peeps

Fresh:

hideous marshmallow texture--approximately as unpleasant as Hostess Snowballs, but hideous in a different way.

One Month:

Much better. They now have some body to them.

One Year:

Chewey

Two Years:

Crunchy, like the marshmallows in Lucky Charms.

Most people like peeps best stale. Sort of like Circus Peanuts and licorice.

I had two-year-old peeps at burning man last year. I now have a peeps cellar.

There are now red valentine peeps, unfortunately, they are strawberry flavored.

Peeps are a rather scary food item because they are almost impossible to destroy. They don't dissolve in water, or bleach for that matter (just lose their color). If you microwave them they swell up to enormous sizes, the same for if you try and burn them. No doubt after a nuclear meltdown all that would be left would be the cockroaches and the peeps. They are also amusing to put in a vacuum. (yes I've had personal experience with doing all these things to peeps, as well as staking them and leaving them outside my college's administrative) building.)

"I'm destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it."
-- Nas, Illmatic, Life's a Bitch

A slang term, popular in America in the 1990s and 2000s. Peeps is a shortening of 'people', or possibly 'peoples'. It implies not just people, but your people; your friends, gang, buddies, your mates. It seems to have entered mainstream usage in the rap song Life's a Bitch by Nas (1994), although it had been around before that.

In some cases, peeps will be used to mean people, both friends and strangers. This usage seems to be most common on-line, in chat rooms and such. Probably this is only done by uncool people. I don't advise it.

"Hello, matey peeps"
-- Harry Enfield

In the 1980s British comedian Harry Enfield created another of his trademark characters. This one was Stavros, a Greek restaurateur who spoke in fractured English. One of his trademark catchphrases was to introduce himself with the words "Hello peeps!" This may be the first recorded use of peeps as a shortening of people (in the general sense, rather than the 'good friends' sense). This could theoretically be the origin of the American slang term, although no one seems to endorse that theory. But it does mean that nerdy suburbanites can use the word peeps without compromising their own particular idiom.

Props to my peeps.

References:
Yes, I use references to node urban slang. Pasty white people. Oy.
urbandictionary.com
ask.yahoo.com/20050401.html
http://www.pugetsoundcenter.org/techREACH/mentors/docs/E-mailSlang.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peeps
http://www.jumptheshark.com/h/harryenfieldandchums.htm
Thanks to Wertperch for pointing me to Harry Enfield.