Oh lords of cereal and junk food, thank you for bestowing this most blessed feast upon me.

Within my top 10 favorite discontinued food products rests Golden Graham Treats. They came out, I believe, in the early 90s and I ate an estimated 2,500 of them in my bagged school lunches. The commercials used to run constantly during the 2 shows I taped incessantly in high school -- Darkwing Duck and Samurai Pizza Cats. I'm a big fan of Golden Grahams cereal, and when they tossed in marshmallow and chocolate I was rendered helpless to its powers.



These new treats have gone the way of the new pudding pops and taken a change in shape. Instead of being roughly the size of your average prewrapped Rice Krispies Treat, they're the size of a granola bar. Not only that, but the sweet graham flavor is almost drowned out by the intense chocolate that's coating the bottom of the bar. It's more candy bar than anything now. Still, I have my Golden Grahams Treats back and that's all that matters.

I'd post the old commercial for Golden Graham treats, as I have it 16x over on VHS, but my VCR is actually boxed up right now as I'm moving in to my first apartment on July 1. I'm moving to another tiny town in Berks County, PA. It's a huge ass 100+ year old house that's split into 4 apartments, and I get the one in front with the awesome basement bedroom. I've also been informed my neighbor is a homosexual Christian psychic, so mass hilarity is sure to ensue.

If you're one of the many that believe Dunkaroos are no longer produced, you're wrong -- I'm just hoarding all of them. As you can see, I have obtained a massive variety pack of Dunkaroos that's really 4 boxes in one. Not only that, but I only paid $4 for it, and that's less than 17¢ a pack.

These snacks first made the scene in the late 80's but they're only available now via black market vendors and speakeasies. The cookies are lackluster shapes like balloons and planes, but no one really cares when there's frosting involved. They could be shaped like cockroaches and goat asses as long as there's a tiny tub of frosting for them to swim it. Dunkaroos are the tastiest Aussie product  since Nad's hair removal cream.

I can't believe I've been at this for so many years and this is my first blog about Dunkaroos. I know I ate at least 15 boxes of Shrek Dunkaroos a few years back, but there's no sign of green slime frosting on the blog anywhere.

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Some time ago I saw this guy hanging at a stand at Zern's. His name is Caterspeller, the 6 foot long alphabet caterpillar. It's a cheap edu-tainment toy designed to teach children letters by showing them lined up on in order on a ridiculously long insect. This guy is over twice the size of our old buddy Lots-A-Leggs.


(Click image for full page)

Here we have Lots-A-Leggs as he appears in the 1985 Montgomery Ward catalog. He's got 10 solid pairs of feet, each adorable outfitted with sweat bands and high-top sneakers. Lots-A-Leggs was a fine buddy on his own and the Caterspeller is a shameful knock-off. Even the color of the original is better, the joyful purple is a comforting blanket among the floppy legs and decorative bowtie. Much like Strawberry Shortcake, the classic is much better than the remake. Viva la Lots-A-Leggs!

June 24 marks opening day for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Mars is once again tugging at my heartstrings with limited edition movie tie-in M&Ms. There's the traditional chocolate (Chocl-o-bots) and peanut (Delect-o-cons) flavors, bearing wrapper images of Bumblebee and Starscream kickin' it with the dopey yellow M&M. While plain and peanut are nothing to have to change your undergarments over, you might want to do so for the new flavor, Strawberry Peanut Butter.



I don't know if the rest of you belt out the Hallelujah Chorus when M&M comes out with crazy schemes like this, but it's become the norm for me. Even odder considering my "norm" is usually to drink heavily and sing to the moon. I'm a little saddened that the candies aren't stamped with Autobot and Decepticon logos because speckling a couple of candies doesn't even come close. Even the Pirates candies had specialized stamps.

For the lord God omnipotent reigneth......

The flavor, however, tastes like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich made into a candy. The chocolate has a hint of strawberry flavor to it with the traditional peanut butter center and candy shell. They're also fun to pinch until they explode. Somehow peanut butter M&Ms are exceptionally enticing to pop, like Capri Sun pouches.

There's 5 limited edition wrappers in all and I've only accounted for 3. There's also a yellow-dyed Transformer's Snicker's available, so I'm thinking maybe the 5th wrapper is a M&M minis tube. The hunt will continue.

(Notice the foot on the track is my lovely swelled "Frankenfoot")


Summer is in the air, and change is all around. I recently made it through a company wide layoff, which is great, because my fiance got a job in my area and it's finally time to move out of my parents' house and find an apartment. I haven't moved since first grade so I'm praying that I can figure out how to pack action figures without having them lose limbs in the process. I'm also going to have to figure out how many Hello Kitty appliances I can buy before it threatens the hubby's sense of masculinity. My "to do" list right now looks something like this:

• Find an Apartment
• Plan a wedding
• Finish college
• Wine
• Lots of wine
  

My mom's offering up half the shit in the house to help see me out the door, so I'm pretty stoked that I'm getting all kinds of free furniture and not just the the McDonald's Camp Snoopy glasses we've had since the 80's. I'll save raiding the Christmas decorations until November.


