Last night I was sorting some of the Pick-A-Brick cups that I had bought at Brickworld.  One of the cups that I had contained some white horses.  White horses aren't exactly a piece that I need a whole bunch of, so I only put 4 in the cup.  Since horses are a pretty bulky piece, I filled in the space around them with small pieces.  Those small pieces happened to be 1X2 plates.  When I dumped the P.A.B. cup, I noticed that one of the horses had a bunch of the 1X2 plates stuck to it.

Have you ever been getting P.A.B. pieces at a LEGO store and purposely avoided certain pieces in the bin because you thought that some kid had gotten them all filthy?  I can just imagine that every so often some parent brings their kid into a LEGO store right after eating at the mall's food court, and the kid hasn't washed their hands.  With sticky residue still all over their fingers they run to the P.A.B. wall and plunge their disgusting grubby little hands into the new bricks.  The parent says, "No, we're not getting any of those," and pulls the kid away.  Inevitably, some of the nasty food gunk from that kid's hands has made it onto the pieces, leaving some hapless buyer to unknowingly purchase defiled parts.

That's exactly what I thought had happened to me.  "Oh great," I thought.  "Some little brat was probably eating some sticky candy, and now the sugary spit from that little brat's hands got all over my new horse, and now I have a bunch of new 1X2 plates that have been stuck to it for months."  I was thoroughly disgusted at this thought as I was taking the 1X2 plates off of the horse.  As I uncovered the sticky side of the horse, I noticed that the layer of sticky stuff didn't look like the kind of residue that's left from greasy fingers or sugary slobber.  It looked just like the sticky residue that's left when you pull a piece of tape off of something.  Then it dawned on me: The horse I had was the one that had been taped to the side of the cardboard P.A.B. box, so they can see what piece it contains.  I laughed in relief at my silly supposition.  I'll still need to clean off the sticky tape gunk, but I definitely prefer that over sticky food gunk.

The vast majority of P.A.B. pieces are smaller and less topographically complex than the horse, thus making them easier to clean.  Nevertheless, watch out for that last P.A.B. piece that comes from under the tape at the end of the box!