Easter basket confections can be divided into two categories.

First there are "Candies We Like to Eat," which include chocolate bunnies, colored jelly beans and those speckled malted-milk eggs.

The other is Peeps - better known as "Candies We Like to Melt, Mangle and Mutilate."

The marshmallow chicks and bunnies have been the best-selling non-chocolate Easter candy for the past decade. In fact, the folks at Just Born - the makers of Peeps - believe there are more than 200 unofficial Web sites that pay homage to the sugar-coated American icon.

Here are a few of our favorites:

Renegade Peeps: Those who love Peeps and music will appreciate having great scenes in rock 'n' roll history re-enacted by yellow, blue and pink Peeps. See Elvis "Peepsley" appear from the waist up on "The Ed Sullivan Show"; learn how "Sgt. Peeper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" came to be; and don't forget the Bee Gees becoming disco icons with "Saturday Night Peeper." See it at www.rhino.com/fun/trunk/peeps/index.lass .

Peeps Play: Bored of those high-tech video games? Try "Peeps in Outerspace" at www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/peep-game. Your spaceship must shoot the yellow chicks and pink bunnies, until they puff up and die. All the while you have to make sure your spaceship doesn't get hit by falling rockets. It's pedestrian but - just like the candy - curiously addicting.

Microwave magic: Next time you need some cheap entertainment, try "Peep Jousting," an idea found on Wikipedia. Take two Peeps. Lick the right side of each until sticky. Attach a toothpick to this sticky side and point it forward like a jousting sword. Place your Peeps face-to-face in the microwave and turn it on. As the Peeps expand, the toothpicks thrust toward each opponent. (Our chicks fell over on the first try.) The winner is the one that does not pop.

kathys@sltrib.com