Things that just....disappeared.

So here it is 9:30 AM, and I'm finally getting around to eating breakfast. I grab a bowl, pour in some Cocoa Pebbles (maybe my favorite cereal of all time), and it got me to thinking about some of my other favorite cereals. Ask my wife, and if you know her, ask my mother - I could eat cereal 3 meals a day and not be bothered by it. However, some of my favorites are either completely gone, or so hard to find now, or have changed so much, they're not even close to what they used to be.

I find it very difficult to find the Monsters cereals. You all remember the Monsters cereals...FrankenBerry, Count Chocula, and the best of all, and the hardest to find...Boo Berry. FrankenBerry was that wonderfully fake strawberry cereal, Count Chocula was of course...chocolate, and Boo Berry was blueberry. Each had standard cereal nuggets, probably some corn thing, flavored specifically, and they all had matching flavored marshmallows in them. I have to fully admit - I hated Count Chocula. If I wanted chocolate cereal, I would go for the already mentioned Cocoa Pebbles, or Cocoa Puffs. I did like FrankenBerry, which is strange. I love strawberry flavored things - but I hate the taste of actual strawberries. Boo Berry was the best though. They all were great at making your milk into some kind of fruity flavored glucose mess that you couldn't wait to chug down (my wife just threw up in her mouth right there - USED MILK!!).

I was a big of fan of the sweetened cereals as a kid - weren't we all? Cap'n Crunch - other than completely tearing up the roof of your mouth, Cap'n Crunch was delicious. Then they made Crunch Berries - are you kidding me? LOVED Crunch Berries! Of course, back then, the berries were all red, but they were the size of beach balls. Have you seen them now? Different colors, and the size of BBs. Looks like someone took Trix (never a fan of Trix) and mixed it with Cap'n Crunch.

There was another cereal I loved that just disappeared - it was kind of like a Cap'n Crunch, but shaped like little saucers - Quisp. Quisp had a little alien on the box, and I would kill a box of Quisp in 3 days. There was just something about it. Apparently, Quisp still exists, but you have to order it directly from the company - they don't mass produce it like they used to.

For those of you with kids, there is one other thing that kids go bat-%#$@ crazy for and that is soda. Believe me, I drank WAY too much soda as a kid, so I know. I was a big Root Beer drinker growing up, and my favorite was Ramblin'. I have no idea what happened to Ramblin' Root Beer - I have a feeling it disappeared right around the time Barq's came around. Of course, there was also A&W (who make a great Cream soda too) and Hires. I think my love of soda stemmed from my parents getting cans of C&C for long car trips to see my grandparents. We'd get orange, grape, root beer, ginger ale, black cherry - all the standard flavors (remember the old cans with the sharp as hell pull tabs that would cut your finger? I knew people who threw the tabs INTO THE CANS before they drank the soda!!).

I also remember some of the weird soda I had that just didn't make it. I had more than a few bottles of Crystal Pepsi, although I don't know why - not really sure what that taste was. I had Pepsi Blue back in 2002. Nasty. Way back when, there was a soda called Slice that tried to cut into the 7-up and Sprite drinkers, and it was good - they claimed it was flavored with real juice. Whatever - I like Slice. Then they made Mandarin Orange Slice, which was really sweet, then Cherry Cola Slice, and I remember an Apple Slice that lasted maybe 6 months. Of course, none of the fruit flavors could hold a candle to Crush - Orange Crush and to a lesser extent, Grape Crush. I never had Nehi - I always remember Radar on M*A*S*H drinking Grape Nehi, but I don't remember ever having that.

I like Sierra Mist now - every once in a while I get into these Lemon-Lime kicks. Sprite is OK, but too bubbly for me. That's why I liked Slice back in the day. I was a big 7-up fan though - so much that I remember trying 7-up Gold, which was a spice flavored soda. I liked it - I think maybe 4 other people did too, and that was it. 7-Up gold went the way of the dodo - extinct.

I miss these things. Do you remember trying some of these, or anything else we had that went away and you miss? Share your memories with me and the loyal followers! Comment on Facebook or here on the blog - seems like most like to comment using FB. I look forward to a steady stream of "I REMEMBER THAT!!!"

Commercial Stupidity.

I think I watch too much TV. The reason I have come to this conclusion is because I have determined that there are certain stores I won't go to, and certain products that I won't buy, just because the commercials for these things and places are just so completely stupid. Not just stupid....insulting.

Not that I could ever afford it anyway, but I will never shop at Ikea based off of a commercial I saw where a husband and wife are congratulating their kitchen appliances on a dinner. Talking to the stove like some kind of athlete - bad enough. The stupid husband giving the refrigerator a poorly executed chest bump that looked more like an awkward gay bar encounter - the final straw.

There are other commercials that strike nerves with me - mostly because they portray teenagers as.... well, current teenagers. Obnoxious and disrespectful. There is a mobile phone commercial where the teenage son with the fruit loop haircut and the "I'm too cool to sit in the back of the car" attitude tells his mother that he "threw away his rollover minutes because they were old." The whole deal of throwing away old minutes like they were old Life Savers stuck to the back seat is bad enough, but to have the kid be as much of a pompous ass as he was made me want to reach in and choke the little SOB.

Gamefly - the video game version of Netflix - shows college age kids screaming and getting violent because they bought a video game that they didn't like. Here's an idea - stop playing video games.

So, my friends, I ask - do I watch too much TV? Mostly, I ask...are there any commercials that affect you this way? Comments welcomed and encouraged!