doodledee

I bought one of those giant cans of Slim Jims the other day. I was walking through Target and I saw they were on sale and I figured they'd be a good snack at work so I just threw them in the cart. It was a classic impulse buy, and I when I got home I laughed at myself for thinking I needed 500 Slim Jims.
Some people feel that impulse buys are the root of all consumerism evil. I think they're just kind of silly and harmless. Like purchasing a rabbit for your kids at Easter, which, according to this article, is frequently an impulse purchase:

Rabbits purchased around Easter time are often impulse buys, bought because they are cute and cuddly. Many of these rabbits are under the age they should be weaned at and are soon sick due to the stress, improper feeding, too much handling, etc.
The ones who survive the trials of Easter morning... grow up, outgrow kids and cages and welcomes. Many are dumped on the streets by people who figure rabbits can survive in the "wild". They can't and they don't. These rabbits die. Rabbits are domestic, not wild. If put out on the streets or in the woods, they rarely survive more than a few weeks. It's also highly illegal to just abandon an animal.

Whoa. Maybe impulse buys aren't just silly. And maybe they aren't just the root of all consumerism evil... maybe they're actually the root of all evil! Slim Jim = Impulse buy. Impulse buy = dead bunnies. When you buy a pack of tic-tacs in the check out line at Target: bunnies die. Or if you pick up those 3/.99 Nut Rolls at Fleet Farm - that's right - bunnies die. What a dilemma.
Evil or not, I gotta believe that 90% of Slim Jim sales are impulse purchases. I mean really, who takes out the time to sit down and write out a grocery list that includes Slim Jims? I bet nobody, that's who. And since somebody is buying them, that only leaves the dorks like me who think that salted mystery meat sticks will make a good afternoon snack for the next 4 weeks to impulse buy them.
So anyway, I bring the Slims to work this morning and around mid-afternoon I go in for a snack. As I'm opening the can, I notice the nutritional information. After careful study I see that a 'serving size' for a Slim Jim is 7 slims. Whaaaaa!? You're supposed to sit there and unwrap 7 beef sticks for a snack? You'd have wrappers piled all over your desk! You'd look like a total pig! As I see it, they should either increase the size of the jim or modify the nutritional information so that a serving is a single slim.
I'm giving ConAgra until the end of the year to resize their product and modify their marketing strategy to discourage impulse purchases. If nothing changes, expect me to launch a 'Save Rabbits, Boycott Slim Jims' campaign sometime around the middle of January.