When Bad Shapes Happen to Good Cereal

It's a little after 3am, as per usual, I can't sleep. I decided to have a bowl of cereal. Standing there, staring at all the various boxes I have in my cupboard to choose from it dawned on me what was wrong with the world today. They completely fucked up our cereal. Seriously. And not for the better. Rememeber when Count Chocula had little marshmellows that looked like little marshmellows? They would melt a little in the milk. Not so with today's Chocolatety marshmellows, those things are bat shaped and other assorted blobby shapes and they do not melt even a little in your milk, you have to chew on those fuckers now, have I mentioned they have the consistancy of styrofoam? It's like chewing on a styrofoam cup, yuck.

Lucky Charms has added so many new marshmellows it barely has any room for the one thing that thinly disguised it as having any nutritional value, the little oat parts. I remember a time when I would have more oat bits than marshmellows, not so anymore. Now I find myself searching for those once scorned pieces to take the sugar edge off so I don't go into a diabetic coma after a couple spoon fulls of the styrofoam marshmellows.

Also, what's with the neon pink pebbles glowing like radioactive sugar from my bowl of fruity pebbles? Just leave my Fruity Pebbles alone, thankyouverymuch. I don't have too many joys left over form my childhood, that is one of them and I swear if they fuck them up I'm gonna have to write a very stern letter to the editor or something. It's bad enough they stopped added prizes to the boxes now a days.

Those prizes established a pecking order in every American childs household. It allowed you to observe at a very early age the different ways people handled conflict and perfect your own style. Those toys helped build character, unless you were an only child, then you were just spoiled and would never learn the survival skills needed to survive on the playground and beyond anyways. Which doesn't matter because I'm sure mommy and daddy gave you everything anyways and still do. But if you had siblings, especially ones close in age to you, then it was a true glimpse at the ways of the world. Just about every tactic was employed and if you were good at it, you walked away with the glow in the dark spoon, if you weren't then you got stuck with the pog.

In my house my oldest sister, Ame, got by for many a year on the fact she was the oldest and could therefor beat the crap out of the rest of us. That lasted until I discovered the power of crying and whining until my mom would just say, "Just give it to her, you're too old for that anyways." Which was the truth, Ame is 6 years older than me. There was only a couple years of fighting over the coveted toy until she out grew the joy of playing with little monsters that fit on your fingertip. I so loved my little Frankenberry finger puppet. The most vicious and peace shattering cereal box fights happened between me and my next oldest sister, Jess, who is only a year and a half older than me. Many battles were played out at the breakfast table between us with my oldest sister usually the only one around to break them up because our parents were already at work. Rice Krispies was giving out little Snap, Crackle and Pop figures once, I had a Snap and 3 Pops, but my life was incomplete because I still needed Crackle.

Everytime I went to the grocery store with my mom I would have to feel every box of Rice Krispies until I was convinced the one I held in my little hands was the box containing Crackle nestled in with the puffed rice. Turns out I had a knack for picking the boxes with Pop in them, between my sister and myself we had a little army of Pops. One morning I was a little late waking up but I wasn't too concerned because I knew we still has almost half a box of Rice Krispies to go through until we could open the new one. Jess, in one of the only brilliant thoughts she has had in her entire life, got up early and with a little help from Ame, had finsihed off the rest of the box and had opened the new one. I walked into the kitchen to her smirking at me with the Holy Grail of cereal toys sitting next to her bowl. THAT BITCH!!! SHE HAD MY CRACKLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not only did she have my Crackle, she was gloating over it. That just wouldn't do. I was the one who picked out the box, I was the one who played by the rules, I was the one who was out smarted by the girl who thought Snausages were beef jerky for people and ate them. First, I tried to reason with her, I tried to trade her 2 Pops and a couple Garbage Pail Kids for it, of course she said no. Then I tried blackmail, but being only 6 I wasn't very good at it. I threatened to tell my mom that she ate all the cereal and she just said, so what. Feeling very ripped off at the injustice of it all, I tried to just take it, that didn't work, at that time she could still beat my ass, though it was a close fight. So I fell back on old reliable, I threw a fit, complete with full on crying and whining. It being a Sunday morning, Mom and Dad were home. The noise woke Dad up who was unsympathetic to my plight and told me to go to my room. I think he was hung over, of course i didn't know it at the time but looking back on it, Mom and him would go out on Saturday nights and not get home until long after we were in bed.

So I sat in my room, pouting and plotting revenge on Jess for stealing the toy that should have been mine. After what seemed like hours but was probably only 10 minutes I peeked my head out my door to see if Dad had gone back to bed. Jess was sititng in the hall, playing with her complete set of Snap, CRACKLE and Pop. She looked up, smirking at me, telling me I better get back into my room before she told Dad I was out. I didn't get my Crackle that day. For weeks Jess would carry it around just to piss me off. The next box of Rice Krispies we got after that one I got in trouble from my mom for pouring all the cereal in a big pan to get to the prize, it was another Pop.

Right about that time those plastic charm bracelets were getting popular and I just happened to get a little platic charm in the shape of a Milkshake that Jess really wanted so she finally trade me Crackle for it. As I was reveling in the joy of having a complete set, Jess handed me Crackle, saying, "I never wanted it anyways, only dweebs play wiht those now." Gotta love siblings. But see if it hadn't been for those toys I would have never learned the art of bartering, blackmail, throwing an effective fit, patience, fighting and countless other skills needed to survive in the adult world. I'm sure some I would have learned but I don't think I would have been as good as I am if I hadn't gotten such a young start at honing my skills.

Oh, and another thing, you would think while they are changing shapes, adding more marshmellows and such they would have at least gotten around to changing Capt'n Crunch's shape so it didn't cut the roof of your mouth like razor wire, but yet they haven't. Go figure.