So I’m pouring The Boy’s cereal this morning, and I notice something a little different about this week’s box of Trix:

It seems our old friend the Rabbit has decided it’s finally time to abscond to South America, Nazi-style, with his ill-gotten booty. Fun in the sun! Brazilian chicks! And — best of all — South American kids are too busy earning their next meal by selling chiclé to tourists to worry about an idiotic talking rabbit and his box of gums-bleedingly crunchy cereal!¹

We’ve talked about cereal marketed to Spanish-speaking kids before. I believe we’re looking at the beginning of a trend here. And it isn’t bad, necessarily; I just wish these companies could figure out a way to do it without pandering. I think that the target audience for this stuff has got to be hip enough to be completely unimpressed with a game of ¡Encuentre el Trix!

(Which means: FIND THE TRIX!)

Of course, to find the Trix, you need to take a tour of South America, and all the wonderful things it has to offer:

The colorful chameleon calls the jungle rainforests of Costa Rica home. Here one is perched on a leafy maze. Draw a line from start to finish throughout the maze, and behold, thousands of colorful chameleons have been bulldozed by greedy capitalist land-raping developers! ¡Encuentre los indigenous peoples!

Some of the world’s greatest coffee is produced in the central highlands of Guatemala. Can you guess the name of the drug hidden in these bags? Did you know that you can’t spell “cocaine” without using the letters C, I, and A? ¡Es muy bueno!

Did you know that in Brazil, soccer is called fútbol? Add up the total goals in this game, then multiply your answer by the total number of fatalities from the riot in the parking lot, divide by two, and you’ve got the number of people in Los Estados Unidos who give a flying fuck about soccer! Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!

Considered one of the great marvels of the world, the Panama Canal links the Caribbean with the Pacific Ocean. Can you name the country whose government Señor Teddy Roosevelt intentionally destabilized in order to complete construction? ¡Viva J.P. Morgan!

Now suppose you just can’t get enough of that South American flavor. What do you do? You can’t very well go around eating Trix all day. Not to worry — the fine people at Sunshine Foods have just the thing for you:

They’re shaped like triangles, because the triangle is the official shape of Mexico. ¡Viva Fiesta Cheesy Taco!

This comes as no surprise; Cheez-Its have come in all sorts of new flavors recently. Most of them look pretty awful — I’m pretty sure there’s something like a “Cheddar BBQ” variety out there, and “Garlic & Sour Cream” Cheez-Its sound like poison — but I guess “Fiesta Cheesy Taco” Cheez-Its make a little bit of sense. There’s also a “Fiesta Cheddar Nacho” flavor, but I chose these because The Boy thinks he’s allergic to cheese, and I thought the “Taco” in the title would outweigh the “Cheesy.”

I was right. He ate one — more than one, actually; more like a handful. Then he declared “THESE TASTE TOO MUCH LIKE TACOS” and has refused to go anywhere near them since. It was a strange comment, even from The Boy; he loves tacos. But now I understand what he meant. These things taste like tacos, all right — just like tacos. From a poorly-ventilated taco truck. I think you know the taste I mean — a little meat, a little cheese, a little tortilla, and a lot of sweat. It’s somehow tolerable when you’re eating an actual taco (under the right circumstances, it can even be downright delicious). In cracker form, however, it tastes like nothing so much as sweaty cheese. The “sweaty” part is all on the back end of the taste, too, so you munch for a few seconds thinking “This isn’t so bad,” and then you gag a little.

And yet somehow it looks like half the box is gone. I think eating all this shit must finally be catching up to my taste buds.

¹Seriously, what’s up with the Trix? They’re like fruit-flavored croutons. Me and my friends couldn’t make it through a bowl of these things without bleeding from our gums for the rest of the day, and that was back when they were round — now they’re actually shaped like fruit, all the better for poking bloody holes in the roof of your mouth. Let the damn rabbit have it already.

During their Biblical forty years of wandering in the desert, the Jews subsisted on a miracle food that fell from the heavens each night. Described as a grain tasting like “flour with honey,” it enabled them to survive in what should have been lethally inhospitable conditions. They called it manna. I prefer to think of it as the world’s first breakfast cereal.

Like many men I know, I have an inordinate preoccupation with cereal. I’ve had long, in-depth conversations with otherwise sane adult males about the relative merits of various breakfast products. Rarely does a trip to the grocery store occur without me dragging poor Leah to the cereal aisle in search of some new and exciting variation. And I’m far from alone in this.

