Pagosa Springs – Ah, nature.
Everything about it apparently has retail potential.
It came as a bit of a surprise for Bill Goddard – an artisan with fruit since spending his teen years at the elbow of his jam- and jelly-making grandmother – that out of all his gourmet specialties, most of the best sellers are fashioned after animal droppings.
The candy poops – clusters of nuts and caramel hand-dipped in specially blended dark and milk chocolate – are called Wolf Creek Deer Droppings, Pagosa Springs Elk Poop, San Juan Bear Piles, Weminuche Moose Poop and Colorado Baby Buffalo Chips.
The Bear Piles look authentic. But most of the various “droppings” are not spherical enough to fool anyone.
“And they’re larger than actual size,” says Connie Bunte, co-owner with Goddard of The Choke Cherry Tree store.
Bunte says she and her partner care more about crafting a quality confection than making something that really looks like scat. Otherwise, she says, you might as well just cover a peanut in chocolate and be done with it.
“Just about every tourist and candy store in the Rockies does something like that and calls it moose droppings,” she says. Why? Because poop sells.
How else could one explain a line of T-shirts by Earth Sun Moon Trading Co. called “Endangered Feces.” Each shirt is adorned with 20 scientifically accurate illustrations of the ploppers of wildlife ranging from the gray wolf to the New Mexican Ridge-nosed rattlesnake. A new line of shirts called Birdsplat is self-explanatory.
“Endangered Feces is a classic. It’s done very well for us,” says Tim Levine, marketing director of the Grove City, Pa.-based wholesaler.
In the novelty trade, a classic is something that still sells well after five or six years, he said.
A line of jewelry called Hung Dung was once available at the Mangy Moose Emporium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. It was the real thing – earrings of shellacked moose droppings. The store later ordered tie tacks, refrigerator magnets and key chains as well. However, creator David Stephenson moved east and grew tired, he says, of “poop profiteering.”
“We took pride in the quality of our moose poop,” says Stephenson, now living in Lexington, Ky. “But I never saw anyone that we gave (earrings) to wear them.”
A now-popular item at the Mangy Moose, says assistant manager Regina Nowlin, is the (Expletive) Kebab (sort of rhymes with shish kebab), real moose poo and bread on a stick, under heavy plastic coating. It carries the legend: “The more bread you have, the less sh(ish) you have to eat.” It retails for $2.95.
This just scratches the surface of what is available in stores and on the Internet. One website, the Fart Mart, says it has everything ever needed along the lines of fake poo.
And, while Pagosa Springs’ Choke Cherry Tree purveys a variety of sweets and treats, the candy droppings garner most of the attention.
The droppings line was not the result of careful market research. It was the brainstorm of a 15-year-old helper.
The idea of an appellation involving wildlife droppings occurred on a day when they were all up to their knuckles in chocolate experiments, and the teen was joking around about what it reminded her of.
Some older people, from conservative parts of the country, find the line of candy poop “horrible” and “disgusting,” Bunte concedes.
“It’s just a novelty,” Bunte says. Madcap vacationers want “something a little different” to take back home.
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.
