I found myself in 7-Eleven waiting for Michele to finish making her coffee when I spied a package of Hostess Glo Balls. Around various holidays, the usual Sno Balls are replaced with seasonal versions. A while ago I got some Lucky Puffs and examined them.

I brought the Glo Balls home and began to investigate them.

The main thing I wanted to see was the Glo Balls actually glowing. The girls and I gathered the necessary test gear and headed into the Cruft Manor Auxilary Laboratory (the bathroom), pulled the shades and began. First we examined the packaging of the Glo Balls. They had that green luminescent look so we aimed the black light at the package.

No glow at all. We were quite disappointed. I removed the wrapper and looked to see if the Glo Balls themselves would glow.

Again, not a bit of glow at all. Our disappointment grew. Zoe accidentally touched the black light to the Glo Ball. We heard a sizzle and then a pop as the black light bulb blew up. Not a huge explosion, but enough to make everyone jump.

Here you can see the glass part of the filament sticking out the side. Who says science does not involve danger?

Of course, I had extra black light bulbs on hand, the testing continued. What? You don't have spare black lights in the closet? In a final hope for glo-osity, we cut the Glo Balls open and looked to see if the cake or internal "s'cream" filling would glow. As you can see, Hostess let us down yet again.

We turned the lights on in the Laboratory. Here's the insides of the Glo Balls.

I tried the Glo Balls next and was not suprised to find that they taste exactly like Sno Balls. There is no differentiating factor other than the color. This is upsetting to me, since variety is the spice of life.

I gave the Hostess hotline a call and asked a few questions. You can listen to the recording of my call about Glo Balls (1 MB mp3 file). I still don't have phone recording down as a direct science, so I had to mess a bit with the volume levels of the call and use an equalizer to remove line noise. Enjoy.

Posted by michael at October 01, 2005 07:03 PM