Women don’t understand it. They approach cereal the same way they look at cars — function over form, practicality over flair. I believe they’ve always been this way; as little girls, they don’t get overly excited about Cap’n Crunch or the Trix Rabbit. Boys, on the other hand, go positively insane for any brightly colored box giving off the slightest whiff of sugar. We carry this intense love affair into our adult lives when, as slovenly bachelors, we realize that — aside from being totally awesome — cereal is delicious, portable, and convenient. Cooking for yourself sucks! Just pour a bowl of sugary goodness and you’re all set!

And, because we always ate the coolest cereals under the disapproving gaze of parents who couldn’t believe the crap we talked them into getting for us, it’s those very same cereals we return to as grown-ups. Now nobody can tell us what to do. We can eat an entire box of Crunch Berries and nobody can stop us. This is what adulthood is for.

There were lots of great cereals when I was a kid — any of the Cap’n Crunch varieties were cool, or Trix, or even Lucky Charms. Usually around Halloween, the grocery store would start stocking the Day-Glo trifecta: Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry. And then there were the fad brands, like C-3P0s or Smurf Berry Crunch. Most of them — as a final “fuck you” to parents desperately trying to steer their kids toward healthier fare — came with toys (or what at least looked like a toy on the box). One cereal, though, was always cooler than the rest; it didn’t even need to include a toy to get your attention. I’m talking, of course, about Cookie Crisp.

It’s the simplest, most ingeniously clever idea for a children’s food in the history of food itself. What do kids love more than anything? Cookies. So how do you make the perfect kids’ cereal? Why, you take cookies and put them in a bowl. End of story. Sure, they had the obligatory goofy mascot and cartoon commercials, but it didn’t matter. They could have just put “COOKIE CEREAL” in generic black type on a plain white box and it would have sold just as well.

I mean, really. Cookie cereal. I hope the guy who thought of it won some awards. And that he lives in a gigantic mansion. Made out of cookies.

Anyway, while other cereals have tinkered with their formula over the years in various efforts to boost sales, Cookie Crisp has resolutely remained the same (that brief “vanilla wafer” experiment doesn’t count). You don’t tinker with perfection, after all, and besides, what changes could you possibly make?

They found one:

I had my doubts about this. Sure, peanut butter cookies are good, but with a main ingredient that’s marginally healthy, they’re nowhere near as cool as chocolate chip. And what’s with this stupid new mascot?

His name is Chip, and he’s a wolf, I guess. The message here seems to be that wolves like peanut butter, or that burglars don’t; I’m not sure. Either way, he doesn’t know how to say “cookie”:

Actually, I just looked, and I guess Chip is now the mascot for Peanut Butter and regular Cookie Crisp. When did this happen? Why? Did Chip eat the burglar?

Anyway.

I poured myself a bowl:

Looks good, huh?

It is. I shouldn’t have worried. I should have known the good people at Cookie Crisp wouldn’t let me down. It’s like a bowl full of little peanut butter cookies — crispy but not too crispy — and though nothing could be as good as the original, this comes fairly close. I had two bowls.

This is it, my friends — the end of Week Boy-Ar-Dee:

It’s been a bumpy road, to be sure, but an educational one nonetheless. We’ve learned, for instance, that it’s possible to can the taste of soggy nachos, or to take the worst parts of the flavor of pepperoni pizza and inject them into ravioli. Most importantly, I’ve learned never to eat anything made by Chef Boyardee again.

But first, the Cheesy Burger Ravioli.

The Boy was all hopped up for this one. He and his mom were gone this morning, and as soon as they came back, he was asking me when we’d be having lunch:

“DID YOU MAKE THE CHEF BOY-AR-DEE YET? WHICH ONE ARE WE HAVING TODAY? I WONDER WHAT IT WILL TASTE LIKE!”

Initial appearances were encouraging: It looked like ravioli because, I mean, it’s ravioli. There were no awful smells, no strange floaters, nothing to cause undue concern regarding malignant after-effects. And you know what? It actually smells pretty good when you cook it.

Doesn’t taste bad either. This is due mainly to the fact that it doesn’t taste anything like a cheesy burger — flavor-wise, it’s pretty much just meat ravioli — but I’m not complaining. I’d been worried that this would be the worst of the bunch, so its relative edibility (is that a word?) was a really nice surprise.

Unfortunately, The Boy didn’t agree with me. He took one bite and cocked his head a little, like he couldn’t quite decide what he was tasting; then, after swallowing, he (somewhat bravely, I thought) speared another ravioli and put it in his mouth. After chewing a few times, he decided he’d tasted enough: His cheeks bulged out, his face turned red, and he started making a bunch of loud noises.

“You like it,” I said. He shook his head wildly. “Yep,” I said. “It’s the best one.”

