Media Bob's Box Of Chocolates

[Tonga Bob]

A man who was not smart but knew what he liked once famously said "Life if like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get". That man was of course me, because I just said it then. It also applies to the teams of Sweet, you never know what you're going to get when you get into a match thread with them. Which is why I have been providing my team with a chance to Know Your Opponents for what seems like 84 years now.

The theme for my KYO interludes this season has therefore been which chocolate bar best represents the opposition we have faced, which I now invite you to peruse. Please consider...​

 

[Tonga Bob]

Our first opponents to get to know in season 39 are the East Side Hawks. As has been noted already, this is the 27th time we have played them in a month so they are no strangers to us. So what is a chocolate bar that is repetitious?



Yessir, it's the Kit Kat.

Kit Kats aren't so much bland, not many chocolate bars are tbh. But they're a simple bar (or bars, depending on how you break them). Milk chocolate and wafers. Good solid ingredients which have found recent success, unless you're Japanese. They do weird things like different flavours and rebrands, but they're never as popular as the original. Plus their wrapper looks a bit like a flag, and they just won one so there's that.

The key selling point of Kit Kats is that you can break it into smaller bars to make it easier to eat, unless you run a bit loose like boncer34 and take a bite straight out of the long side.



Anyhoo, back to the breaking. The Kit Kat catchphrase is "Have a break, have a Kit Kat". And just like the chocolate, the Hawks have had breaks. From premierships (now resolved thankfully for them), from Tarks (now also resolved thankfully for them) and even from their name and whole identity (now resolved thankfully for everyone). They also melt if you hold onto them for too long.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

Back by popular demand (well it was more of a whinge but I'll take it) we have the second Know Your Opponents for the season, this time brought to you by Big Chocolate.

Round two sees us up against the Gumbies - a green coloured team that looks like plastic but isn't with a thin coating, lots of empty space in the middle and whose captain is a connoisseur of mint flavoured milk (the greatest of all milk flavours). So it would come as no surprise to anyone that the chocolate bar I have chosen to best describe the Gumbies is the Aero Bar (mint edition).



Light and fluffy, sweet but ultimately unfulfilling and making you want more, the Aero Bar is the chocolate you give to your kids if you're leaving them with their mother with a helluva sugar rush but you don't want to ruin their dinner. Won't make you fat but will give you diabetes. As an aside, I'm sure Aero isn't short for aerodynamic cos I once chucked one at my brother from across the room and it didn't make it two meters, then the dog ate it and shat all over the rug that had my favourite Phantom comic on it then Mum threw it out so yeah Ocha905 I know about loss.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

It's round three and we've found ourselves in a week with the Old Farts so it's time to look into the box of choccies and get to Know Our Opponents. And the chocolate bar I have to describe this lot is the Snickers bar.



Like the Snickers, the OOFs contain peanuts. Some people are allergic to them to the point of death, while other enjoy their crunchy interior. When I was I kid I thought I was allergic to them, but it just turned out I didn't like how they tasted so like my time with the OOFs I enjoy the sweet parts of them and throw the nutty remainder at my brother without him noticing which would stick to him and the dog would gnaw at him until he cried. My brother that is, not the dog.

Snickers was spruiked by Mr T, whose catchphrase of "Get some nuts!" is as true for the qooty team as it is for the chocolate bar. He had another catchphrase about pitying fools, which describes his recruitment strategy [FUN FACT: you can't spell Snickers without 'nick'].​

 

[Tonga Bob]

This week we're hosting the Las Vegas Bears, one of the better groups to interact with with nowhere near as much fear and/or loathing as previous weeks. And the chocolate bar I've chosen to describe the Las Vegans is this:



Yes it's a Picnic bar, but the Bears have got a Yogi-inspired version which they call the Picanic bar, given the fact they enjoy pilfering from pic-a-nic baskets. Vegans love nuts, so the Picanic bar has plenty of them (as does Las Vegas in general), and of course what happens in a Picanic bar stays in a Picanic bar. It also has wafers instead of the Snickers bar we saw last week, which makes it a lot less dense.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

This week we have the Fighting Furies. So called because for a few seasons there they were fighting for life, they're now on the road to recovery and are angry as heck. Kinda like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. In fact, dinosaurs are a bit like coconuts in that they have a hard exterior covering a watery interior, have been around for a long time, the meat inside of it is white and they hurt your head if one fell on you. So with that in mind the chocolate bar that I've chosen to represent the Furies is the Bounty bar.



