Sunday, May 5, 2019

Maybe he's thinking, "Oh my GOD, what IS this?!"



     Yes, I wrote the below, re-read it and thought, "Man, this is the most trivial shit EVER." I could feel the ghost of Andy Rooney, laying his big, dyspeptic paw on my shoulder. "The torch is passed to a new generation..." 
     So be forewarned. You no doubt have more important things to do, to read, to think about. Go to it, and power to you.
     For the rest of us, however.... at least it isn't long.
        
     You'd think people designing cereal boxes would step back and examine their work, from a distance, to see how it looks on a shelf. which obviously didn't happen when the current iteration of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch box left the drawing board. Glance at the little anthropomorphic square of cereal gazing down into the bowl, right under the "ch" in "Crunch."
     Fiercely frowning, right? Maybe pulling back in revulsion. It's almost as if he's looking, not into a bowl, but a pit, an open grave with the bodies of his fellow squares, face down, after having been shot perhaps..
     Now look closer. There is a little smile, a black crescent, high up, right under the downcast eyes. What I took for a frown is just a pronounced vein of cinnamon. 
     And who knows? Maybe it's intentional. A bit of cognitive dissonance thrown in to cause shoppers like me to pause, look a second time. That's no doubt giving them too much credit. If intentional wrongness in marketing isn't actually subtle science, it should be. Tuck a single tiny ant in the bowl of cereal and see what happens to sales. 
    Not that it helped here. I've never tasted the stuff, have no intention to—tastes like a bunch of cinnamon wheat crunchy cereal, right? Who wants a bowl of cinnamon? At best you want a dash, a sprinkle on your vanilla yogurt. No wonder the little guy is frowning.
     

10 comments:

  1. I like the coloring of the letter. You know a bunch of overpaid eggheads sat around for hours to think that out. I can't see any real pattern but the colors are sexy. They draw my eyes to it which is probably what they want to accomplish.

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  2. Part of being a great columnist and writer is being observant.
    And you are spot on with this one. Seems to be looking at a mass grave in horror. Perhaps fearful and unaccepting of his own fate.

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  3. far superior subject matter compared to the dog shit colomn from the other day.

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  4. There’s been a far too serious and morose vibe around me lately, so this whimsical post was very welcome.
    I’m thinking the horrified look on the cinnamon square’s face is because the fate of her fellow squares is close at hand: to be drowned in cold milk, taking away their precious crunchiness.

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    1. Not to mention being chewed, swallowed and digested!

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  5. They aren't that bad actually. ;)

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  6. I love sugary cereals...which makes my dentist happy and rich and keeps his yacht afloat...but that brand is TOO DAMN SWEET. Horrible stuff...almost like eating candy for breakfast. Won't touch that shit.

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  7. Obviously, you never saw "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves" cereal, which was a tie in to the Kevin Costner movie of the same name.
    It was made by Ralston, one of the three companies that make cereal mostly for generic store brands. The other generic makers are Malt-O-Meal & Quaker.
    It had cereal that was supposed to be shaped like arrows, except the pieces didn't look like that. They were in fact, tiny little penises!
    The only place I ever saw that cereal was in dollar stores, the big chains wanted nothing to do with it.

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  8. Have you ever seen the television commercials for this product? The little toast creatures are cannibals, eating each other with joyful abandon. Very odd...

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  9. these types of cereals target children! not we of the musilix generation.

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