So he went to the chalkboard we have hanging on the kitchen wall and wrote:

In case it isn’t legible, it reads “THIS IS THE WORST.”

Kind of a sour note for Week Boy-Ar-Dee to go out on, I guess, but those are the breaks. What it basically comes down to is that if I’m ever held at gunpoint and forced to choose between these four lunch products, I’m going for the Cheesy Burger Ravioli. But gunpoint is pretty much what it’ll take.

Cheesy Burger Ravioli
The Boy: “THIS IS THE WORST.”
jefito: “Hey! Tastes like ravioli!”
overall score: 3 out of 5

So. We meet again, my fat, toque-headed nemesis:

I won’t lie to you — yesterday’s Boyarxperiment hurt me, and hurt me bad. Judging from the way my hands were trembling as I opened today’s Can O’ Foul, my body is quickly developing a physical aversion to the Chef’s wares.

And today’s sounded pretty bad:

You won’t believe this, but I’m normally fairly picky about my meat. The missus and I generally shop for the blue-ribbon, grass-fed, free-range stuff. I’ve read Fast Food Nation and seen Super Size Me — pretty much the only reason I buy meat at all anymore is that I like the way it tastes enough to not think about the way it was probably made while I’m eating it. If I wasn’t such a pussy, I’d raise and butcher my own livestock.

Anyway, so:yeah. Picky. There are a lot of restaurants where I’d never even think of ordering a meat dish. Denny’s? Carrow’s? Oh God — Lyon’s? No thanks, I’ll stick with the pancake breakfast.

I tell you this so you’ll understand the level of dread I experienced when thinking about a Chef Boyardee chili cheese dog. Even as a kid, I was smart enough to avoid the “hot dog” bits in Spaghetti-O’s, or to at least dump enough parmesan cheese on everything to cover up the shape and taste of what lay beneath. And here we have the Chef’s best version of a chili dog — in other words, those same old gross slivers of “hot dog,” along with minced-up bits of mealy “meatballs.”

I gasped a little when I opened the can:

Do you now, or have you ever, owned a dog? I have. In case you don’t, or haven’t, let me share some information with you: this shit looks like dog food. The Boy, of course, was all over it.

“IT SMELLS LIKE SPAGHETTI,” he said. “WHAT IS IT SUPPOSED TO TASTE LIKE?”

“A chili dog,” I told him.

“IT SMELLS LIKE CHILI! EEEAAAAUUGGGH!”

“Have you ever had chili?”

“NO!”

Didn’t stop the kid from trying it, though — in fact, he dug in before me. “UNCLE! HURRY UP AND TRY IT! WHAT DO YOU THINK IT TASTES LIKE?”

The verdict? Well, it’s:surprisingly okay. I mean, I can’t think about the ingredients without feeling sick, but I suppose that should be true of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (now with Limon!), and those are just too delicious to avoid. They basically taste like Spaghetti-O’s — which, now that I think about it, is probably the root of all these insane new Boyardee lunch products. All they have to work with is pasta, cheese, tomato sauce, and meat; modern kids are too hip for more than a couple days of that. Dress the same old crap up in bizarre new clothes, though, and you can compete with Lunchables!

Chili Cheese Dog Twistaroni
The Boy: “THAT TASTED GOOD. I LIKED IT.”
jefito: “The best one yet.”
overall score: 3 out of 5

Yes. Fucking Pepperoni Pizzazaroli:

You would think “Pepperoni Pizza Ravioli” would be good enough, or even “Pepperoni Pizzaroli,” but no. They had to add another Z in there, to make it a little more “extreme” or something. Say it with me: pizzazaroli. Up in heaven, the angels are keeping a list of the most retarded food names, and I’m pretty sure “pizzazaroli” is at or near the top.

Anyway, after yesterday’s twistaroni debacle, I scaled The Boy’s portion way back:

This stuff looks okay enough on the surface, I guess. Kind of like the old-fashioned Boyardee ravioli from my youth, but with a pepperoni odor. A not altogether pleasing pepperoni odor, I hasten to add, but The Boy didn’t seem to notice. “WHEN WILL IT BE DONE?” he asked. “I WONDER IF I’LL LIKE IT. DO YOU THINK I’LL LIKE IT? I’M GOING TO TRY SOME.”

And he did. In fact, not only did he eat the pizzazaroli I put in his bowl, but he asked for, and ate, seconds!

