This post by Ace on the cereal Kaboom is one of the best blog posts I have ever read. A masterpiece. I had never even heard of that cereal before, but you can just feel the raw emotion in the writing. Now in some way Kaboom haunts me too.
My mom didn’t let us kids eat sugary cereal. She like cared for us and wanted us to be healthy or something. It was awful. Have you ever eaten a plain bowl of Cheerios? It’s bland and tasteless. Might as well have broccoli in milk.
Oh, how I envied the kids you got to eat Cocoa Puffs and Froot Loops. Sure, all those kids are now morbidly obese or dead, but at breakfast they were kings.
“Cereals”, not “Cereal’s”. For shame.
That said, I grew up eating “healthy” cereals, and they were just fine. Especially if add enough sugar to them to blur the difference between “healthy cereal” and “sugar cereal”.
My mom was the same…she refused to buy cereals which listed sugar as the first ingredient. Of course, she had no problem with my dumping two heaping teaspoons of sugar on my Cheerios before pouring on the milk.
Yeah, Cheerios are OK if you add enough sugar; I got use to them w/o sugar later on.
Speaking of Kaboom, did you ever read the defunct blog by that name? The LT came back and wrote a book–I think it was “Embrace the Suck” by Matt Gallagher.
Oh, poor, poor humans – so sad!!!!11!!!
Pffft!
Try spending the best year of your life eating this crap. “Nurturing Formula” they call it. The only thing it nurtures is a grudge against the people who feed it to you.
The Bunkerhillbrood grew up straight and strong on a diet of Quisp, Alpha-Bits, Breakfast-Stix (‘member them? Based on the food eaten by Apollo astronauts!), Frosted Flakes and the like during the warm months. Come the fall it was Cream ‘o’ Wheat or Quaker Oats on the breakfast table. Drank milk or Tang along with it. Pancakes and waffles slathered in actual butter and maple syrup with bacon or sausages on the side come the weekends.
Of course, as kids, we were on our Schwinn bikes getting around to and from school or the neighborhood, not being arsebulbs playing videogames 18 hours a day. Played pick-up baseball, football or street hockey too. So sugar highs weren’t much of a problem…a few bloody noses or broken bones, maybe.
Mom used to buy Kaboom once and a while…lot of build up for a let down. Brightly colored box, clown and not much for taste. Also got Quisp on occasion as well as King Vitaman. If we did get a box of the “good stuff” (that had a generic look alike) it was surprising how long that box would last…I am sure Mom wouldn’t stoop so low as to top it off with the knock off product. Would she?
@2 – You stopped at 2???
@5 – ditto… are we related? lol
New cereals coming out soon:
* Bloomberg Sugar Smackdowns – it tastes like cardboard because it is. But, hey, zero sugar.
* McRINO Flakes – what McCain eats for breakfast. You won’t Thank God.
* Pelosi Fruity Puffs – You gotta open the box to see what’s in it.
* Shredded Hillary – stuff just disappears after you eat it.
* Special BernanKe – quantitatively easy to eat. Has zero calories.
Geez, so much vitriol for a breakfast cereal, did they get Mayor Bloomberg to write a guest post?
@5 Bunk:
I also grew up with all you cite. And Quake.
And Kaboom.
That explains it! Excellent essay, I agree, Frank & Ace.