I grew up with a sweet tooth. In our cupboards at home we always had a great selection of candy and then in the fridge we had sodas for days. In the freezer we had everything from Dreyer’s Ice Cream to Drumsticks and I loved every last bite of it. I just loved sugar! Back then we didn’t have the research that we do now about how bad a lot of sugar can be for you so we filled our mouths with candy, soda, and ice cream. But nowadays? Way different as we know that heavy sugar intake can lead to obesity and diabetes which are 2 things I never want.? I remember the chilling words my dentist told me around 10 years ago. He said, “Tim, if you don’t stop with the candy and soda you are not going to have teeth anymore.” From that moment, I made a switch in my life to save sodas for special occasions (i.e. with Cali burritos) and to enjoy my sweets in moderation. I’m happy to report that since that scolding from my dentist, I’ve only had 1 cavity. Up to that point I would say my cavities were in the 20’s or maybe even 30’s. Yeah…. no bueno! As an ode to my sugar obsession, I wanted to take things back to the 90’s when candy ruled my life. These stories all take place between 1992 - 1993 when I was in the 7th grade of junior high school.
Standley Junior High in ‘93
If you’ve read any of my other stories, you know that I was already selling product out of my backpack in elementary school so I had a good business sense to enter junior high school with. I lived on the west side of UC (aka University City) which meant I went to Spreckels Elementary while the kids on the east side of UC went to Curie Elementary. We all played sports together and saw each other at the arcade so we kind of knew each other but junior high finally merged the east side of University City with the west side of University City. This meant our small elementary school crew at Spreckels turned into a serious posse at Standley Junior High School. Most of us had similar backgrounds… Middle class blue collar kids who didn’t have everything but were fortunate to have just enough. We were raised to have a great work ethic and to try hard to achieve our goals. A lot of us had older brothers who played sports, got into fights, listened to gangster rap music, and even started neighborhood posses. Not bloods and crips type gangs but also not the type you wanted to mess with at house parties. We were the little brothers who looked up to our older brothers and wanted to grow up just like them. But we were only 12 to start junior high so we had to take baby steps… Enter the gateway drug known as candy.
While we were only 12 or 13, we wanted to make money so we can buy shiny things like baseball cards, comic books, or maybe even a nudie mag. We had graduated from stealing chromed out shiners (tire valve caps) off of expensive cars for our BMX bikes and were now trying to see that cash money. In the 7th grade, I was on the student council (aka ASB aka student government) and we actually had a candy store that would be open during lunch break. This is the spot you could hit in order to get a quick sugar rush after you crushed your Lunchables. The ASB students were the ones that ran the candy store so this meant I had picked up a new job. I was the perfect scrawny kid to get the job done because I loved candy and I was a decent salesperson.
While working my shifts, the exchange of candy for cash gave me a high I had never experienced before. I was befriending so many people at school in that small candy store and I was quickly gaining clout as the candy guy. “Oh what? You’ve never had a Butterfinger? Well let me tell you about it…” But with that candy fame came by downfall as I got too greedy. I saw that our candy store was making money off of the same candy that I could buy and sell on my own. I was the top salesperson in the store but I was not getting any type of compensation for my hustle other than experience. I wanted to start my own little candy business. My student government friends and I knew where the candy store’s inventory was stored which was in a storage cabinet in our classroom. We somehow came up with the idea to take a fork and bend it so that we could slide it in the cupboard and then pop the lock. GENIUS! From there, my friends would grab 1 candy bar for themselves to enjoy later that day. Then I would grab 14 of them and stash them in my backpack. We would all enjoy our Butterfingers together shortly after. But then I had those extra 13 candy bars in my backpack to sell to pocket some extra cash. And the block was hot with candy sales! Suddenly my Champion sweatpants were filled with quarters for Street Fighter II at the Yellow Brick Road arcade. Boom! But then the unthinkable happened. The candy store got shut down because of what was being stolen. Was I the main reason for this? No… But was I a large part? Uhm…… Absolutely… I carried this guilt for some time but learned my lesson. I didn’t use my best judgement. Luckily I didn’t get snitched on so therefore wasn’t suspended or put in detention. And even better, my dad didn’t find out! Dodged a bullet!
After the candy store fiasco, my candy supply was no more so we had to change that. After school my buddies and I would all ride bikes, play video games, play tackle football, and just stay busy. I would spend a lot of time at my buddy Darren’s house who was into the same things I was. Darren and I would go with his mom Gloria when she ran errands to kill time. I remember tagging along on trips to Pic ‘N’ Save and Smart & Final where she would pick up snacks for their house. While my mom had a great snacks, Darren’s house had some bangers too! Darren and I would eat so much candy… Then we would go hit some bike jumps, pop some wheelies, and do some bunny hop kickouts on the trash cans along the curbs on our BMX bikes. Classic times! Our favorite candy at the time was probably Airheads. The gas stations and liquor stores in UC sold Airheads for a quarter but we knew we could sell them for at least $0.35 at school. We weren’t the only ones on this same hustle. George, Matt, and Pat were also in on this. We started buying Airheads and then selling our of our backpacks. We were only making a dime per sale but that was something. But one day, while shopping with Darren’s mom, we couldn’t believe what we saw. KING SIZE AIRHEADS?!?!?!?!? Whoa… Game changer right there. We had never seen the king size Airheads before… We knew that our schoolmates hadn’t either. We convinced Gloria to buy us a box that day. From there we were slangin’ king size Airheads everywhere. Nobody had those so we can set the market price on campus. With money made, we’d pay Darren’s mom to buy us another box while at the same time keeping the profits in our pockets. We were running a profitable business! And then we decided we should expand our assortment…..
When we were younger, TJ (aka Tijuana, Mexico) didn’t have the stigma that it does now. TJ was only a 30 minute drive south on the 805 from where we lived in San Diego so we could have our parents drive us down there to walk around on the Mexican side of the border and maybe pick up a thing or two. I loved being down there because I got to experience a whole different culture outside of where I was from. In the 7th grade, we started to eat some Mexican candy that our homies from school would trade us. While Airheads could be picked up locally, Mexican candy back then was harder to come by. We all loved the spicy lollipops (Rebanaditas, Vero Mango, Vero Elotes), the candy crayon mango ooze (what were those called?), Pico Pico, and Lucas. We would eat those spicy lollipops until our tongues were raw and we really didn’t care. While down in TJ, we would walk the markets and see large bulk bags of all of this Mexican candy that we loved. And this candy was sooooooooo cheap! We saw an opportunity to improve our profit margins on candy that nobody could buy at the gas stations and liquor stores in UC. There was also nobody selling these at school so we saw a serious opportunity. That’s what led to our Mexican candy hustle! Everybody respected our grind and they came to us to get that hard-to-find candy.
When I look back at these days I do have regret for some of the dumb things I did but I think that’s totally normal. You have to live and learn in life. Are you going to repeat the same mistakes or learn from them and grow? In 7th grade, our crew learned what it took to run a business. We learned about supply and demand. We learned about profit margins. We learned about operational expenses. We learned about customer service. We learned about brand loyalty. At the ages of 12 and 13 that is amazing. Now you can go on YouTube to find out all about this but back then you had to just live and learn. And that’s exactly what we did… We hustled out of our backpacks to make that money!
Below is a cool video from Gary Vee talking about him selling baseball cards back in the early/mid90s.