having bubble tea wars?

What the hell is wrong with kids today?! I've personally tested these, many times, and I have to tell you - with the size of the straw and the rounded consistency of the tapioca, you can achieve considerable range. And we have the added bonus of the stickiness of the tapioca upon impact.

Walking with a friend who *snort* actually buys them to DRINK (!), she didn't believe me on the range and accuracy of these pudding dots. I then fired off a round or two at the stop sign across the street, smiling satisfactorily at the metallic *ping* that followed each.

I'm sure she was impressed. Really.

We decided, in the interest of science, to continue to prove this theory and found multiple targets for me to practice my sharpshooting (sharpspitting?)

In hindsight, I did consider that perhaps defacing public property was not the brightest move. Doing so by the Department of Corrections and the Chinatown prison, possibly even less brilliant. Fortunately we came to this conclusion before any police could watch our demonstration.

She did manage to get off a shot of our handiwork before we ran for the hills.