What do you do when you have nearly 1,000 Swedish Fish to dispose of? 

That’s the conundrum Kaitlin Shrier and I faced after the Northwest Hydroelectric Association (NWHA) conference in Portland last week. The Swedish Fish were part of a game we had at our display table: Attendees were asked to guess how many Swedish Fish were held in the fish bowl on the table with the closest guess winning a GoPro Hero 3 camera. The guessing game was a big hit.

After awarding the GoPro to the best guesser, we found ourselves with a large, fish-shaped, fish bowl full of Swedish Fish. Which leads back to my question: What do you do when you have nearly 1,000 Swedish Fish to dispose of?

You give them to a Boy Scout troop, of course!

One of the conference attendees was Steven Miles, the Director of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Hydroelectric Design Center and a former coworker of mine. It turns out Steven loved Swedish Fish as a child, and he couldn’t bear the thought of us throwing them all away. So he offered to take them off our hands and find them a good home.

The home he chose was the bellies of the Boy Scouts in Troop 230. This photo captures the feeding frenzy. With all those hungry and sugar-starved Boy Scouts around, you know the fish didn’t last long. But the purpose of Swedish Fish is to energize, and I’m sure they fulfilled their purpose.

While it was sad to see all those fish go, Kaitlin and I were glad they found a new and happy home. And of course we were also glad we didn’t have to take any of them home, ourselves, to tempt us.