Criminal Cereals of the Past 8 & Scrumptious Soup

Cereals are littered throughout the years with excellent novelty and corporate marketing strategy. The cereals of our past were some of the best corporately marketed products that I believe there ever have been and who ever they had orchestrating these marketing ventures was amazingly masterful and had an almost Palpatine-esque talent and understanding. From flavours to premiums to cartoon mascots and cartoons on the box, the marketing elite of the cereal world seem to be a pack of mad geniuses. Sure there have been some misses but for every miss there was a Trix Rabbit or a Lucky the Leprechaun. That's why it surprises me to see some of the most unique marketing used on something truly unique in and of itself and for that unique marketing to seemingly fail as the product is discontinued. Why? By all logic and reason, the marketing should have worked and in some cases did work but something went wrong and down the drain the product goes, never to be seen again. It's a cold grave that these products fall into from their respective corporations and sometimes it's very disappointing.. Almost.. Dare I say... Criminal.. That their lives are cut so short..


#1
Ralston Nerds Cereal:

Released in 1985 the marketing on this cereal was nothing short of absolute brilliance. There was not a single stone left unturned in the quest to get this shit off the ground. Going so far as to make the box of cereal like the box of candy and give it not one but two separate flavours that were both divided by a single cardboard wall within the box. Now that's really something. There was and has been so far to my knowledge no cereal which has done this before or since and that makes me a little sad because as an idea, it's an EXCELLENT one and whoever thought of it should have been given a bonus. They're straight from marketing mad genius to marketing diabolical super-mind and they've probably been properly shafted if I had to guess. Sadly that's what corporations do all too often is simply shaft people.. Isn't it?

Nerds Cereal amazingly enough even had a bowl, a fucking bowl people. A bowl made specifically for the cereal with the same design as the box, creating an individual compartment for the individual flavours but was that enough? FUCK NAW! We can even open the flood-gates to the other side and let both flavours in theory harmoniously mix in a state of bouncy nerdy goodness. In theory anyway.. And that's the problem.. The criminal charge in this? Wasted marketing. - While Nerds candy is delicious and nice to eat, Nerds cereal was.. Well.. Abhorrent.. Not only did it not taste like Nerds but it didn't taste like Nerds if Nerds were given an overdose of essence of anchovies. This shit was nasty and not even my 'no milk' policy saved it. I never had the bowl because I never got to send in for it, I believe lacking the proper proofs of purchase and citing to the fact that I did not finish my box. Also as a girl saying this on a blog, I feel kind of embarrassed but fuck it. Shame and dignity are for pansies. Nerds cereal turned my shite orange.

#2
Post Reptar Crunch:

They're round, they're mean, they turn your milk green! You open the spout and pour them out, Reptar Cereal makes you want to shout! Reptar! WE WANT REPTAR! REPTAAR!

So, yea.  In 1999 Nickelodeons The Rugrats was at what was soon to be largely the end of it's life-span (never mind the abortion that was 'All Grown Up') and they were releasing movies and updating the cast in an attempt to save the dying cash-cow from collapsing in on itself. One of the products we'd always seen in the show was Reptar Cereal, surprisingly enough (or unsurprisingly given that all they had to do was have a marketing department with a single brain between them to come up with this) we ended up with actual Reptar Cereal in Reptar Crunch. I had this, yes. Consisting of purple rice bits and green dinosaur cereals I can neither confirm nor deny whether this turned your milk green because it wasn't one I ever tried with milk, I had this strictly dry as a snack food rather than a cereal (unlike the Nickelodeon Slime Cereal which I had to have at least one bowl with milk by like.. Law or something..) Reptar Crunch wasn't bad, it wasn't great but it wasn't bad. The greatest criminal charge for this cereal? As I recall it it was more or less Captain Crunch in stranger shapes and was available for less than a year. Less than a year. How are we supposed to enjoy anything that's around for less than a year? Really.. And there was marketing potential here that was missed! 

....Also why was the Reptar Bar chocolate never made?

Dinner:

And alright! I recaptured my stride and with something I've never cooked before! The above meal you see I call Aka sake no shiru (Red Salmon Soup) and was a unique Japanese take on a traditional tomato soup utilizing ginger, a small amount of my own custom teriyaki style brew (including soy and no I won't reveal any ingredients past that), sweet peas and of course salmon. All together this was an incredibly successful soup and was intensely flavourful to the point that when I taste-tested it before serving it to James I was stunned. Most of the ingredients were left to sit for twenty-four hours (overnight) and it intensified the flavour ten-fold, this was a delicious soup full of hearty chunks of vegetable and fish and bordered the thin line between being a salty and savoury soup to being a sweet soup and along with this soup came a unique Honey Banana Nut Anpan (Sweet Bun) filled of course with Honey Banana Nut Anko (Sweet Red Bean Paste) and it didn't explode! It actually came out properly baked this time so huzzah! Perhaps I just need to get used to the consistency of this new batch of dough I'm thinking and try to bare with it a bit more. James really seemed to enjoy this meal and did indeed indicate that it was something he definitely wouldn't mind having again. Once again I swell with pride.

Second photograph brought to you by Redsoupisred©