Gosh this man is energetic.

"They are!" They go kaCHUNKaCHUNKaCHUNKaCHUNKA and spin, what's not to like? "What happens if one of the corncobs gets turned sideways in there? Does it get stuck?"

"What a clever question! They will get horribly, confoundingly stuck, yes! Absolutely! If you take no precautions. But in this factory we keep nesting pairs of corn cobs and corn pens, so when one of them gets stuck, the other will come along and rescue it. It's simply the best way to do it!"

Yes, clever. Sharp. Observant. Hmm!

"May I have the pleasure of an introduction?"

"I'm Kevin. Kevin McAllister. And if you're not Willy Wonka then that's too bad, because you act like him."

"The very same!" Mr. Wonka chortles, eyes twinkling. "What brings you to the Pushcorn Room? A zest for reverse agriculture? In need of a listening ear, perhaps?"

CLUNK. An odd sound draws Mr. Wonka's quick attention back toward the recombobulator. It is supposed to go kaCHUNKaCHUNKaCHUNK, but that last one sounded like kaCHUNKa-CLUNK. He adjusts some wheeled dials on the wall, peering at the pressure readings. They seem satisfactory!

"Well, the rest of the tour was here, and I liked the sound, and." He probably shouldn't admit that he's been kind of wanting to see a corncob get stuck and cause some kind of huge mechanical problem. Not in a way where he would actually do anything to cause that, just in a way where if any mechanical problems are going to happen today he wants to be around to see them. "I guess I forgot to leave when everyone else did." If he had noticed them leaving he would probably have gone with them, but he didn't. 

He liked the sound! Mr. Wonka notices himself feeling rather fond of this factory foundling.

"Ah! Then you are doubly in luck! First, your tour group will be miles away by now, so there's absolutely no prospect of catching up, none at all, and therefore no need to bother about them anymore: you are, however briefly, the captain of your soul!

And on that point—well, of course you may stay and watch the pushcorn getting re-corn-cob-ulated if you prefer! But if you are amenable, I should be delighted to have you along for my remaining duties, where I will give you a personal guided tour of some of the factory's most interesting and obscure experiments. I suspect you will find it splendiferously fun."

He peers eagerly at Kevin.

This is not how most grownups would react to this situation and Kevin approves. "That sounds totally awesome!"

Mr. Wonka claps his hands together. "I'm so very glad!"

He then pulls out his pocketwatch and leaps straight up as if stung. "Nearly twelve o'clock already! Well, not to worry, at least Shortwave Lollies are just down the hall. If you will please follow me, dear boy!" And without further fanfare, he trots rapidly out the door, the tails of his velvet coat flapping behind him.

Kevin follows, trying to guess what it means for a lollie to be shortwave. Lolly is British for lollipop, probably, so maybe it's those spirally ones that look sort of like a wave. Or maybe they actively move and have ripples! There's no telling around here.

The Shortwave Lollies room has a magnificent domed skylight which shines down on a crowd of busy Oompa-Loompas at various workstations. Some are folding great glossy lumps of colorful molten candy. Some are pouring molten candy into copper molds, or wrapping them in a strange blue-green metallic foil. At a few workstations, Oompa-Loompas wear large earphones, fiddling with metal consoles with dozens of knobs and lights and little display gauges. A deep spacious hum fills the space.

"The lollies started as lucky accident!" Mr. Wonka cries, dashing from station to station and inspecting them like a hummingbird among flowers. "We had been making a new kind of shortbread biscuit, only one of the batches turned out rather more wavy than breadlike, and when you took a bite of them— oh, no! I won't spoil the surprise. But to recreate the effect, we needed a form factor that was less crumbly, and then when I hit on the ingenious idea of using lolly sticks— well, see for yourself!"

And he hefts a large copper bowl full of the foil-wrapped lollies and offers it to Kevin.

"The trick is to clamp the candy between your teeth."

Well that's an easy instruction to follow! CHOMP. (He takes the wrapper off first, he's not a feral badger except when he is.)

And what a lolly it is. First comes the flavor — a mouthwateringly delicious fizz of sweet citrus. It coats the tongue, the bright juice tingling and crackling like fireworks. But oh! There's more: the moment you put it in your mouth, you feel it buzzing and vibrating and thrumming softly of its own accord. When you bite down, every one of those vibrations is conducted through your teeth and into your skull where you can hear—well, in Kevin's case, the tinny but unmistakable sound of music. It is, in fact, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra being broadcast from a local radio station.

"Isn't it fantastic?" Mr. Wonka beams. "The stick acts like a little antenna— there's actually a little strip of metal in every one! If you move your tongue around just right, you can probably get the knack for changing the station! Just think— no more being bored in class! No more confiscated radios! With my new Shortwave Lollies, tuning into the wireless is as easy as eating candy!"

"Grsh thrs"--remove candy from mouth. "Gosh, that's neat! And it tastes good too!" Candy back in mouth. This time it's a commercial. He fiddles around for a bit in search of a baseball game and then remembers they probably don't play baseball in Britain and goes back to the orchestra.

Mr. Wonka practically dances with glee, hurrying with the bowl of sweets to the far side of the room. "But here is the best part of all!" he squeaks in his high, flutey voice. "Now which flavor was it?"

"Lemon." 

"Lemon!" He fishes around until he finds a lemon lolly, plucks off the wrapper, and sticks it in his own mouth. His jaw seems to be moving.

<Come in, come in! You can read me loud and clear, can't you?>

The sound is—remarkably clear, given the inherent mouth-position and amplification challenges one might expect when talking over two-way candy radio.

"Wrrrf?" He makes the "wait wait don't tell me" gesture and twiddles the candy around in his mouth for a minute. <Am I [static] this right? Can you [unintelligible] me?>

<Yes! Yes! You'# a natu#al! And you see the principle is so si#ple— you can talk with a#yone nearby with the same flavor as you, and I've made sure the#e are plenty of f#avors to choose from! I'm sure you can t#ink of a dozen things to do with them!>

He totally can but at least the first three involve pretending to be a ghost haunting his brothers and the fourth one is cheating on tests. <Yeah!> Hmm what's something he feels like confessing to. <Like t#ing in the movie thea# wi##t get# in trouble!>

<Quite right; you can tell yo#r friends exactly what you think of The Man in the White Suit and how you'd have gotten away with it. Refreshment stalls are going to be keen as mustard for this stuff. But somehow, dear boy, keeping out of trouble seems like a waste of a good sweet—or don't you agree?>

His eyes twinkle watchfully, though perhaps only the Oompa-Loompas are close enough to see.

Two seconds of assessing stare.<Also it would be funny to give these to my older brothers and pretend to be a ghost and scare them.> 

Now that's a funny image. Mr. Wonka can't help laughing. Another test passed, too.

"Ohohoho—"

<— yes! Now there's a real hair-curling idea. I was sure you could do it! Many don't know how, I'm sorry to tell you. Comes from parents following them around saying ‘Don't get any ideas’. Can you imagine such a tragedy? ‘Don't get any ideas?’ That's what heads are for!>

Kevin laughs too, gets a bit of lollipop spit on his chin and wipes it with his sleeve. <Yeah!> His enthusiasm for everything that's going on right now is rapidly shrinking his lollipop. <Where do you get your ideas? You have so many!>

<Special Wonka pencils, of course. Have you ever seen people gnawing at their erasers? Disgusting habit; I recommend it. My pencils all have chewing gum erasers that give you good ideas as you chew them over.>