Pop Rocks!!!  These fizzy little candies had a genuine mystique to little kids in the late 1970’s — and they were pretty damned good too! (I am linking here to the Bionic Disco Youtube channel for the video.)

Of course, no reminiscence about Pop Rocks could leave out the morbid, wide-eyed awe we kids felt at the fate of poor Mikey, the beloved little brother in the classic Life Cereal commercials.  The finicky tike had perished horribly after a concoction of Pop Rocks and soda had literally exploded his stomach.

It was all bullshit, of course — and maybe the first example of pervasive “fake news” affecting me in my lifetime.  But the bizarre and grisly myth got the harmless candy yanked right off the market after sales plummeted.