Tuesday, August 10, 2010

World's Finest Fundraiser

The candy bars we sold each year.

Every year, the Catholic school I attended as a kid would have us sell World's Finest chocolate bars to raise money for our school and church. Yummy $1 milk chocolate with almond bars that broke into four perfect squares. Each chocolate bar wrapper included a coupon for a free McDonald's hamburger on the inside fold.

The bars always came packaged in a brown cardboard box of about 30. The cardboard box took on such an incredibly sweet scent. I remember wanting to devour bar after bar and sometimes I did! The box had a cardboard handle at the top. I remember how heavy the box would start out in the morning when I'd go to sell them, then get lighter and lighter as each sale was made.

My favorite hot spot to push these delicious treats, was at Franklin General Hospital, a block away from our home. I could easily sell about 60 bars in a day. I believe this location was my father's idea. He swore that visitors could buy them for patients and hungry nurses could pick one up on their way to their shift.

I was a very motivated kid candy seller. Why? I longed for those cheap-ass prizes in the catalog. Stupid crap like jump ropes, sticker books and other toys my folks could have easily purchased from Toys R Us or TSS (a popular department store near us back in the 1980s). One item in particular really caught my eye. It was a water bottle for my bike. I wanted this water bottle so badly for some reason. I remember how excited I was the day my dad attached it to my 10 Speed. I was such a geek.

Example of a simple water bottle for a bike
Things were going well selling World's Finest candy bars at the local hospital. I worked that location for about three years until one Sunday afternoon, one of the priests from our church happened upon me. He suggested I stop selling them there. What a jerk that priest was. From that day on, I never really made many sales. He screwed his own church by insisting I find a new location. Oh well.

Did you sell these chocolates for school when you were a kid?

30 comments:

  1. I DID! And my mom was always so pissed when we brought them home to sell cuz we lived in the country and I had nobody to sell too!

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  2. I've never even heard of them. We always sold candy bars- crunch, caramel or shoot, I can't remember the 3rd one..obviously I didn't eat it! :-)

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  3. I never did the fundraisers. I live in the boonies, so there was no possibility of door-to-door, and my parents told me they'd rather give the money to the school than have to get some random crap.

    For the most part, I didn't mind that I didn't participate. I was always sad, though, the day that the prizes were handed out.

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  4. I sold them! I LOVED the caramel ones!!

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  5. I sold them as a child, loved the almond ones.

    Kiddo sold them this year for her school too, the "prizes" haven't changed much either

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  6. I'm so probably gonna burn in hell for sayin' this...but that priest was probably just sick of you coming around cuz you might catch him with one of the altar boys! GRRR!!!!!!

    Ok - off to don my flame retardant suit. Gonna need it, one way or the other...oops.

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  7. Yes!!! I sold these chocolate bars, too! What a great memory!

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  8. I totally forgot about selling those chocolate bars when I was kid! Unfortunately, there weren't too many people around where I lived that would buy them; therefore, I usually ate most of them myself and had to pay for them.

    Those money hungry, and grubby candy bar companies!

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  9. I didn't sell them but I ate A LOT of them!

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  10. I tried to sell them but mostly ate them. I don't think kids should have to sell anything.

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  11. You don't think he nabbed the location for himself do you?

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  12. Yes I remember those candy bars oh so well. Now they are smaller but still a dollar!
    I too wonder why the priest asked/told you to go sell somewhere else? Oh well, he hurt himself too having to beg/ask for more donations ;o)

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  13. Oh yes. Ours were for Tee-ball, although now that I think about it, we didn't get prizes. I guess our prize was getting to play tee-ball. What a bust.

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  14. My brother & I would go to this bank next to my parents' business each Friday afternoon. Of course, this was back in the day (80's) when there was no driect depsoit so you had to GO to the bank for your deposit & cash out. People felt pretty flush and paid nicely. could clear thru 3 boxes in an hour. hehehe

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  15. I never sold them, but I remember my parents buying them from other parents at work. I also remember eating quite a few of them. Thankfully, my school stuck to wrapping paper, coasters and candles.

    Thanks for stopping by! I'm following you now, because reliving my youth is one of my favorite things to do! :OP

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  16. The Daughter has sold these in the past, she too seems to want those 'garbage' prizes...
    We usually end up buying a bunch of those candybars on our own!

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  17. The only fundraising thing I did as a kid was 'Jump rope for heart' and I got a water bottle and, yup, a jump rope. Thrillsville.

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  18. Really, the priest didn't want you selling the chocolate bars to support your CATHOLIC school? Seems a little counter-productive to me.

    I don't think I ever sold World's Finest. But I did do some Joe Corbi's pizza kits and holiday wrapping paper. I hated fund raising.

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  19. I went to Catholic school for 13 years. In grade school we sold Gertrude Hawk candy - Yummy! Before that it was a kit that had various items in it. I only remember a couple of things like a raccoon stuffed animal. I can't remember what kind of candy we sold in high school. Dad sold alot of it and one day I got a giant candy bar as a prize for most sales.

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  20. Ally, i did sell these bars when i was younger, and do you know that they are still selling them today, however, when i reached for the only single dollar bill that i had in my wallet, they little kid informed me that they are now $3.... funny, they still say $1 on the package.... don't know if he was just trying to rip me off, or if the chocolate's a little outdated with the packaging, but that better be straight from the wonka factory for $3 a pop!!! psssh!

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  21. We didn't...we had those Joe Corbi pizza kits. I'm not sure if they were a local thing or not, but I always waited until the last minute with mine.

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  22. Never sold chocolate, I sold magazine subscriptions. Well, in all fairness I didn't even really sell those. Even as a little kid I couldn't imagine the amount of work going door to door selling my wears would pay off in terms of prizes.

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  23. oh my gosh! i know these! we used to always get 2 boxes each every year. 2 boxes each for 4 kids = 8 boxes to sell. my mom would always be mad whenever we brought those home. no one really likes buying these here in LA since there are a lot of stores to buy chocolates from. needless to say, my parents always ended up paying for the 8 boxes. :/

    <3, Mimi
    http://whatmimiwrites.blogspot.com/

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  24. Hell Ya! I rememba' them. I recently bought one off some "Christian guy" who was in a half way house.

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  25. Yes, in grade school and high school there were always candy bar fund raisers into eternity. In high school it was supposedly for new band uniforms. Finally, finally we got them--each one represented about twenty thousand candy bars. They were so precious we were almost afraid to wear them.

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  26. I loved those things. Now, kids have to sell magazine subscriptions, jewelery, and things like that. Pretty soon they'll be selling used cars for school.
    Oh yeah, I think I used to buy most of Ashleys candy bars...

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  27. We used to sell products from the World's Finest Chocolate books too! Gift wrap and chocolate, ugh it was tough. I never sold enough to win the crazy good prizes :(

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  28. I wonder why he wanted you to stop selling there?

    Hmm.

    I was always hot on winning the girl scout cookie stuffed animal-had to sell 100 + boxes!

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  29. well, if the priest wasn't happy with you selling at the hospital, he would have been livid if he saw me selling at the bars on Jericho Tpke! Those old drunks were my best customers! I even won top prize in 5th grade... an awesome tape recorder!

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  30. When I was in elementary school, we used to have fundraisers of some sort - I don't remember what we sold, maybe it was magazine subscriptions or candy - but I remember that I got a prize of a cardboard Tootsie Roll bank filled with miniature Tootsie Rolls. :)

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