Rick Dawson
Guest Columnist
July 01, 2008 10:51 am
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There was an announcement a few weeks ago that rocked the breakfast world.
Are you telling me that you missed it?
There’s a new charm in Lucky Charms cereal. The world is saved.
General Mills announced to much cereal-aficionado fanfare that a new Hourglass marshmallow is making its debut in the box.
If you didn’t already know it, Lucky Charms are not only magically delicious, they will actually give people who eat them special powers. The current stable of marshmallow charms are said to do the following: Hearts, to bring things to life; Shooting Stars, the ability to fly; Clovers, luck (of course); Horseshoes, the power to speed things up (frankly, I don’t get that one); Blue Moons, the power of invisibility; Balloons, the power to make things float; and Rainbows, instantaneous travel from place to place.
The new marshmallow Hourglass charm will allow you to… (Are you ready?) control time.
The way I see it, if I eat just one Rainbow and one Hourglass I can become the first-ever time traveler. Finally, I have a use for that old DeLorean in the garage. (Kids, ask your parents about this last reference.)
I got all of this pertinent information from a public relations Web site that included the big story from General Mills. It also included the following quote from the makers of Lucky Charms.
“Lucky Charms has been a family favorite at the breakfast table for decades and we are excited to add a new marshmallow charm to the cereal,” said Catherine Cox Draper, marketing manager for Lucky Charms. “The colorful fun of Lucky’s magical charms is a delicious way to start each day.”
You can practically hear the sugar dripping from that.
I don’t know what would be more fun; being the marketing manager for a specific cereal or being able to come up with some of the sweetest and sappiest quotes to ever cross Madison Avenue.
Not only is all this talk of cereal making me hungry, it’s making me reminisce about the breakfasts of my childhood. I grew up in the ‘60s when every single commercial during our Saturday morning cartoons was about cereal. Remember Quisp and Quake? What about Count Chocula, Frankenberry and his pal Boo Berry? There were also the non-stop permutations on the Cap’n Crunch theme which resulted in my all-time favorite: Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch. There were small balls of some kind of grain-based powder, high fructose corn syrup and some sort of peanut butter flavoring. Deeee-licious.
It’s no wonder that shortly afterwards my mom replaced the paneling and carpeting in my bedroom with rubber walls and floors.
After successfully completing a 12-step program I was able to quit the sucrose and evolve into a largely sugar-free cereal regimen. I became a Raisin Bran, Granola and Grape Nuts kind of guy. Grape Nuts always had a double use at our house. If you let them set up in the milk just long enough, you can use the resulting mixture as mortar for that new fireplace you’re thinking about.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some different work to do. I’m going to be knocking back a few rainbows and hourglasses to climb into the time machine. I’ll fast forward to next Saturday, pick up a racing form and drop a few grand on the No. 7 horse in the seventh race at Belmont. I’ll even check the lottery numbers for that day before returning back to today.
Let me know you want in on the action. My cut is only 20 percent of our winnings.
Rick Dawson is a reporter for WISH-TV Channel 8 a Rush County resident and a regular columnist for the Rushville Republican. You can reach him at rdawson@wishtv.com or rdawson@lightbound.com.
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