When we were in college, my roommate Greg and I would often talk about technology and design through the ages. As we carted off the broken remnants of his sleek black plastic stereo, which we had dismantled with a hammer on the day it dared not to work anymore, we reminisced about the wood-paneled, silver-knobbed home electronics of our youth. Why wood panels? What were they hoping to conceal? Were people supposed to come into the rec room, see the sound system, and assume someone Amish had lovingly handcrafted it and/or picked it from the garden? And how did that fit with the chrome knobs? What, other than cocaine, was going on in the 70s?

Since those days, I have periodically tried to spot the regrettable things of the future, the things I’m wearing, watching or buying that I don’t yet have the good sense to be embarrassed about. This week, I had the accidental chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter good fortune to lay two pieces of technology next to one another, and the thread revealed itself.

Yes, they are a phone and a CD player, but in emergencies they can also be used as delicious, sustaining candy.