This is why six-year-olds are fascinating to me. Personally, I found it hard to finish my bowl. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you exactly why, because Pepperoni Pizzazaroli tastes pretty much the way it’s named; it’s like they took whole slices of pepperoni pizza, pureed them, and stuffed them into pasta shells. You’d think eating something like that would be sort of cool, but no — it’s actually fairly awful. There’s a really foul undercurrent to the taste that I couldn’t quite identify while I was eating. While I was eating, I couldn’t figure it out, but after I’d been finished for a few minutes, I realized what it was: the aftertaste. Yeah, you read that right — the aftertaste on this stuff is so bad that it sneaks back around and hits you even before you’re done.

I’m actually shaking a little just thinking about it.

And here’s another thing. I’m not the kind of guy who normally tends to get heartburn, except for maybe after a heavy night of drinking, and even then it doesn’t show up until the next morning. But no sooner had I rinsed off my bowl than I could feel that fat fucking Chef tearing his way through my innards. Ooof.

Pepperoni Pizzazaroni
The Boy: “THIS TASTES LIKE MEAT AND CHEESE. EXCEPT I CAN’T TASTE THE CHEESE.”
jefito: “(nauseated burp)”
overall score: .5 out of 5

Behold!

Isn’t modern technology wonderful? They’ve taken cheesy nacho, combined it with pasta, and put it in a can. Convenience at its best! They’ve even given us an easy-off, no-can-opener-necessary lid!

The Boy had been talking about eating this stuff since last weekend, and this morning, his anticipation went into overdrive. Before he’d even eaten breakfast, he was asking about Mr. Boy-Ar-Dee. I heard “When’s lunch?” at least two dozen times.

Now, as I said, it is not my intention to force the child into Boy-Ar-Subsistence — I made him a turkey sandwich with fresh tomatoes from our garden as a main course. As he ate his sandwich, I emptied the can into a saucepan and got to cookin’.

“THAT SMELLS GREAT,” he said. “WHEN WILL IT BE READY? IT’S TAKING FOREVER!”

Naturally, it didn’t smell great. Or close to great. It smelled like wet nachos in a can, and it started boiling unnaturally quickly, much like the terrible üncheese from a few months ago. The overall visual/olfactory experience was of something perilously close to not being food — in other words, something I would have been clamoring to stuff myself with at The Boy’s age.

So I got the bowls out, gave myself about 95% of the can, and poured the rest into his little Spider-Man bowl.

He looked in the bowl.

He looked at me.

“EAAAUUUGGGHH,” he said.

We sat down at the table together, but he wouldn’t even eat a single forkful:

As it turns out, he’s much smarter than I was at his age. Or than I am now. While he refused to look at Cheesy Nacho Twistaroni, I ate my whole bowl, and guess what? It tastes just like it smells. If your hungriest moments are spent dreaming of eating soggy old nachos, then this stuff is for you.

So, at the end of Week Boy-Ar-Dee, day 1, here’s the score:

Cheesy Nacho Twistaroni
The Boy: “EAAAUUUGGGHH”
jefito: “Tastes like soggy old nachos”
overall score: 1 out of 5

I realize it’s been a long time since I did an entry on some new piece of dumb junk food, but our nation’s beloved conglomerates seem to have put a freeze on that sort of thing lately. Leah can tell you how dejected I’ve been, week after week, as I scan the aisles of the grocery store in search of something to tell you all about.

Well, I’m feeling much better now. The search is over, friends! And not only have I found something new, but I believe I’ve actually stumbed across the worst idea for a cereal in the history of the world!

Okay, so, what are the grossest things in a kid’s world? To my memory, in ascending order, they’d be boogers, pee, and poop, right? So it would seem like a total 100% given that if you were in the cereal-making business, you would want to just strike “Booger Cereal,” “Pee Cereal,” and “Poop Cereal” off your list.

Well, the boardroom at Kellogg’s is filled with men who are either brave, crazy, or desperate, because they’ve just gone right to the top of my magical list and decided that it would be a wonderful idea to fill a cereal box with what looks like tiny pieces of dried poop.

Behold:

It’s even called Fudge Ripple!

C’mon, you might be thinking, The art department just made an unfortunate mistake. The cereal doesn’t actually look like POOP, does it?

Yes. Yes, it does.

DRIED POOP:IN A BOWL!

You might even think that this stuff looks better once you add milk to it — that it might no longer look like DRIED POOP IN A BOWL. And you’re right, it does look different. It looks like WET POOP IN A SPOON.

Open the barn door, Junior, because here comes an airplane with some very special cargo!

But the back of the box is the best part. It’s like the guys in the art department couldn’t believe what they were being asked to sell, so they decided to load up the packaging with a bunch of terrible doody jokes. There’s a big word puzzle on the back, on top of a painting of the worst carnival ever. Just look at what’s happening:

They’re selling tiny little turds in a building with a giant turd on the roof!

