I love Airheads.
They’re straight sugar, and I don’t care.
When my kids bring ‘em home on Halloween, they know I’m coming for them. My wife feels the exact same way about the exact same candy. We have a problem. We’re working on it.
My favorite is Grape. Even outside of Airheads, cough-syrup grape is my go-to for anything: gum, Kool-Aid, Gatorade, snow cones, Jolly-Ranchers, etc. Give me grape or give me death.
Another great Airhead flavor is Mystery. It’s the shiny white one with a question mark on the wrapper. For years, people have tried to guess what the Mystery flavor actually is …
Theirs is a futile pursuit.
There is no mystery flavor.
The white Airhead is made up of the leftover taffy from all of the other Airheads. When there’s not enough goo left to make another batch, the bottom of the barrel is literally scraped. What’s removed is then tossed into a new vat. The process then repeats with any other remnants that might be available. Added to the same mixture with no food coloring, a flavor is formed …
It’s Mystery.
Every time you eat a white Airhead, it’s a new experience.
Ta-da.
So what does ANY of this have to do with brown discs?
Well, their existence follows the same thought process on the part of the disc manufacturer. Poo-brown, muddy-green and dirty-dishwasher gray frisbees don’t hit the shelves because they’re attractive – and certainly not because they’re easy to find out on the course.
They exist because they allow disc manufacturers to use every last ounce of melted polymer in their possession – nothing’s wasted. As long as it’s the same type of liquid plastic, color doesn’t affect the final product. Combined inside an injection-molding machine, though …
They DO make for butt-ugly discs.
For example, check out my wife’s favorite Outlaw …
This thing’s a travesty:
She’s terrified to throw it.
Now it should be said that some hard-to-find discs are intentionally made that way. This Josh Anthon Shimmer Star Destroyer is one such case. Again, it flies like a dream, but man …
It’s awful in the woods:
In recent years, manufacturers have become more savvy with their polymer-saving methods. Seriously, why else do you think Innova’s Swirly Star and Discraft’s ESP Swirl plastics exist?
There are others, too.
Sure, some of them are jaw-droppingly beautiful. But for every five that should be housed in a museum, there are ten that look like they’ve been pulled from the remnants of a house fire.
Unless you can choose the exact disc you’d like, it’s a crapshoot. Ultimately, be it of the “swirly” variety or not, whether you love or hate what arrives in the mail, the manufacturer wins.
Brown discs help their cause.
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