Somerville, Mass – Some places host oyster festivals, wine festivals or even street food festivals. Here in Somerville, we have a fluff festival. What the fluff? That’s right, marshmallow fluff originated right here in Somerville way back in 1917, which make this the “FluffCentennial”. And the city celebrates this food (loosely defined) with an annual festival of fluffy stuff.
(If you go to the What the Fluff? website, you will read that the festival is one of the reasons that Lonely Planet named Somerville as one of the top 10 Best in Travel destinations for 2017. It’s really the whole line-up of quirky festivals that impresses me, but this is one of the good ones. And, for the record, it was actually 2016, but yes.)
Since it started in 2006, What the Fluff? Festival has grown to become one of the ‘Ville’s most popular events, drawing some 15,000 visitors for an afternoon of silly, sticky fun. I first wrote about this festival back in 2009: I don’t think they do the hair-do competition anymore, thankfully, but the blog post still gives you a pretty good idea of what goes on.
Honestly, the fluff festival has become too popular for me. It’s not that my tastes are so refined that I cannot appreciate what the masses appreciate. It’s just that the place gets too darn crowded.
But this year I had a mission. I volunteered to sell Marshmallow Pops to raise money for our school PTA. In case you don’t know what a Marshmallow Pop is, it is two giant chocolate-covered marshmallows on a stick. We offer milk, dark and white chocolate, with and without sprinkles.
We had an abundance of volunteers working the tent, so I took a basket of pops and worked the crowd. These Pops were was hot! I’m not usually much of a salesperson, but it’s different when your product is in demand! In the end, we sold over a thousand Marshmallow Pops in about two hours, raising $5000 for our school. I had a blast selling pops and contributing to a cause that’s close to my heart. And the twins got to run around with their friends and eat marshmallows, so what’s better than that?
Marshmallow Pops at the What the Fluff? Festival