Why else have I made this connection? Well the Furies' recruiting over the last off season was bountiful, coconut flakes are kinda furry when they stick to you (like my brother when he was rummaging through the pantry this one time and the shelves fell down on him haha he looked like an emaciated polar bear), they're packaged as two smaller bars which makes sense given people enjoy them more in smaller doses and like the ship of the same name a mutiny is only a matter of time given the 18 co-captains this team has.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

We've quickly arrived at the half way point of the KYO episodes for this season, and to get us to the half way point we have the Sin City Swamprats. The Sin Citizens had an off season where the majority of the bigger names departed for above ground locations such as the joke-telling patriarch, the goal kicking icon, the stream-of-consciousness-having overseas contractor and the proof-reading rules monkey, which has left their list somewhat light. And with that in mind the chocolate bard which I've used to describe them is the Milky Way.



It's one of the smallest of the chocolate bars on the market, which usually means you have to buy them in bags which still struggle to fill a minimum requirement, in this case satisfying a craving for chocolate. Milky Way is of course named after the galaxy in which we live which, like the team, you struggle to see if there's any light about.

Estimates vary as to the number of habitable planets there are in the Milky Way galaxy, but run somewhere between 20 Billion and 100 Billion. And of those planets, further studies suggest that there may be between 30 and 200 civilizations from those habitable planets that are advanced enough to engage with other such civilizations. Enter Enrico Fermi, an Italian-American physicist who heard these figures of there being many advanced civilizations in the Milky Way and asked a simple yet paradoxical question: "But where is everybody?"

So come for the week, have your fill of these undersized chocolate bars but be warned that your appetite may not be satisfied by the end of the bag so it may be worth bringing your own goodies to finish the job.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

The opponents we are getting to know this week is the Mount Buller Demons/Delons/Deez/Corroboree Frogs (depending on how you perceive them). We already know them quite well, what with the qricket qrossovers and mixed playing records and previous histories and such and such, but for the benefit of those who haven't been a part of that I will attempt to describe our hosts through the sugary medium of the chocolate bar. And the one I've chosen to describe them is the Mars Bar.



Like the Demons, the Mars Bar is one of the more popular chocolate offerings going around, which has a comparatively hefty yet irregular 53 gram weight. It also has a suspicious looking vein on top of it. Mars was the Roman God of both war and agriculture, who was a bit of a Demon himself apparently but still had a passion for gardening, and had a planet named after him which oldmate Elon wants to go and move to which further proves their popularity. A week with the Mount Bullerites will also help us to work, rest and/or play, so I encourage all of you to do a combination of these things. And yes Dinsdale the wrapper has a picture of a frog on it.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

We had a week off from this place but just like the Godfather we've been pulled back in. This is our eighth KYO for the season, and we've moved onto the Baghdad Bombers. Baghdad is of course the capital of Iraq, which shares a border with Turkey or Türkiye or whatever they call themselves. So it will come as no surprise (unless you thought I was gonna go with the Cherry Ripe) that the chocolate bar I'm using to desribe the Bombers (oh ok cherry bomb I get it now) is the Turkish Delight. [FUN FACT: I was going to choose Coconut Rough in honour of my cousin CursingFijian but his mum didn't want me to do him dirty like that].



Just like the Babylonians, the Turkish Delight (or lokum if you want to use the native vernacular) is another one of those chocolate bars that polarise the population, has a thin coating of brown stuff which is kind of hard but kind of not over the top of a soft gelatinous centre and tastes like rosewater & diabetes. They have staying power in that they're normally the last ones picked from a box of Favourites but they have some die hard fans out there. Apparently they have 60% less fat now, probably because Pugsley left.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

The ninth one for season 39 is Roy which, like one of those ethnic coffee shops on Sydney Road full of chain smoking card playing opas, is a club frequented by the elderly. There were a couple of different chocolate bars that I was thinking of to best describe them, from Fry's Chocolate Cream (the oldest chocolate bar, first made in 1866) through to straight up prunes (Nature's candy if nature wants you to shit yourself regular), but I settled on this - the Europe Summer Roll.



A staple at most aged care facilities and always on offer at your grandparents' house, the Summer Roll looks like a silverback gorilla with dandruff. Nuttier than Roys patriarch Mobbs with a nougat interior fit for gumming and a choc/coconut/chud covering, it's the cousin of the Honey Nougat Log and those weird ones with apricots in them. They're perennially out of fashion but they always seem to be around and like the Roys they provide a nostalgic hint of a bygone time.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

This week were up against the more genrically named Wonders who, like many others, have left the West Coast behind them. Maybe they had lunch with Sam Mitchell? Who can say, but their more generic name had me thinking about what home brand chocolate bars are on the market. Aldi have their own brand, and Cadbury Dairy Milk is as plain as chocolate bars come despite the best efforts of Professor Julius Sumner Miller. But there's more to the Wonders than just a plain old block of chocolate. There are intricacies, layers if you will. Put them under any sort of pressure though and they are prone to crumbling, which is why I have chosen the Flake.



