An Ode To All Things Awesome, Food Edition

"Blame It On Me" ~Parachute (This song puts happiness in my step every time.)

I realize my last blog post about nostalgia contained absolutely no reference to food or candy at all. And there's good reason for that: food and candy, etc. deserve their very own blog post. Especially those that are since dearly departed.

Candy and soda is pretty much what childhood is. As Jerry Seinfeld so lovingly put it (in one of my favorite stand up routines ever): "Candy was my whole life when I was a kid. That was...first ten years of my life, I think the only clear thought I had was 'GET CANDY!' That was it. Family, friends, school, they were just obstacles in they way of the candy. I'm out for the candy here. I'm just thinking 'Get candy! Get candy!' That's why you have to teach kids not to take candy from a stranger if they're playing in the playground, because they're such candy idiot moron brains... They're just 'This man has candy, I'm going with him. Goodbye. Whatever happens to me. Get candy, get candy...' 'Don't go! They'll torture you, they'll kidnap you.' 'It doesn't matter, he has an O Henry. I have to take that chance. Get candy, get candy...'"

And so the list begins...

I'm going to start with what I believe to be the most amazing, incredible phenomenon of our time: CRYSTAL PEPSI! In 1992, Crystal Pepsi became the focus of children all over the US and the lament of all of the mothers of said children. I specifically remember watching the "Right Now" Van Halen commercial for Crystal Pepsi, thinking I would DIE if I didn't get some of the mystical, magical clear cola soon. Of course, I spent the next year of my life (Crystal Pepsi was discontinued the following year, in 1993) trying to convince my mother that it was absolutely necessary to have Crystal Pepsi---to absolutely no avail. If I remember correctly (and I swear, this has to be almost verbatim), her answer was, "I am not paying MORE for a Pepsi with LESS ingredients. Unnecessary. No." And that was that. Thankfully, I found friends whose mother's weren't quite as strict within the walls of Shop Rite, and I eventually got to have some of the holy grail. Unfortunately, it tasted like crap. I never told my mom that she was right...until now.

Next up, another holy grail of beverages: ECTO-COOLER! In 1987, Hi-C decided to tempt kids everywhere and promote The Real Ghostbusters cartoon via juice drink. And since kids will go for ANYTHING that's oddly colored, Hi-C made their new juice green, slapped the cartoon Slimer character on the front, and called it Ecto-Cooler. Unlike Crystal Pepsi, Ecto-Cooler was widly successful, especially at my Brownie and Daisy meetings. (I'm pretty sure everyone in my group's mother can attest to this fact. We demanded Ecto-Cooler. It was the glue that held our little troupe together...until we all realized that no one actually wanted to be a full-fledged Girl Scout, and we disbanded to join cheerleading.) I was convinced they had simply stopped making Ecto-Cooler altogether; however, Wikipedia has informed me that the sneaky bastards at Hi-C didn't discontinue the flavor until 2007, renaming it twice (first Shoutin' Orange Tangergreen, then Crazy Citrus Cooler) along the way. It seems I have missed out on a MINIMUM of ten years of Ecto-Cooler-drinkin-goodness...ten years I'll, sadly, never get back.

Taking a break from purely sugar drinks, I move on to mourn the loss of one of my favorite childhood candies: CANDY CIGARETTES! Now, I don't completely blame the candy industry for my long-time smoking habit, but I'm sure it didn't help. Maybe if I could still find these delicious little packs of chalky bubble gum, I wouldn't be addicted to nicotine--just sugar. Candy cigarettes used to be sold by the ice cream man. Hearing his crazy little truck playing a strung-out version of "O Suzanna" could only mean one thing: candy cigarettes that made us all all look and feel as cool as our parents! I have a distinct memory of being on the playground after school with a friend, Stefanie, Stefanie's mom, Stefanie's mom's friend, and her children. At the time, everyones mom smoked (my own included), and these particular moms bought us all packs of candy cigarettes, which we promptly ripped open and blew into...to make the chalk puff out...it looked like smoke...come on! Whatever. I loved it. After all the chalk was gone, we took the paper off the gum, gobbled it up until it lost it's flavor 3 seconds later, then moved on to the next candy cigarette. Brilliant. Controversial? Yes. A staple in my childhood? Absolutely. Moving on...

Next up, to add to the proof that oddly-colored things, regardless of what they actually are, will sell to kids: EX SQUIRT KETCHUP! This super-rad colored ketchup actually came out in 2000, and even though I was already 15, this was still fantastic. French fries simply taste better dipped in blue or green ketchup. (Really? No, but it was awesome anyway.) This was one product that, by joining forces, my brother and I convinced our mother that we absolutely HAD to have. Success! (That, or she just couldn't put up with our crap anymore and bought us the ketchup so we'd shut up and let her do her food shopping in peace.) One thing I learned from EZ Squirt ketchup: it stains. Badly. This is most likely why it was finally discontinued in 2006. A big seller to kids, but a major problem for white shirts and carpeting everywhere.

I can't believe I've gotten this far in the post without mentioning breakfast cereal. Kids are to breakfast cereal as flies are to shit. They flock. (Take that, SATs. I get how those comparison things work, see?) And what was the BEST kid cereal we had growing up, you ask? Why, it's SPRINKLE SPANGLES! Sprinkle Spangles (for those of you who don't remember) was the cereal that "spangled every angle with sprinkles." And it was magic. (See picture: http://www.x-entertainment.com/cerealprizeproject/group014/2.jpg ) General Mills came out with Sprinkle Spangles in the early 90s with their genius mascot, The Sprinkle Genie, who was none other than Dom DeLuise! The cereal was basically puffed sugar, coated with colorful sugar, and glazed with sugar. It was delicious as all hell, despite tasting eerily similar to Cookie Crisp (minus the "chocolate" chips) and made every morning a good, sugar-rushed one.

And, on the topic of sugar (not that we left), I'd like to come back to sugar drinks. And this particular sugar drink was, by far, an all-time favorite in my household: SQUEEZITS! First off, you can't go wrong when you put kid-friendly sugar drinks in cool Coke bottle-shaped plastic. But General Mills upped the ante and gave each flavor it's own "face" (which was part of the plastic bottle) and gave each flavor its own name. The names, if you can't remember (I couldn't either) were: Chucklin' Cherry, Berry B. Wild, Grumpy Grape (later changed to Gallopin' Grape), Silly Billy Strawberry, Rockin' Red Puncher, Mean Green Puncher, Smarty Arty Orange, and Troppi Tropical Punch. Then, of course, like any good kiddy product, there was a "mystery flavor" in a black bottle--o0o0o0o0o--which, sadly, was later presumed to be kiwi strawberry. Boring. But, Squeezit took it yet another step further later creating "color pellets" (which I distinctly remember we were NOT allowed to have in school after awhile--school ruins everything fun) which you could drop into your drink and change the color of the juice inside. FUN! INNOVATIVE! ROOFIE-DROPPING TACTICAL TRAINING! All in all, a major success. Congrats, General Mills. Win.

I know there are hundreds of awesome nostalgic food/drink items I've left out. Please share your favorites in a comment! Face it, we all love the 80s and 90s, we all love candy and sugar drinks, and we all love talking about it. Perpetuate the cycle, discuss. Amen.

"Stephen" ~Ke$ha. (The best Ke$sha song there ever was.)