Outrageous Oatmeals & Polished Poultry

You know we look back at the past, we remember things. We remember some things more fondly than others and many things we remember we desire to return with a burning passion, I know one thing that has always confused me is how certain things throughout the years could have been so popular and yet still gone the way of the dinosaur in spite of their popularity and presumably good sales. How does this happen? It doesn't make any sense, something that has such a huge following couldn't possibly be undone by lack-luster sales or 'lack of consumer interest' as so many companies claim to their products discontinuation so what is it? That sadly is a mystery, much of a mystery as why some shows are cancelled in spite of receiving fairly good ratings consistently, we'll probably never truly know. Maybe the companies just hate fun, maybe they like to torture us and maybe they're just having moments of extreme idiocy. Whatever the case may be, we rarely see a revival of these products and that's sad but today I'm going to do my part to try and help one revival at least kick off the ground.. Let's get into the article, shall we?

The subject of the article is oatmeal. Yes, oatmeal. The strange cereal that is warm, the cereal that no one really thinks of as cereal and few eat in spite of it's deliciousness and nutritious value. Why? I don't know.. Throughout the years there have been some really good and really fun oatmeal products that would have made anyone jump for joy to receive oatmeal instead of your run of the mill cereal, for some reason it never seemed that popular or mainstream though, maybe that was the problem.. Maybe people just don't 'gel' with oatmeal? I did. I always have. I love oatmeal for what it is, it's brilliant and genius and when something as simple and mundane as oatmeal is mixed with fun, that's a combination that is just awesome.

General Mills Under Cover Bears Oatmeal:

Launched in the early 1990's General Mills Under Cover Bears Oatmeal was a pretty gooddamn awesome oatmeal. The premise was simple enough, the execution was flawless and the product was more importantly fun. Who can deny the whimsy and magic of an oatmeal that, get this.. Housed little tiny fruit-gummy bears that wouldn't appear until you'd stirred the oatmeal and water up and in.

 Instant oatmeal has never been so goddamn cool, I specifically remember the childish glee I felt when I would stir a bowl of this up to see those bright red or dark brown bears seemingly magically form and appear from the sloppy sludge that was the mundane oatmeal, it set it off, made it something more and made it oh so much more fun. Not to mention the fact that these were delicious! Coming in Strawberry and Brown Sugar, it's an oatmeal I've always wished was still around. It's unfair and I don't understand why it was discontinued, I wish General Mills would bring it back for it's yet another product they'd managed to hit out of the ball-park.


Quaker Cookie Blast Oatmeal:

Quakers Cookie Blast Instant Oatmeal..Well this one didn't actually have much of a gimmick but had a pretty great commercial and was a pretty great and delicious product. Essentially your standard sweetened oatmeal, it was adorned by chunks of chocolate chip cookies, delicious and gooey chocolate chip cookies that became nice and melted in the warm oatmeal and bestowed upon it an even sweeter and more dessert-like taste. Oh yeah, Cookie Blast oatmeal was good and while not as fun as the Under Cover Bears, it was still a very kid oatmeal and a very good oatmeal. (By the way I notice the association with bears and oatmeal seems to be a theme, what the fuck? What do bears have to do with oatmeal?) Why would you rather have some mundane unflavoured oatmeal after all when you could have oatmeal with fucking cookies in it? Many a breakfast was made awesome by Cookie Blast Oatmeal, who can go wrong with cookies and oatmeal after all? Pretty much no one, that's who. Why was this discontinued? Again, can't answer.. I really don't know but it's quite baffling, it seems like it'd be a really popular oatmeal.