I saw this when I looked out my window a few days ago. It's now official -- if you don't have a cell phone, you're more out of touch than the Mennonites.

When I wasn't spending my time this weekend dancing and singing around the Maypole, I was finding other ways to hammer a few extra nails into my seat in hell.


I think I've mentioned a good 5,000 times or so that my older brother runs semi-annual video game shows in the area. Sunday was lucky #8 and TooManyGames tried out a new location at the Leesport Market. Now, the Leesport Market was also open that day for the flea market across the way. While I was running the door several people, mainly elderly, saw fit to stroll through the doors paying no mind to me sitting there collecting entrance fees, and started wondering into the show. Several times throughout the day I was forced to yell at people to pay the $5 fee or get the hell out. At one point I'm fairly sure I was cursed out in Spanish.

Regardless, a good time was had by all. Lots of rare goods were sold, games played, prizes won, and networking made. I had the genius idea of buying a few dozen boxes of Pocky at Wal-Mart and selling them for nearly twice the price. Sold out in about an hour. Made a few bucks, had a few laughs....



Oh, and I met the Angry Video Game Nerd.

McDonald's needs to take a page from the Backstreet Boys and quit playin' games with my heart. Now we all know that the infamous Shamrock Shake is a seasonal treat sold by McDonald's around St. Patrick's Day. Typically, a week after the event we know they're gone for good and stop looking for them. Now two weeks ago I was coming home from Easter dinner and spotted a foreign McDonald's with a sign in the grass stating they still had Shamrock Shakes. Since it was Easter, they were obviously closed and I couldn't inquire about any stray shakes. I put it to the back of my mind, thinking it must be a fluke. But in recent days I've passed McDonald's and sworn I still saw the minty green desserts sashaying on the board and began to wonder if the Shamrock Shake had jumped into the terroritory of being a Spring season treat.



I went to my local McDonald's today and what do I see, but the board still claiming they have Shamrocks Shakes, damn near a month after the fact! I timestamped the above picture so you can clearly see that I'm not making this shit up. I stick my head out the window and say to the intercom, "I'd like two medium Shamrock Shakes, please!" Only the bastards are OUT of Shamrock Shakes! OUT! They taunt me with promises of green shakes in 82º weather only to smash all my dreams to pieces. McDonald's #25261, you can officially eat a dick.

How does one recover from such a downer?



You go home and make blue raspberry Snoopy Sno-Cones. The trick is to use crushed ice from the freezer as it will drastically cut your work time and increase the Sno-Cone consuming time.

Further accelerating his status as a blazing orange bad-boy, Chester Cheetah has now resorted to hyping the size of his balls. Not only  that, but Chester’s ball sack contains not 2, but a full 4 balls which makes Chester second only to Chuck Norris in the ball department.

If you’ve been paying a lick of attention lately to any of the Cheetos commercials, you’ll have seen the CG kitty  in various real life escapades egging on Cheetos consumers to get down with their bad selves. In this latest development, he’s forcing specimens to open their mouths as he determines just how large he can expand his balls while still fitting them into the average size mouth. Chester wants you to open wide for his balls.



While you’re busy licking Chester’s salty ball residue off your finger, remember that we’re still deprived of the greatest Cheetos shape ever made -- the paw. Paws were designed for cheese powder coating perfection with the grooves in the toes and the perfect hole in the middle. Swollen balls could never lend themselves to the extreme cheesiness needed by this jaded generation. Unless there’s a reserve of extra flavoring in the middle, the engorged ball shape is superbly faulty. I, for one, will take my ball cheese sucking elsewhere.

The laptop is paying off already. I just finished a Nestle Magic article that I started over a year ago and never finished. 2009 will be the year of finishing articles that are already part way done. Maybe I'll finally get that Are You Afraid of the Dark article finished after 19 months of lies about it "coming soon." Hell, maybe I'll even find a use for that USB record player I had to have and used all of 2 times. When all that's done, I'll review some crazy stuff I snagged via torrent. Stick Stickly anyone? Maybe some fun with the live-action Bill and Ted TV series? Surprises await.

I just finished the first article I've written with my new mini laptop. I finally was able to validate the need for a laptop owing to going back to school and well, shit, I can get financial aid to pay for it! Honestly, I think I'll be able to write better from my bed. I'm looking into finding a cute pink laptop case now so I can also be one of those bastards that sit at Barnes and Noble all day drinking $6 coffee and pretending like I'm writing anything that amounts to jack shit. Maybe I'll write poems about the other people I see shopping at Barnes and Noble. Genius.