See, in my opinion it would have made more sense to just have trashed the whole addiction concept together and go with something much more milder in that sort.
This was as mild as you can get. Addictive candy bars unless you want addictive apples, which really doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, I agree. Though not completely original, the candy bars were a good prop for this show. Addiction can happen, and I didn't see too many drug-related activities, other than Binky selling the bars. But I don't think that was the main point of the episode.
I mean that if they wanted to say to be careful about what you are eating, they didn't have to have done it in such a way that includes drugs.
The problem is, they already referred to that concept in "Arthur Weighs In". The only other way I think you could say "be careful what you eat" in an episode, it would be in a weight-related episode, which, as I've mentioned, has already been done. So they opted for the addiction concept, which, as I've said, is actually quite practical to kids.
And, looking back at these posts, I now do think the characters did sort of switch roles. It's as if the characters have multiple personalities. :O
EDIT: OK, so I think there actually is a way to say "be careful what you eat" without referring to weight or addiction...it would probably be in some form of "general health problem", like if the bars merely made the kids sick, or had some other side effect other than addiction. So, yeah, the inclusion of addiction was to a degree unnecessary, but I think it helped with the overall message of "be careful what you eat".
But, Muppetfan, I don't think they were "obviously going for drugs"...I'm guessing that most drug-doers probably don't look at the ingredients in a drug, they just know it's that drug (this is just a prediction/speculation, I don't do drugs!), so I think the makers of the episode merely wanted to address the idea of, as Mrs. MacGrady put it, "be wary of ingredients you've never heard of" and the like.