Actually, in this mug of thank you's, the finish on the inside had tiny fine crack and the mold got into the ceramic through these cracks and started to grow. This IS what the black stains were - I have seen it before and a friend did a science paper on this, breaking several mugs he got from people and restaurants that had these cracks that didn't bleach clean. the growths generally were mold. This taught me to watch for those fine cracks inside mugs and ANY damage that exposed the pottery under the finish. I throw mugs with chips away because all sorts of NASTY things can get inside and then cannot be cleaned away. husband gets upset but he and thank you are so hard on mugs that I have to pitch 3-4 a month due to whatever they do to the mugs that cracks them.
I used to say "Chocolate pudding" or "Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough" before I told the kids anything. they could hear dessert words whispered 2 rooms away while they played video games but a Mom right next to them? They were totally unable to hear me until I started with attention getting dessert words first. In the beginning they actually got the dessert then it became only sometimes. But since they didn't know if they would get the dessert or not, they sure listened to what I said after that. My mother thought this was hilarious but very creative and it sure ended a lot of drama, lol.