Archive for breakfast cereal

Lots of Podcast goodness for you to consume

Posted in breakfast cereal, Cap'n Crunch, Ghostbusters, movies, podcast, pop culture with tags , , , , , , on April 8, 2014 by Paxton

Several episodes of my podcasts have been posted lately.

Teen Wolf Bites

Episode 125 of the Nerd Lunch Podcast was posted last week to much acclaim. It features the final week in our Atomic Weeks celebration in which we are celebrating the Atomic Geeks’ 250th episode by having each member of the show as guests.  This final week has Digio as our guest and we are talking about breakfast cereals. We talk about our favorite cereals, mascots and commercials. We even take a moment to create our own cereal based on a pop culture property. It’s a fun episode, check it out on iTunes, Stitcher or listen to it online here.

Cult Film Club vs Nerd Lunch

This week, episode 126 features a crossover between Cult Film Club and the Nerd Lunch Podcast.  You may remember that all of us met up in Atlanta last month.  While we spent our time eating and drinking our way through the city, we did actually sit down and record a podcast.  And it has now gone live.  It’s our annual Summer Preview episode where we all talk about movies that we are excited to see in the coming months.  It’s a lot of fun.  Check it out on iTunes, Stitcher or listen to it online here.

Harold Ramis

And, in a bit of synergy, Shawn, Jaime and I have finally started recording Season 2 of the Cult Film Club podcast. The first episode is up in which we pay tribute to the great Harold Ramis by looking at three of his most famous and cult-y flicks; Stripes, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day.  So click the RIP image above and listen to the awesome Episode 13 of The Cult Film Club Podcast.

 

Oh yes, and this is my 800th post on the Cavalcade.  You’re welcome, Internet.

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The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Part III

Posted in Batman, breakfast cereal, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Trek with tags , , , , , on March 16, 2010 by Paxton

Last year I wrote a two part article talking about long defunct breakfast cereals. They were both a very big hit. Dark Roasted Blend and The National Review Online picked them up and it exploded onto a bunch of other blogs after that. If you missed the first two parts of this article:

Read Part I here.
Read Part II here.

A big thanks to my friends Jackie and Steve for actually suggesting this topic to begin with.  Now, let’s take another stroll down Grocery Aisle 7c and examine a bunch more extinct breakfast cereals.

Freakies Fruity Freakies Cocoa Freakies
Freakies cereal was created in 1971 by Ralston-Purina and lasted until about 1977. However, despite most of the general public not really remembering it, the sloppy man-love for this cereal among cereal box enthusiasts is insane. These boxes are traded heavily amongst collectors with the Cocoa Freakies box going for around $800. I honestly don’t remember it, but there are a lot of people who do and would shell out truckloads of dough for certain boxes.  Here’s a commercial for Freakies.

Quisp and Quake Quangaroos
Quisp and Quake were introduced back in 1965 by the Quaker Oats company.  They were usually marketed together as rivals in much the same way as Baron Von Redberry and Sir Grapefellow.  The characters and animation for the cereals and commercials were done by Jay Ward who also created Rocky & Bullwinkle.  The commercial even uses some of the same voice talent as Rocky & Bullwinkle.  Check out a Quisp commercial here (you see Quake at the very end).  In 1970, Quaker ran a contest promotion to see which cereal was more popular.  Quisp won and Quake quietly left the shelves. However Quake would resurface later in the even more queerly named Quake’s Orange Quangaroos.  Quaker was totally committed to the whole ‘Q’ thing. See a Quangaroos commercial here. Retro boxes of both Quisp and Quake have been released to certain markets in the past few years.

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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

Awesometoberfest banner

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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The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Pt II

Posted in advertising, Batman, breakfast cereal, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags , , , , , , on April 3, 2009 by Paxton

Allrighty, here’s Part II of the discontinued cereals article.  If you missed Part I, click here, my friends, otherwise, let’s walk back down Aisle 7c (Nostalgia) and take a look at some more forgotten cereals from our childhood.

Burgen, flurgen, murgen…BORK BORK BORK!! The cereal with the nonsense name. Swedish Chef was one of the more popular Muppets, so it’s not surprising he got his own cereal. This was released in the late ’80s and the commercials for it were produced by Jim Henson, right before he died. Here is one of the commercials.

Croonchy Stars

What if you want a breakfast food that looks like other food? I mean, why eat donuts for breakfast when you can have cereal…shaped like donuts? Or waffles? Or ice cream? These cereals remind me of that Jim Belushi skit on SNL where he’s an Olympic athlete that eats “Little Chocolate Donuts” for breakfast. See that skit here. Here are cereals based on donuts, including a Dunkin Donuts branded cereal. I actually remember each of these.

DonutzDinky DonutsDunkin Donuts

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The Grocery Aisle of long forgotten breakfast cereals Pt I

Posted in breakfast cereal, Cap'n Crunch, cartoons, food, nostalgia, Pac-Man, pop culture, TV shows with tags , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2009 by Paxton

Cereal Boxes potpourriMy good friend Steve emailed me a few weeks ago and asked me to write an article on a subject he and his wife had recently been discussing.  He wanted me to talk about breakfast cereal.  More specifically, he wanted me to talk about some of his favorite breakfast cereals he remembers when he was a kid.  Now, Steve and I have known each other since first grade, but I won’t know all of his favorite breakfast cereals.  So, I thought I’d take the general topic of cereal, and look at it from the nostalgia perspective.

There is a surprising amount of cereal box enthusiasts out there.  If you go to Flickr, there are two main groups dedicated to cereal from the ’50s up through the ’90s.  There are more groups than these two, but the two I’m talking about contain the majority of the images.  So, scanning these groups, I thought I’d discuss some forgotten and long discontinued cereals that we may all remember.  So, let’s head on over to your local Western Supermarket or Safeway, and walk down the Nostalgia aisle (Aisle 7c) and see what we all used to eat when we were kids.  FYI…There were so many awesome, awesome cereals that I found that I decided to split this article into two parts.  Come back later this week to see Part II. For any of the pictures below, click them to go to a bigger version (most likely on Flickr).

All set, then let’s begin with the first batch…

No talk about breakfast cereals is complete without talking about Capt. Horatio Magellan Crunch (aka Cap’n Crunch for the noobs).   And if we are talking about the Cap’n, I’m going to have to talk about the elephant in the room.  It is a harsh truth that all cereal enthusiasts are aware of.  Cap’n Crunch is an incurable media whore.  Currently, there’s like five versions of Cap’n Crunch on the shelves.  That alone is enough, but if you look into the past, and include special editions, we are looking at a number north of 17 versions of Cap’n Crunch.  Seriously.  He will pimp his image/cereal out to any idea that comes across the table.  Here are 9 versions of Cap”n Crunch you may have never seen.

Choco CrunchVanilly CrunchCinnamon CrunchPunch CrunchDeep Sea CrunchHalloween CrunchXmas CrunchHome Run CrunchPolar Crunch
Deep Sea Crunch? Vanilly Crunch?  Seriously? And that’s not all of the images. How about Treasure Hunt Crunch? Or maybe you would prefer Choco-Donuts Crunch? This never ending parade of Crunch madness has got to end. The Cap’n is sick, he needs help.

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