Coincidences on parade: I am, right this minute, wearing a t-shirt that says “Soylent Green Is Delicious.”
I usually skip the butter or “butter” altogether. Without topping, I can convince myself that I’m enjoying a healthier snack (albeit with a week’s worth of salt). Don’t burst my bubble.
Half the time I go to the movies, there isn’t even a ticket taker. I tend to go at strange times, sure, but security doesn’t seem to be a high concern.
My wife and I aren’t big popcorn fans, but we usually stop by our local Quickie-Mart for supplies to smuggle in. She always marvels at my ability to put a 16 oz bottle of water/soda in each front pocket of my jeans. We will sometimes also get a box of Raisinettes (for me) and Sno-Caps (for Mrs. Omens), which either go in her purse or my back pocket (one of the advantages of having no butt to speak of). As long as nobody asks why I’m walking so strangely, no problem.
I just bought a couple of boxes of microwave popcorn. The packaging proudly says “100% whole grain” because of course that’s the current health fad. (But it seems kind of silly. Isn’t popcorn whole grain by definition?)
For about the same reasons you never get an actual ice cream shake anywhere but an ice cream parlor. Cost is obviously a big factor but just as important are ease of storage and preparation, and the homogeneity of product and serving size. In essence, the goal is to produce something that can in seconds be squirted out of a plastic bag through a tube.
Advertisers like to do this to make their product seem special in some way. An old cigarette ad used to declare that their product was “toasted” as if that made it better than other tobacco products. Never mind that every other cigarette tobacco had been toasted as well.
Odesio
I have to admit I feel guilty smuggling food/drinks into a movie theater. I know the stuff is way, way overpriced; but that’s because it’s the only way the theater makes any money. I feel like I need to support them.
Most people with dead taste buds, I guess.
I’m convinced that fake butter crap is actually just a petroleum by-product and not edible at all. I also noticed that, once you drop a piece of popcorn that’s soaked in the stuff on your shirt, you will never get that splotch of oil stain out of the fabric. That can’t be made of anything resembling food.
Guess what? You’re close! 
That’s just the way you remember it.