Not just a generic cut of fish that's deep fried in oil, the Flake is one of the oldest chocolate bars going around that did well back in the day but is now more of a novelty than anything else. Prone to melting easily, past history has also shown that like the Flake, the Wonders have been known to go the squib in certain important events. Squibs are also known to be deep friend in oil under the guise of calamari rings, which adds another point of connection to this week's choc analogy. They're still sweet though... well most of them are.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

We're up to the penultimate KYO segment for season 39. That means it's the second last one (pardon the Wazzasplaining). We've got the Dragons this week, which is appropriate given it's Easter this weekend and the sim has determined that we are their bunnies. And Easter bunnies give out chocolate, so that's what I'm gonna do in the guise of the chocolate bar that I have chosen to describe this week's opponents - the Peppermint Crisp.



As you can probably tell by both the colour of the wrapper and the use of the word peppermint in the name, this chocolate bar is mostly green. Like the Dragons. It's also covered with brown stuff. Also like the Dragons. The inside is brittle. Again, like the Dragons. Not everyone likes mint flavoured stuff, although long time followers of my rambling will know that I'm a Masters spearmint milk fanboy but that's different. And at the risk of repeating myself, that's like the Dragons. Hell, even the Crisp part of the name is a throwback to when they used to roll out those irritatingly scaly gifs ad nauseam. You know the ones... stupid bloody Rebecca Black!

One thing that the Peppermint Crisp is good for however is for crumbling up into little pieces and sprinkling over a Pav. And given that the Dragons have more Freo fans per capita than any other team in the SFA (yes, even us!), they absolutely love a good Pav. But like the Great Man's commentary, even Pavs can turn against you.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

We're back on the horse after last week's absurdity and have made it to the final installment of KYO for the season. It's been quite the trip down both memory and candy lane as we have discovered more about our opponents each week. And the final opponent that we get to know are the Gold City Royals, so the chocolate bar that I have chosen to best represent the Gold Citizens is the Violet Crumble.



Like it's cousin the Crunchie, the Violet Crumble consists of golden honeycomb covered with brown stuff, while also wrapped in a purple wrapper. Well technically the colour is violet but purple is the colour of royalty so imma go with that. The crumble can relate to the results that the Royals have had in recent times, as highlighted by their captain's whinge earlier in the season ("oh no, we haven't won a premiership in eight seasons, we want an oompa loompa now daddy!").

The crumbling could also relate to the brittleness of the bones of royalty caused by generations of inbreeding, with the Hapsburg Jaw not as solid as one would be led to believe. Or like glass, it could be because if you place enough pressure on it then it will shatter. Unless that glass had formed into one of Prince Rupert's Drops, otherwise known as Dutch Tears. As Austin Powers' dad famously stated: "There's only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch". So f*ck the Dutch and their tears.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

Well we've got the Gumbies again, the Aero bar of the SFA. In a way they're also like the chocolate mint that you find on the pillow of a hotel bed. Sometimes they're a welcome surprise when you first check in that gives you both a sugar fix and a minty taste in your mouth, and other times they're a brown stain on your pillow if you don't find it straight away and it looks like you've shat the bed & some of it exploded onto your ear. Let's see which mint we get this week...
​

If you ate enough of those little mints you probably would shit the bed

 

[Tonga Bob]

We've got the Furies again who, the last time I did one of these for them, were described as a Bounty bar. Well this time I'll throw in the Coconut Rough.



Still got that flaky coconut interior and still covered with brown stuff, the sort of stuff only found in showbags but now smaller and a lot rougher looking. Heads that a mother would only just tolerate, and even then if they wore four eye patches (in case the first two didn't work). And the number of captains they're rocking. What do they say about too many chiefs spoiling the broth, or too many cooks and not enough Indians? Whatever, it's Flogapalooza this week so kick some shins.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

The first time we came up against the Swaprats I described them as a Milky Way chocolate bar, which is of a somewhat inconsequential size. Well since then they've edged ever closer to the proverbial abyss, losing their captain in the process and throwing a hail Mary to a former player and a journeyman to revive their fortunes. So I'm giving them a second chocolate bar to help describe their back end of the season, and that's the Time Out.



Like the increase in peril the club faces since last we met, the Time Out is bigger than a Milky Way, but at the same time not as popular. So much so that, as the name suggests, it may not be long for our shelves. It comes in two halves, still sweet, but has the propensity to get stale easier than its early season counterpart. So I hope you get to enjoy them while you can.​

 

[Tonga Bob]

Throughout the season many people (well three) have asked me which chocolate bar I would describe the Warriors as, and in my mind there was only one answer.



That's right, we're Cherry Ripe. So good it was named twice.

Dark yet sweet, fruity yet can get stuck in your teeth. Overlooked by some, adored by the rest. Truly it is the King of Chocolate Bars. And ripened, as we have done the hard yards sitting in the proverbial fruit bowl and as a team are ready for well-overdue success. Plus the Whore Tree has been known to tie our stems into knots.​