It is a cold day at the National Harbor and I have on a too thin jacket. I’m trying to make up for it with brisk walking, but there is a breeze that cuts through my jacket.
I see the Awakening, moved from its original home at Hains Point. I start towards it for a moment, readying my camera as I do so. I was thinking of the atypical blizzard we had when I see something that catches me completely by surprise.
The Peeps store. A store that is totally about Peeps, those pastel marshmallow fabrications that show up every Easter. I’ve never actually eaten one, although I have poked one through the chest with a bamboo skewer and made a shrike joke from Dan Simmon’s Hyperion. That was a funny joke until people asked me to take it down at work for various reasons that I will not go into. Maybe it was the blood or the sound recordings of Peeps screaming.
Either way, this store is all about Peeps.
Or more accurately, Peeps & company. I wasn’t aware that Peeps had an entourage. I always thought that peeps were the entourage. Clearly, I was wrong.  Peeps has other candies that run with it, namely Mike & Ike’s and Red Hots. Both had very large displays in the store, but mainly, really, it was all about Peeps. Peeps merchandise was in abundance.
Also, there are very large peeps in the store, constantly judging you with their dead eyes.
I never realized that Peeps, Red Hots, and Mike & Ike merchandising was in such demand to warrant their own store.
And of course the candies themselves were available. I was not tempted by any of it, although my curiosity was piqued by the Dark Chocolate Dipped Peeps, which to me sounded like a marketing failure. They could have named them Dark Peeps and broadened their marketing share past the Cute and Fluffy demographic.
Also, did I mention the large Peeps?
Ultimately, the Peeps & Company store was too much of a distraction and I never did get that picture of the Awakening. I did manage however to hit the Godiva Chocolates and CakeLove, also down here at the National Harbor.
I think I came out on top.