Quaker Kids' Choice Oatmeal:

Fare from 1993 (OH GOD SHIVERY SPINE) Quakers Kids' Choice Instant Oatmeal was a little more mundane but still a pretty cool and fun product. Coming in serving-sized packets it featured mini packets inside that flavoured the oatmeal with your choice of Radical Raspberry, Strawberries n' Stuff or Cinnamagic. The only real cool thing about this oatmeal was the flavour packets turned the oatmeal different colours which is probably to be expected considering the flavour packets were different colours than the oatmeal itself and well.. Changing of colours tends to happen when you add colour into something that is otherwise colourless. Kind of lame but the stuff was good so we'll throw them a bone. Honestly this one probably was discontinued due to lack of consumer appeal, it wasn't that it was bad but.. Face it.. If you had the other oatmeals to choose from such as Cookie Blast or Under Cover Bears are you going to choose the oatmeal that just changes colour because you added a coloured flavour packet? No. You're going to pick the cooler and more fun ones because you're a kid and you're simple.


General Mills Oatmeal Swirlers: 

Then we come to the creme de la creme of the Oatmeal world, the Oatmeal everyone seems to remember, a little diddy launched in the early 90s; General Mills Oatmeal Swirlers. Everyone loved Oatmeal Swirlers, at least everyone that could remember them or does remember them and anyone that had them at one point or another in their lives. This was a brilliant oatmeal, the epitome of fun with food it was an oatmeal that not only came with it's own flavouring you could choose (six different flavours in all)

But the flavouring packets were also created in such a way to urge you to cut a single snippet off and use them as drawing implements on your oatmeal creating your own artistic expression upon a steaming bowl of mush. I don't care if it sounds horrible, it wasn't; it was AWESOME.

From Tic-Tac-Toe played presumably with your evil alter-ego since I assume you're not going to have another person hovering over your bowl playing a rousing game of Tic-Tac-Toe against you in your oatmeal?

To happy faces and pretty much anything else you could fathom or at least manage to draw on your warm gruel with your gel incarnation of artful expression the gel delights were many and plenty. Strawberry, Maple, Brown Sugar, Grape, Orange or Milk Chocolate are the flavours that this came in so far as I can remember, this is purely off a decades old fuzzy memory and at the time I wasn't in the habit of obsessively remembering things such as these because I didn't fathom they'd ever be gone and need to be remembered so don't quote me absolutely on the flavours. Never mind that, I'm right about most of them that much I know and another thing I know is that this was an unbelievably awesome oatmeal that should have never been discontinued but was. If one major product General Mills absolutely needs to bring back it's Oatmeal Swirlers Oatmeal and in that interest, I'm bringing attention to a petition I found online. It's small now but I feel perhaps if we spread this around the retro-sites of the internet maybe we can make a dent, maybe General Mills can be shown reason and the era of the Oatmeal Swirler may once more return to us in it's glorious gooey goodness. Please consider taking part and spreading this around!


Bring back Oatmeal Swirlers Petition to General Mills

Dinner: 

This is Amai Niwatori Tsubasa (Sweet Chicken Wings) and is a Teriyaki dish I'm quite happy with. In spite of the small size of the wings, I'm to understand that the dish did not skimp or disappoint on BIG SWEET TASTE. Frankly I couldn't tell you, I didn't taste much of this dish as I was making it but what little I did taste certainly tasted quite good. I'm more interested in the ascetics which strangely came together in that odd sort of 'you're on your stride, don't question it' sort of way. The rice may I point out was perfectly dished in a circular pattern on the plate. How the fuck did I manage that? I wasn't even trying, honest! I had planned to square the shit because it's easier and looks neat.

But it came out in a perfectly proportioned circle and whatever, I rolled with it. The chicken itself? Glazed beautifully coming out with the Teriyaki searing the surface of the chicken and leaving it with a sleek and shiny appearance, just what you want from Teriyaki to look so fucking amazingly mouth watering. The sauce mixed in unintentionally with the already sweetened rice and evidently according to James really set it off which was an unexpected positive and the Anpan? Baked damn near perfect. It burst near the bottom I'll admit but you can't see it so hah. Replacing the Ume no raisu purin today was a bowl of satsumaimomasshu (Sweet Potato Mash) with a nice chocolate/vanilla swirl marshmallow to dot it's surface. Yeah, this was a good one. Nothing to complain about really, not particularly boastful about this meal because it wasn't one of those oh my god I created perfection meals but it was damn good. Damn good indeed.

Second photograph brought to you by Shiiiny Chicken©