DON’T GO ON THE TEACUP RIDE!

How long is the line for the poop-go-round?

Remember how your mother always told you that money doesn’t grow on trees? Well, it doesn’t. But guess what does?

I’m counting the seconds until this stuff goes off the market. Grab a box now, because it’s totally going to be worth like five thousand bucks on eBay in twenty years.

Oh, and it actually tastes pretty good, too.

I realize it’s been a long time since I did an entry on some new piece of dumb junk food, but our nation’s beloved conglomerates seem to have put a freeze on that sort of thing lately. Leah can tell you how dejected I’ve been, week after week, as I scan the aisles of the grocery store in search of something to tell you all about.

Well, I’m feeling much better now. The search is over, friends! And not only have I found something new, but I believe I’ve actually stumbed across the worst idea for a cereal in the history of the world!

Okay, so, what are the grossest things in a kid’s world? To my memory, in ascending order, they’d be boogers, pee, and poop, right? So it would seem like a total 100% given that if you were in the cereal-making business, you would want to just strike “Booger Cereal,” “Pee Cereal,” and “Poop Cereal” off your list.

Well, the boardroom at Kellogg’s is filled with men who are either brave, crazy, or desperate, because they’ve just gone right to the top of my magical list and decided that it would be a wonderful idea to fill a cereal box with what looks like tiny pieces of dried poop.

Behold:

It’s even called Fudge Ripple!

C’mon, you might be thinking, The art department just made an unfortunate mistake. The cereal doesn’t actually look like POOP, does it?

Yes. Yes, it does.

DRIED POOP…IN A BOWL!

You might even think that this stuff looks better once you add milk to it — that it might no longer look like DRIED POOP IN A BOWL. And you’re right, it does look different. It looks like WET POOP IN A SPOON.

Open the barn door, Junior, because here comes an airplane with some very special cargo!

But the back of the box is the best part. It’s like the guys in the art department couldn’t believe what they were being asked to sell, so they decided to load up the packaging with a bunch of terrible doody jokes. There’s a big word puzzle on the back, on top of a painting of the worst carnival ever. Just look at what’s happening:

They’re selling tiny little turds in a building with a giant turd on the roof!

DON’T GO ON THE TEACUP RIDE!

How long is the line for the poop-go-round?

Remember how your mother always told you that money doesn’t grow on trees? Well, it doesn’t. But guess what does?

I’m counting the seconds until this stuff goes off the market. Grab a box now, because it’s totally going to be worth like five thousand bucks on eBay in twenty years.

Oh, and it actually tastes pretty good, too.

Benja described it as “the movie of the year,” and I have to confess I didn’t believe him, but then I saw this:

And I figure, well, if they’re making cookies from the movie — and putting what look like edible paper tattoos on them — then hell, it’s got to be a great film. Sorry for doubting you, Benja!

Just a few aisles away, I saw something that I’m sure has been out for many years, but I’d never noticed before:

Leah said, “It looks like an open wound,” and I can’t put it into words any better than that. Also, I kind of think there’s something wrong with the phrase “Boneless Pork.” I can’t point to exactly why those words give me the heebie-jeebies when I see them on a box of food, but they do.

And here’s what really caught my eye:

RIB SHAPED PATTIES.

RIB.

SHAPED.

PATTIES.

Are the folks at Hungry-Manâ„¢ taking greater care in the truth-in-advertising department these days, or have they figured out that the people buying their dinners don’t really care about what’s in them?

Dear Smokey,

Whether most people remember it today or not, you are one of the greatest songwriters in the history of American music. “Tracks of My Tears”? “Shop Around”? “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me”?

“Ooh Baby Baby”! “I Second That Emotion”! “Tears of A Clown”! “My Girl”!

I could go on, Smokey, but you see my point. Yes, it’s true that you eventually went on to more or less create the “Quiet Storm” genre, and most people my age or younger only remember you for your 1987 comeback, and its wretched double-barrelled shot of suck, “One Heartbeat” and “Just to See Her.” But nothing can take away from all the great music you made with the Miracles, and all the great songs you wrote for Motown artists. If there’s any justice in this world, Smokey, you’re dirty rotten filthy stinking rich. I mean, I’m talking wiping-your-ass-with-$100-bills rich.

Rich enough to keep from shilling microwave jambalaya and beans & rice:

The soul is:in the bowl?

I can understand why Chubby Checker is selling beef jerky—he only recorded one song anybody ever cared about, and he didn’t even write it. But you, Smokey?

Goddammit.