Hoops Love in Oklahoma City & Whatever Happened to Baby Binks?
Anyone else as obsessed about college basketball as me? I've been writing a March Madness series, and the third part deals with love in Oklahoma City.

On another note, is anyone else as obsessed about Baby Binks as me? (For the uninitiated, Baby Binks is the littlest chocolate bunny put out by Palmer at Easter time, and little Binksy dates at least from my early childhood, and probably even before then.)

When I was about five or six, I was staying at my Grandma's house out in the country, where I first became obsessed with Baby Binks. My much-older uncle (who was probably a senior in high school, and still lived with my grandparents) had a Baby Binks stored away in my Grandma's fridge. I would go and look at Binks longingly every day of my stay, probably because my Grandma expressly forbade me to eat him, since he belonged to my uncle Bill. As I remember, this Baby Binks had a tiny blue (real ribbon) bow attached to his chocolate neck.

Because I was a (mostly) good child, raised by my parents and Catholic school teacher nuns to believe that stealing (even just one quick lick of Baby Binks) was a very bad sin, I looked and looked at this delectable chocolate bunny, but didn't even touch him.

On the next-to-last day of my visit, my aforementioned much-older uncle was chasing me up and down my Grandma's staircase. In my haste to get away from Uncle Bill, I tripped and fell headlong down the long staircase onto the hard floor below, knocking out a few of my teeth.

While my Grandma was holding me in her arms and I was bawling my head off, she glared at my much-older (really old enough to know better) uncle, and told me that I could now have my uncle's Baby Binks. I could even eat Baby Binks' head off with impunity.

Almost instantly, I shut up, and with my mouth still bleeding, hurried to the fridge and claimed Baby Binks. (I imagine that my Uncle Bill was not too happy about this turn of events, considering that it was his girlfriend who'd given him that Baby Binks as an Easter gift.)

He tasted just as good as I thought he'd be.

It became a tradition for me to get a Baby Binks in my Easter basket after that. And then, when my daughter was born, the Easter Bunny always brought her a Baby Binks.

Well, yesterday I looked for this years' lineup of Baby Binks in Target, and guess what? Baby Binks was still there, and he still had his candy sugar eyes, but his real-ribbon bow (which used to come in a few different colors--blue, pink, and yellow, I think) was missing! I did a double-take.

Whatever happened to Baby Binks? Is his loss of the real-ribbon bow another sign of our weak economy? And will he ever get the bow back?

Does anyone know?

Does anyone else besides me even care?