The Hurt Locket

I found a packet of Lockets in the cupboard I forgot I’d bought a while ago. They have a sell-by date some year hence, so if I was to leave them unopened, about a year from now the sweets inside would still be pristine.

Unfurling the outer paper emblazoned with the company logo, I took out one individually-wrapped prize and ate it. Bliss to my nose and throat. I folded the outer packet up tight and put the pack back in the cupboard. Three or four days later I took another. It was a bit tacky, but still otherwise edible.

Fast forward two more days and the individual wrapper on my next lozenge was reeeally sticky. It took considerable might to separate the wrapping from the sweet inside and I got all gunky in the process. I want to know why. They still have a year to go until they’re out of date, they are still wrapped up tight in the outer wrapper, but it seems the very act of opening it sentences the sweets inside to a rapid, sugar-meltingly, squishy grave within a week.

So what the hell’s the wrapper made of? It appears like foil-lined paper, tears like it, yet it somehow prevents air (or something) from sullying the waxed-paper-encased contents. The very moment you break that seal, it’s a race to the end of the pack before they dissolve like slugs in a salt bath.

Oh mysterious packaging material, please divulge your sorcery of granting long-lastingness to your cargo. It doth baffle me.