Cheap little donuts bring priceless warm memories

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

What a smile this brings.

Ran into this image in a 1980 Tops ad this morning.

Once every great while there was a peanut stick around, but if you were to say “donut” the me as a kid, this box of Tops brand donuts is what would have come to mind.

These were a highly anticipated, special treat in our house growing up.

When this ad ran, you can see they came sugar, plain, or a mix. While (obviously) the powdered sugar was my favorite, a plain one was just fine too.

The high-riding good times came to a screeching halt when, a few years later, they started adding cinnamon powered donuts into the mix.

That row always sat there as the last in the box, even growing a little stale sometimes before I could bring myself to wolf down a few– so they wouldn’t have to be thrown out.

Even a disappointing donut deserves a fate better than the trash.

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.