Archive for the Supermarket Category

AWESOME-tober-fest 2009: Supermarket Halloween Goodies from years ago

Posted in Halloween, holiday, Pepsi, retail, soda, Supermarket with tags , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2009 by Paxton

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**Start shameless self-promotion** Recently, a humor/nostalgia site called Monkey Goggles has asked me to write some articles for them.  Unlike on Cracked.com, I got my first article posted on Thursday.  It’s a repost of my Glorious Glass article about ’70s and ’80s collectors glasses.  If you don’t mind, click on over to my article on Monkey Goggles and take a look if you haven’t already (or even if you have).  Get some friends and family to click on over and check it out, too.  Let’s let MG know they need to feature more Pax articles.  **End shameless self-promotion**

Okay, back to business…

As you can tell, this week has been the “Supermarket Goodies” week of AWESOME-tober-fest. I’m continuing this theme today but I’m firing up the Flux Capacitor and taking us back in time. Let’s have a look at a few products from Halloweens past. It seemed like items back then were just more FUN.  Starting with…

Ghoul-Aid
Ghoul-Aid — Kool-Aid’s entry into the Halloween product parade back in the late ’90s.  There was also a Scary Black Cherry flavor, but this Scary Blackberry was a brand new flavor not seen before or since.  It has reached almost mythical status amongst the Kool-Aid enthusiast crowd.  How awesome is it that Kool-Aid man is dressed as a bat-winged “ghoul”.  I would say he’s a vampire but I don’t see any fangs.  Maybe he’s a Twilight “vampire” (notice the quotes, yes that was on purpose).

Halloween Rice Krispies
Halloween Rice Krispies — Snap, Crackle and Pop dress it up for All Hallow’s Eve (click the image to make it BIGGER).  Love the graphics on this box.  The three elves flying in on a witch’s broom.  So cool.  It’s funny, this is a box of the cereal, yet they are showing pictures of the Rice Krispies bars all over the front and back.  Hope you weren’t expecting that you were buying the bars instead of the cereal.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2009: More Supermarket Halloween Goodies

Posted in Halloween, holiday, retail, Supermarket with tags , , , , , , on October 1, 2009 by Paxton

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Day 2 of AWESOME-tober-fest!! Did you miss Day 1?  Check it here.

It seems like fewer things are getting branded with the Halloween graphics. Sometimes companies will cop out and brand something “Fall” or “Autumn” instead of a cool Halloween theme. I’m totally not on board with that. Bring out the bat and demon fueled monster graphics.

Here are some more retail products that celebrate All Hallow’s Eve like the rest of us.

Snowballs
Blue Bird Snowballs — I’m not a huge fan of Snowballs, but Blue Bird really dresses them up for the holidays. For Halloween they turn orange. For Xmas they are usually red (or white). I may not like them, but I fully support their celebration of the Halloween season.

Gourmet candy corn 1 Gourmet candy corn 2
Gourmet Candy Corn — Gourmet candy corn?  Gourmet?  Should I drink red or white wine with these?  Calling candy corn “gourmet” is like calling McDonalds a “fancy restaurant”.  First, it’s not true, and second, well, the first one pretty much covers it.  I can understand you wanting to change the flavor of candy corn, but blackberry cobbler flavored candy corn is no longer, technically, candy corn.  Unless it’s just a hint of blackberry cobbler, then I’m worried they are just making the flavors worse.  Up next?  Strawberry shortcake flavored peanut butter cups.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2009: Early Halloween finds at the local supermarket

Posted in breakfast cereal, Cap'n Crunch, food, Halloween, holiday, retail, Supermarket with tags , , , , , , , on September 30, 2009 by Paxton

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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
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’.

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Indiana Jones invades the Supermarket and more!!

Posted in food, Mountain Dew, movies, Pepsi, pop culture, retail, reviews, soda, Supermarket with tags , , , on May 22, 2008 by Paxton

Piggly WigglyWell, the inaugural post to the newly branded Cavalcade of Awesome will be one of my favorite types of posts, a rundown of some cool stuff I found at the Supermaket these past few weeks. You should all know by now that I love perusing retail shops and grocery stores for cool product. I’m a sucker for a cool movie promotion, so I especially enjoy food/snack items that are branded with the promotion of an upcoming movie. This usually only happens with action or comic book movies, but that makes it all the better. Surprisingly, you won’t see a movie like 27 Dresses get its own box of cereal (and that’s a shame). But you will see Indiana Jones get one.

You can check out some of my earlier finds here and here. I also enjoy looking for new flavors of candy, cereal, ice cream and soda. All of these really get me excited, so I’ll show you some of the kick ass stuff I’ve been finding the last few weeks.

You can tell the summer movie season is coming. More specifically you know that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens today, mainly because they have been hyping the crap out of it the last few weeks. And in typical George Lucas fashion, the movie’s images are posted all over products you can find in the store (e.g. Indy Jones cereal above). Indy’s visage has also been slapped all over packages of M&Ms. They even created a new flavor for Indy, Mint Crisp. Here are some of the Indiana Jones M&Ms packages you can currently find on store shelves (click the images to see them larger on my Flickr photostream).

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