Have you ever been at a hockey game and thought, “Man, I wish I could be playing some sort of hockey-like game right now with a piece of popcorn as a puck?”
Me neither, but on the off chance that you have, the New Jersey Devils have gone into the lab and made your dream a reality.
Behold! The official Devils-branded popcorn bucket with some kind of pinball hockey game on top!
It’s the work of the mad scientists at Levy Restaurants, and it could be the biggest salvo in the ongoing war for novelty stadium concession vessel supremacy.
There’s no denying that we live in the golden age of stadium food novelties. From beer sticks, skates, sabres, and horns to small-plastic Zamboni-brand ice resurfacers stuffed full of chicken tenders, it’s one of those things that makes you proud to live in the present.
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I’ll take beer skates over rampant tuberculosis and no air conditioning any day.
But this one troubles me a little. It’s groundbreaking, but when the goal is to get people watching hockey, why would they need something to entertain them in the stands?
I thought that was the game’s job.
Now, I don’t have kids — just a dog and a little bit of disposable income — but I would be so annoyed if I bought my youngsters NHL tickets, popcorn at stadium prices in a souvenir bucket, and what do they do?
Ignore the world-class athletes on the ice before them in favor of flippering a piece of Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet popping corn back and forth.
It’s like if you needed your kid to stop playing video games to power wash the deck, and when you went to unplug their PlayStation, you realized they were playing “PowerWash Simulator.”
Having said that, I feel pretty confident that I would be a very good popcorn hockey player. I just have shockingly quick reflexes and am good enough at geometry to track the bounces when the irregularly shaped popcorn piece hits the boards.
So would I buy one? No, but I’d school anyone who bought one and then sat next to me.
