I was shocked- shocked, I tell you!- when I opened the kits and found little round tablets that you have to dissolve in vinegar. What? WHAT-WHAT-WHAT? Where are the four, tiny, impossible to open, oh-so-spillable, stinky bottles of green, blue, yellow and pink that you daubed on the eggs with q-tips?
Apparently, the Old School method has been discontinued. No one else could remember what I was talking about! Zak waxed at length about how the tablets have been around as long as he can remember. (He's 12.)
I've been looking around online. At least one another person mentioned the same dismay, but their post is dated April 2000.
Whoa. What else have I been missing?
EDITED TO ADD:
Okay, the comments have prompted me to pull out these old pictures. Look, it's Gwen from 1993! Isn't her "Blossom" hat the coolest? Here, we are, painting Easter eggs with q-tips.
Let's get a close-up on the jars, shall we?
See?
EDITED (AGAIN) to ADD:
Yes! My sister figured it out! Here they are, the stinky, spillable bottles of Doc Hinkle's Easter Egg dye! Also? How fun to post something lighthearted and get 10 comments right away! I missed you guys. I'm glad the work load has lightened enough to let me get back to my hobbies.
17 comments:
I dont remember bottles or q-tips either. I remember getting the little pills and dissolving them in vinegar then soaking the eggs in there.
Unhelpful, dude.
I'm afraid I won't be much help, either. Like Luke, I remember the dissolving pills.
Maybe you always had the counterfeit "Paass" brand, and they had stinky vials?
And whoever used q-tips? I always had the wire holder thing that you use to remove the egg after dunking.
I have pictures of Gwen and me and Alissa and Kelly coloring Easter eggs from waaay back in the day and as soon as I am done getting an oil change I am driving home locating that picture from 8th grade and posting it and hoping you can see the bottles and q-tips I am too rushed in my desire to do this that I can not use punctuation
The colored-tablet-dropped-in-vinegar-with-wire-egg-holder-egg-dipping process seems so much easier anyway. Makes a very nice even coloring on the eggs. I think you lived in an alternate Paas-verse from the rest of us.
yay, i definitely did not have bottles and/or q-tips....we had tablets (although i don't remember what we dropped them into, but it must've been vinegar) and the freakin' wire thing from hell. and you turned over the box and punched out the holes and attempted to use the wire thing from hell to place the egg in the hole to dry. i absolutely HATED that wire thing and i always just ended up using my hand to get the egg in the hole.
angie, what odd easter egg coloring kit are you talking about???
You know what, I think we used those once. But only once, and then we went back to the little dissolving tablets and the wire holder.
This year Gaby's egg decoration kit has glitter. That should be "fun."
My favorite when I was a kid were the shrink wrap ones that went over the egg, then you put them in the boiling water. I think they were my parents' favorite, too -- they were much less messy. And, cool pictures.
I *heart* Gwen's hat.
Shall big sis answer all? Angie's thinking of Doc Hinkles egg dye, originally made by a Columbia, PA pharmacist. I always thought it was universal until moving to New England. You can get the kits - four bottles (red, yellow, purple and blue) and four q-tips included - from the Vermont Country Store (ironically actually), as well as dochinkles.com. Doc Hinkles is far superior egg dye to ANYTHING paas or otherwise, I SWEAR! In fact, I'm buying my kit RIGHT NOW.
Oh! Shannon beat me to the punch mentioning the shrink-wrapped kits.
Ang - we always had the dissolving tablet kits, too.... so, I don't know what to tell you. I don't think it was a Lancaster thing, or even an EP thing....I think it was a Gaul family thing. :)
I always loved the evenly-saturated jewel-toned eggs that you could make with the tablet kits... I always thought the paint-it-on q-tip kit eggs looked too messy. I guess my OC tendencies started early. :)
(and I am SO excited (sarcasm) to see whatever 8th grade photos you pull out next. I'm pretty sure there's a Gaul-kitchen Easter egg photo with Ian R, too...
Jewish girl remembers the egg dye in the bottles! I can attest that Ang did not break any laws of journalistic ethics and Photoshop that photo.
But my mom used to get the kind with the little wire dipper. Passover eggs, don't you know. Need something in the middle of the seder plate.
Oh, the hat... no wonder I got so much action in 1993. Ha.
I've got a couple of unopened bottles/kits from Doc Hinkle's left in the cupboard. You're welcome to them but sadly, it is the end of an era! Even if used them 57+ years.....Mom
I'm with Michelle on the nuisance of the wire-holder-to-cardboard-hole transfer. And then when the eggs dried, there was a line where the box and the egg met!
I always liked the boiled egg sleeves, too. Do they make those anymore?
Re the first picture: My first thought was, "Why does Gwen's hat have a metal ring on it?" But then I noticed the metal ring was actually not part of the hat. Silly me. Nice hat, Gwen! Much better without the ring.
And let's not forget the cool "trick" that if you draw on the eggs with crayon, then dunk them into the cup (I had the tablet die childhood as well) the die won't go where you drew with the crayon. Magic!
Luke- always the helpful one!
Wow- it's been a very long time since I've done this. I don't remember much about it to be honest. How strange is that? Perhaps it's because my birthday often fell so close to Easter? i do however remember the Easter when I was six or so and found the chocolate foil wrapped eggs that my parents hid where I couldn't reach it (but my older brother could) and being very upset about that.
Yep. Seriously. Vivid memory. Apparently coloring eggs was not memorable. And can I tell you how impressed I am that you knew where that photo was? Want to come organize my life?
Yes, i'm procrastinating from writing a paper, how did you know?
I remember ONLY the little bottles of dye that you inadvertently squeeze while you're trying to open them, thus causing dye to dribble all over your fingers and stain your skin. The tablets? Never even heard of 'em before now.
lol. The little bottles with the pointy top? I remember those... I think I have some in my kitchen cabinet right now. I used them 2 years ago at Halloween to make green witches fingers cookies.....
All I know is when you punched the holes in the cardboard holder thing and put the eggs in there, it left a ring around the egg once it was dried.
UGHHHHH I used to hate that.
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