Lip-Smackin’ Eats

     As I have begun the slow march towards aged-ness, I have started to realize that it’s just not cool to do some of the same things I used to do. Man, when I was a kid (or a year ago) I would relish the idea of jumping into a near by mud puddle just to watch the water and wet dirt spew forth. Now, however, I’m more worried about getting my nice shoes dirty. Shoot, I used to sit on my butt for hours and watch cartoons, too… wait, really bad example there, sorry. Anyway, you get the gist of what I’m getting at here: basically, times they are a changin’ (sorry Bob).

     I think the thing I miss the most, though, has got to be the breakfast cereals I so loved as a younger man. Now, it’s raisin bran and granola all around for me, and that’s just sad on so many levels that it makes me weep a little on the inside. I like to keep regular, what are you going to do. Still, I can honestly say that I long to savor the sickening sweetness of a good kid’s cereal so inundated with tooth-rotting goodness that you almost forget the fact that the stuff is supposed to have a moderate nutritional value. I pine for a nice bowl of something chocolaty, or something enmeshed thoroughly with fake strawberry goodness, or something chock full of phony marshmallows… man, those were certainly the days.

     It was all about pretty packaging back then, too. I could have honestly cared less if the box was full of light bulb shards as long as it was saccharine and the box was obnoxiously colored. I usually turned more towards the pictures of giant mascots consuming the very product they were trying to pawn off on you, like any one of the amazing Monster Themed cereals.

     I never got right into Fruit Brute or Fruity Yummy Mummy, but my life revolved around the more famous trio of Frankenberry, Booberry, and Count Chocula respectively. Sure, the box had a list announcing what (if in any significant amounts)  nutrition these fellows contained, but I secretly knew the good folks at General Mills were big, fat liars. There was no way on God’s Green Earth that all of that good-for-you crap was in there… no way. I just loved the fact that, after inhaling the bowl of sweet, sweet glory, you were rewarded for your efforts with a sugary milk slick that was the ultimate prize. I would savor the HELL out of that elixer. Good times.

     Beyond the world of the Universal Monster fare was the animal-themed breakfast goodies. I think above all was the duo of Froot Loops and Trix. Froot Loops were pretty tame considering the competition: no marshmallows, no funny shapes, no little multi-colored bits of what not, just plain and simple hoops o’ fruit. It’s in the name, folks. there was a reason it wasn’t called Froot Loops Etcetera, for example. They were good, though… oh so very good. You have to love the idea of a British Toucan with a multi-hued schnoz singing their praises… classic. The only real issue I had with these round rascals is that they tended to turn into wallpaper paste rather rapidly once the initial solidity wore off. In roughly 12 seconds, in fact. Trix, on the other hand, were hocked by the sad-sack rabbit who never actually got to eat his own stuff, even after several failed attempts for the consumer public to vote for his potential prize. And, above all else, they looked like little, fruity, rabbit turds. Hmm, not so appetizing, that. I guess someone at the headquarters finally made that little discovery eventually since they did finally change shape into little fruits. Either way, still delicious. But, alas, they too suffered the same penultimate fate: Sogginess like mad gangbusters.

     I have to say that I truly loved Cap’n Crunch in all its incarnations: with or without Crunch Berries, Peanut butter-flavored, Christmas Crunch with the red and green… you name it, all breakfast gold. I think what really turned me on, aside from the fact that it was gleefully spearheaded by a sea-going cyan-shaded, goofy-assed naval officer, was the Capn’s battle with the Soggies, the milky critters threatening the cereal’s very structure. The creators had their stuff together for this cereal suffered from the opposite affliction of just about every other brand out there by actually being so resistant to the milk as to nearly rip your mouth to shreds as you attmpted to penetrate its exoskeleton. But even so, I loved every painful bite. Like GLASS I tell you.

     I think at the bottom of the list, though every bit as missed as the others, have to be such favorites as Alphabits (sort of vanilla flavored letters so we could learn at the breakfast table… fun?), Cocoa Puffs (another goofy bird going absolutely ape shit over his little brown balls… wait, what?), Fruity Pebbles (the Flintstones got themselves neck-deep in some serious thievery, namely Barney… not a Flintstone, I know), Frosted Flakes (Tony the Tiger, voiced by good old Thurl Ravenscroft who also sang the music for the Grinch cartoon… I am a dork), Sugar Smacks (Digg’Um was a frog… how about we associate a slimy amphibian with breakfast. Good plan), and Lucky Charms (four out of five dentists recommend you enjoy a big old bowl of marsh-a-bits with a smattering of actual cereal every morning! Nutritional Kryptonite for sure).

     So there you have it; my longing for the good old days and my unrelenting desire to once again be a kid. Sure, my boys love them some tooth-aching goodness, and that is so cool with me. I have to say, though, I have been finding it hard lately to even eat anything with more sugar in it than a typical candy bar, and these cereals may as well have been just that: candy. That being said, I have made myself so hungry right now that…. okay, where’s the milk.

Stew