In the past, I've told this story MANY times, but like a stubborn boomer, I'm gonna tell it again! So unwrap a Werther's, and gather 'round as I tell my tale... My side hustle for Wacky Packages funds, albeit short-lived, was efficient and lucrative. Whenever a new series hit the shelves, I would buy a full box. This usually involved me begging my mother for the $2.40 to seal the deal at the local mom & pop shops where I conducted my Wacky transactions. Upon returning home with my bounty, I turned on the kitchen stove (low setting), cleared the adjacent countertop, and started to slowly open each pack within "non-wax-melting" range of the range. This practice guaranteed a stack of rip-free wrappers once the packs were all opened. During this "ritual" of cracking a fresh box, I would end up with neat stacks of wrappers, stickers, checklists and gum... hard, pink slabs of roof-of-the-mouth shredding gum. After dealing with the ridicule that my friends hurled at me for saving the wrappers and the box, I carefully stacked the wrappers in the display box, gently closed the lid, and stored it with the others. I actually enjoyed the flavor of the gum once it became pliable in my mouth, but by the time the 6th series rolled around, I was getting tired of it and had moved on to Big Baddy sticks. I must have been extremely bored one day, because I somehow discovered that freezing the pink slabs of gum made them soft when they reached room temperature again. With this newly-gained knowledge, I put all of the gum from a box haul into a plastic sandwich bag and store it in the freezer overnight. The next morning, if it was a school day, I would bring the bag of gum on the bus, and, as it was thawing out & becoming soft, I would sell the slabs for a nickel each. Once the bag was empty, I would have another $2.40 to go spend on another box of Wacky Packages. Things were going quite well until the day my mother inquired about the baggie of gum in the freezer. After hearing about my "business", she shut me down, claiming that it was "unethical". My argument was that it was keeping me from constantly begging money off of her, and that it was allowing my hobby to become self sustainable. In the end, she wasn't having any of that, and my short-lived Wacky money hustle ended almost as soon as it began. But, I still have all of those boxes still full of freshly opened wrappers!