Monday, Jul 6, 2009

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Sunset Rubdown at the Entry

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Seven billion Pixy Stix

by Jay Gabler, TC Daily Planet • June 29, 2008 • My friend Nalini and I were sitting enjoying some Pixy Stix (on clearance for $1 at the Highland Park Blockbuster) when we noticed that each Stik (Stick? Stix?) was numbered. A Maui Punch Pixy Stik, for example, was numbered 7318514434. That got us wondering: Did they start from 1? Has the Wonka company produced over seven billion Pixy Stix? Even at the generous estimate of 50 Stix per package, that would work out to over 140 million packages of Pixy Stix. If there have been 140 million packages of Pixy Stix sold, that would mean that even if each were sold for the $1 I paid, the world has spent more money on Pixy Stix than it took to build the new Science Museum of Minnesota with its gratuitously convertible Omnitheater. Could that be? But wait! We then noticed that each Maui Punch Pixy Stik bore that same number—while the Grape, Cherry, and Orange Stix shared numbers of their own. Does that mean that there have been over seven billion flavors of Pixy Stix produced?! It boggles the mind.

Arts Orbit is a multisource blog about the local arts scene, featuring both original contributions by Daily Planet writers and entries reprinted from partner blogs and online publications.


Why am I sharing these idle speculations with you? Because the next time you’re at the video store chosing a movie to rent, you will be well-served by the knowledge that we devoted all that time to pursuing this line of reasoning as we were watching Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd.

That’s not to say the movie was boring, exactly…just that we found the numbers on Pixy Stix more interesting. That may say something about the movie, or it may say something about us.

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workaround

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