Eureka, the TubaNut mystery is SOLVED!!!

Holy crap, it happened so fast I didn't even have a chance to grab the video camera. A TubaNut is ... drumroll please ... roll tape gum. You should have heard the wild cheering in our house!! We figured it out because of helpful blog comments. Here's what happened: The girls and TubaDad just made Christmas sugar cookies (a completely hellish experience, but that's a story for another time), and Ro and I were sitting on the couch tasting the finished product. She told me she wanted to search on the "pew-ter" (computer) for TubaNuts, a pretty typical request lately. So I remembered that folks had left comments suggesting that we show the girls candies that were OUT of the packages and did a Google search for a detailed look at the inside of that gum roll stuff. I picked that candy because a whole bunch of folks had commented that they thought Ro was saying "chewing gum" in the first video, plus gum roll (which commenters also kept mentioning) was the nearest thing to this red candy that Ro identified as "close but not quite" a few days ago: At the time, she had studied this red candy picture VERY intently, then said the candy was close, but "TubaNuts are pink, don't have holes in the top, and are curlier." The detailed pic clinched it -- roll tape gum it was!!! And I'll be danged if her description of "pink, no holes on top, and curlier" wasn't spot on. Here is a pic of one brand of elusive TubaNut candy, this one sold by Oriental Trading Company, who regularly sends us catalogs that the girls get their hands on. We must have put these little gum roll cannisters in the girls' hands a dozen times during our recent in-store tubanut searches, but the outside packaging didn't ring any bells for them. But a close-up picture of the candy inside finally got a resounding "yes!" Ahhhhhhhhh. This thing has been driving me crazy (I know, I know, not a long drive). Now Santa better get busy shopping, because after all that work I'm thinking the patient little girls deserve an entire stocking full of TubaNuts. Thank you to everyone who helped us solve this Christmas mystery.