This plop's no flop

No matter what you do to chocolate, people will still want to eat it. Even if it looks like poop.

In fact, as one local shop has discovered, sometimes that makes people want to eat it even more.

For seven years, the Candy Shoppe in downtown Port Orchard has been making “Seagull Plop,” a tasty, albeit authentic-looking, pile of white, green and brown that has become quite the popular treat.

“It looks gross, but it’s wonderful,” explains former Port Orchard Chamber director Melode Sapp.

First made by the store for the city’s annual Seagull Calling Contest, the candy was not the original idea of Candy Shoppe owner Sandy Charbonneau, but she said her company does own the state trademark for it.

And though Sandy’s daughter Becca was happily mixing three colors of chocolate together Friday for a fresh batch of plops, she admitted that years ago she was far less enthusiastic.

“I wanted nothing to do with them,” said the younger Charbonneau, who was 15 when her mom began making the distinctive mounds. “I said, ‘That’s all you, mom.’”

But they grew on her, and the customers as well, apparently, since so many people come in looking for the plops that Charbonneau said she can almost spot them before they ask for it.

“They’ll look around for a while, then they’ll say, kind of embarrassed, ‘Do you have that seagull plop candy?’” she said, laughing.

The candy is still given out to each seagull-calling contestant, but it is steadily making a name for itself far beyond the first weekend in May when the callers gather at the Port Orchard marina.

“We used to only make it for the contest, but now it’s so popular that we have to keep it in stock all the time,” said Charbonneau.

In February, the candy even traveled to Olympia with Sen. Derek Kilmer as part of the gift basket representing the 26th District he offered his fellow senators for his first session in the Senate.

“I asked (Mayor Kim Abel) ‘what would you like me to bring from Port Orchard?’ and she reminded me of the seagull calling competition and that the Candy Shoppe makes Seagull Plop candy,” said Kilmer, according to the Journal of the Senate for Feb. 2, 2007. In addition to the plop candy, Kilmer explains that he brought Bremerton Ferry Tea and gourmet tuna fish from Gig Harbor.

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