Where do Peeps come from?

From Salon Lisa Gidley tells all about Peeps, including this excerpt:

People don’t just eat Peeps. They take pictures of them. They make crafts with them. They write songs about them. They put them on wreaths. They put them on pizza. They create parody porn Web sites for them. And some curious souls devote countless hours to Peep research, testing the effects of everything from heat to liquid nitrogen on the hardy little fertility symbols.

What is it about Peeps that inspires such passion? Is it their expressions, as winsome as a kitten offering you its paw? Maybe. But hollow chocolate rabbits are cute, too, and nobody writes loving odes to them. Is it their long-standing association with Easter? Perhaps; the Just Born company has been putting Peeps in Easter baskets since 1953. But Cadbury eggs have the holiday-icon thing going on too, and nobody builds little dioramas for them to live in.

Maybe it’s the pure sugar rush that ensues five seconds after you pop a Peep in your mouth. Some folks find it blissful; others shudder in disgust at the mere thought. Arguably, though, those marshmallow Circus Peanuts provide the same result. And, safe to say, nobody devotes parody porn sites to them.

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