Or, rather, I need candy.

You see, I recently noticed something: one simply cannot become a blogging microcelebrity without a mainstream candy attached to one's brand. Oh, sure, it helps if one's blog is well-written, interesting, relatively topical, brimming with pretty images and sexy Vimeo-hosted videos, and includes just the right amount of oversharing to be titillating (but not too much!). But I have concluded that it is really the candy that makes the blogger famous. For example, the vlogger iJustine has become so synonymous with Junior Mints that she is basically the candy's one-woman publicity machine in the Web 2.0. Similarly, the journalist and blogger AV Flox is currently nurturing a fantastic obsession with KitKat, making it nearly impossible to converse with her on the phone without hearing her tell you that she is going to eat one, or beg her husband to buy her even more while he is at the store. Now while I have never been much of a fan of the mint and chocolate marriage, and think that any candies made with barely-sweet wafers composed mostly of air are a waste of my palate's time, the fact still remains: if I want to be a famous blogger, clearly, I need candy.

But this whole selecting of a candy with which to align oneself is a very serious business, especially if you are me, and in possession of all of my complicated yet still rather marvelous hang-ups regarding food. (For example: I do not like to bite into anything if I can avoid it; I prefer lean ground turkey and turkey bacon to ground beef and pork bacon, yet will polish off a rare filet mignon more quickly than one can scream, "PETA!"; and I have issues with food texture so neurotic that remembering which pieces I love versus which ones make me nauseous makes a dim sum lunch more of a task than a treat.) Upbringing must also be considered. My mother may have sworn that her signature candies were La Maison du Chocolat truffles, which she stored in bulk in a temperature-controlled case in my father's wine cellar, and simply to retain the proper appearances of my good family name of "Bartelby", I just may claim this, as well, should I be interrogated in mixed company. But I know that my mother's true candy fetish was PayDay, of which she would secretly have the village market deliver cases when she was particularly weepy. (And quite frankly, darling, I am rather sure that neither La Maison du Chocolat nor their distributors could care less about an endorsement from an American blogger, even one as fabulous as me.)

And then there are what I term "Candy Phases". I mean, will the candy have true staying power? Will it endure past the initial Candy Honeymoon Period? During prep school I ate no other candy but Skor, yet tired of it after two years. While working in the New York publishing industry, I consistently ate one Snickers bar for lunch, every day, until I left that position after about a year. I still like both of them. But do they really reflect the complexity of my character, capture the layers of my temperament, truly scream, "Atherton Bartelby!"? Are they the candy with which I would choose to be stranded on an island with no other food? Are they, really, worthy of my brand?

I contemplated this conundrum over an Américano at Starbucks this past Saturday, while catching up on n+1, NonSociety, and all of my favorite Tumbletards, and furrowing my brow in concentration. "What could it be?" I thought. "What could possibly be my can..." And that thought was promptly cut short by my loud laughter, as I suddenly realized that I was just then absentmindedly ripping into my third package of Hershey's Take 5 that morning!

Originally released during 2004, the same year as my harrowing break-up with my ex-boyfriend Tristan (which would quite nicely explain why I became so violently hooked on them, buying five packages at a time and unwrapping all of the pieces at once to place them in a crystal bowl, gorging on them while sobbing and watching "Sex And The City" DVDs), Hershey's Take 5 presents the mouth with a veritable cacophony of flavors. A salty pretzel sits atop a layer of velvety peanut butter, covered by just the right amount of bittersweet caramel mixed with peanuts, all enrobed in Hershey's famous milk chocolate. It is a sweet and salty explosion for the mouth, the kind of taste experience you think of when the female Japanese judges on "Iron Chef" cover their mouths and whimper, "Oh! The taste it is so big in my mouth!" or when one local Hawaiian bruddah tells you that the grinds he is eating, "Broke da mout'!" Translated, it is simply a way wicked awesome culinary experience. It is the candy epitome of my multifaceted character, and apparently I have been hooked on them for nearly four years.

Do not only take my word for it, though. In March of this year, Michelle over at CandyAddict.com reviewed the luscious chocolate bar herself, reporting: "The Take 5 bar impressed me with its originality - I love the idea of having the pretzels in there, and having both whole peanut pieces as well as peanut butter." Although she does disagree with my assertion that the candy is a taste explosion for the mouth ("While it wasn’t quite the mouth party I had hoped for..."), she does conclude with, "As a delicious candy bar with just that little bit more oomph to it than your average Snickers or Mars, this one is worth eating." Additionally, in August of 2006, Tom Coffee of SpillingCoffee.com was lucky enough to participate in a BzzAgent campaign for Hershey's Take 5. (BzzAgent, the viral "Word Of Mouth Marketing And Media Network", sends free samples of a given product to its volunteer "agents", and asks that they try them and also spread the word and the product around to their friends. How jealous am I that I became a BzzAgent operative only recently, missing out on the Hershey's Take 5 campaign? So jealous!) Coffee wrote at the time, "The candy bars arrived with a little card which told me to have one or two and then share the rest with friends and coworkers. Pffft. Right. They never made it out of the house. Not a one. So, yes. They are good. Very good in my opinion. Too good, really."

So there you have it, The Atherton Bartelby Brand Candy: Hershey's Take 5. I know that it may take awhile for my endorsement of Hershey's Take 5 to make me Internet Famous. I realize that it may take some time before all of my blog's fangirls and fanboys begin randomly sending me all manner of Hershey's Take 5 branded products. It's all right. I can wait. But you, Hershey's, you should pony up with a lifetime supply of these things for me, right now, because endorsements are kind of a quid pro quo, you know. I will include a linked Hershey's Take 5 reference in every blog article I write. I will slap a linked graphic up in my navigation sidebar that reads, "Atherton Bartelby says...TAKE 5!" Hell, I will even sign off of Twitter every evening with, "All right, off to put another dent or two in the most recent case of Take 5 candies that Hershey's so kindly sent me. 'Night, all!" So what do you say, Hershey's? Do we have a deal? Make me Internet Famous?

I think two cases per month should be sufficient.

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Atherton Bartelby is a writer and graphic designer based in New York City. He writes frequently on design, media, and the dissemination of information across the Web 2.0. More of his work may be found at Curious Affairs.