Cavalcade of Awesome

October 1st is tomorrow.  However, I’m pumped and excited to kick off AWESOME-tober-fest so I’m doing something unprecedented.  I’m going to post this little entry a WHOLE DAY EARLY.  WHAT-WHAT?!  That’s right, AWESOME-tober-fest is starting a day earlier this year.  Have I completely blown your mind?  Don’t worry, you can thank me by sending envelopes of cash and/or blank checks from your checkbook.  I’ll accept either.

So, this year, AWESOME-tober-fest has a theme.  What is that theme?  Well, if you look at the new blog header above you can see the theme of this year is Frankenstein.  It’s a loose theme, mind you, as I’ll be looking at a other stuff besides just Frankenstein, but I have a lot of Frankenstein themed articles coming.  So prepare yourself.

Anyway, like I said, Week 1 of this little yearly dance known as AWESOME-tober-fest is now officially under way.  What am I looking at today?  Well, even though the overall theme this year is Frankenstein, the mini-theme of this week will be “Supermarket Goodies”.  I’ll be looking at cool Halloween items you can find at your local grocer.  I did an early scouring of my Targets, Wal-Marts, Walgreen’s, etc in order to find out what Halloween related items are out there already.  Most stores have their Halloween sections up and ready, so let’s see some of the cooler items I found.

Halloween Crunch — I found it this year! Wa-Hoo-HA!!  If you remember, I couldn’t find this little slice of Heaven last Halloween OR the year before. And I wanted it.  BAD.  It had become my personal Moby Dick.  I had to find this cereal, if only to prove it existed.  I could find Christmas Crunch every year but this one kept eluding me.  It was like trying to nail Jello to the wall.  However, this year, the God of all things spooky and Halloween-y decided to grace my local Wal-Mart with Cap’n Crunch’s annual scary monster cereal.  And all was right with the world.  The only thing I wish was that the Cap’n himself was dressed as Frankenstein’s monster instead of the mummy, but mostly because my general theme this year is Frankenstein.  Not to take anything away from the awesome Mummy Cap’n artwork on the box.  I’m just sayin’.

Pumpkin Patch Orange Pop Rocks — At first glance I thought these were pumpkin flavored Pop Rocks. After spotting them, I started digging my arms into the bin trying to grab as many as I could hold like a starving man would dive at a cooked turkey. People started to stare. I think I heard a kid start crying. Not my finest moment. Then, as I looked closer at the package, I noticed it said Pumpkin Patch ORANGE and I died a little inside. Orange?  Bah.  You’re on the list, Pop Rocks.

Nestle Scream packaged candy — While the contents of these packages are ordinary, the packaging is awesome. On the Ultimate Scream package we get our first appearance this month of FRANKENSTEIN. Very nice image of him too (click the image to see it bigger). Same goes for the Classic Scream Dracula packaging. The classic scream queens in the lower right corners of the packages are a nice touch, too.  Really nice artwork elevates this candy to the upper echelons of this year’s Halloween candy finds. However the innards of the packages are hardly worth screaming over.

Dr Scab’s Monster Lab gummy candy — Another Frankenstein themed candy!  We are on a roll!  This is a bag of gummy monster parts with which you can build your own gummy monster.  I like the graphic of the bald Frankenstein and his goofy looking monster.  These gummy body parts are popular every year.  I discussed three other versions of them in 2007.  And this year I again saw the same gummy body parts from 2007 (well, I hope they aren’t the EXACT same).

Ghost Dots — Ghost Dots are BACK!! And they’ve brought friends!! Ghost Dots have been around for a few years and they are AWESOME! This year, there are two new Dots flavors, Bat Dots and Candy Corn Dots. The idea of these Dot flavors are bad ass. All three work together like RUN-DMC to rock tha house. However, the flavor of Bat Dots and Candy Corn Dots are not up to the Ghost Dots bar of superiority. Bat Dots are an orange flavor, which is okay, but not great. Candy Corn Dots continue the long standing tradition of Candy Corn flavored items; a) They taste nothing like actual candy corn and b) they taste like spoiled cream cheese squeezed through a dirty dish rag. Not sure what companies are thinking when they release candy corn flavored products that don’t actually taste like candy corn (I’m looking at you Jones Soda Company).  So definitely get Ghost Dots, and if you are interested, try the new flavors.  But you won’t be missing anything if you pass right by.

Thanks Shawn Robare for the use of some of your pics. They were much better than what my sorry ass scanner was able to do.

Hey, people, this little shindig is just getting under way.  I’ll be posting two or three entries a week from here on out (check your mind, I may have just blown it…again).  Keep checking back for more scary stories and articles this week!

Also, click on the image below to head on over to the main Countdown to Halloween website where you will see hundreds of other blogs doing what I’m doing, posting Halloween centric articles everyday until Halloween.

This entry was posted on September 30, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under breakfast cereal, Cap'n Crunch, food, Halloween, holiday, retail, Supermarket with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2009, breakfast cereal, Cap'n Crunch, Halloween, holiday, retail, Supermarket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.