October Thought Day 12: Rock the Vote

There is an important date drawing ever near. It will be upon us before we know it. Sides have been taken. Lines have been drawn. Heated words have been spoken. The candidates will do almost anything to get your vote. The final tally may very well impact the world. Yes, I’m talking about the General Mills Monster Cereal Election. Wait, what did you think I meant?

With all the mudslinging, scandal and general craziness going on lately in the actual campaigns I thought a light-hearted break from the insanity that is this year’s election cycle was in order. I don’t remember how I found it, I think it was Twitter, but this year, General Mills has capitalized on election fever and asked which monster cereal should be deemed America’s best. There is a website set up and there are platforms and dossiers on each of the three candidates.

You get to vote every day until the 31^st of October, but just like in actual politics I think the system is rigged. You see, I have commandeered my family’s email accounts and voted every day multiple times, yet still, the poll numbers stay the same. I find it hard to believe that my constant ballot box stuffing isn’t making a dent or even a small indentation in the process. What’s a girl gotta do?

The three contenders for the monster crown are Boo Berry, Count Chocula and of course my personal favorite Franken Berry. I have rubbed my Franken Berry doll for good luck, worn my Franken Berry pin, and though about going door to door in my Franken Berry costume to spread the good word. But Franky still remains steadfastly in third. The site even has a handy guide of the country so you can see which state is voting for which monster. So far the only state showing Franky any love is Montana. You go Montanan’s? Montanites? Montaooners? Montantonians? Anyway, stupid Count Chocula is in the lead with 41% of the vote. It is my least favorite of the cereals. It tastes like chalk. Boo Berry has 30% and Franky has 29%, always and forever 29%. Sigh. It also doesn’t help that Franky is doing the Nixon “I’m not a crook” pose on his cereal box. I think there is subliminal sabotage going on. Just saying.

So if you want to get in on the fun go to generalmills.promo.eprize.com and vote up a storm. Unless of course you are a Count Chocola supporter in which case, hey, look over there (grabs your computer and runs very quickly away).

On the serious side though, if you haven’t registered to actually vote in the real country elections, go to this legitimate site to do so while there is still time. https://www.usa.gov/register-to-vote. Your vote really does matter and this year more so than most.

Day 2: October in a Box

Now-a-days there is a motivational slogan/platitude/catch phrase for just about everything. "Just do it" "Look on the sunny side of life" "YOLO" "Dare to Dream" "Just keep swimming" "life is like a box of chocolates" " Hang in there" and "think outside the box" However, when it comes to October, I like to think inside the box. Deep, deep inside.

If you had any kind of decent childhood, or had children or grandkids who did, then you watched the show Duck Tales either after school or on Saturday mornings. Some of you may have even had the comics. Anyway, in the show, there was a character named Scrooge McDuck. He was very rich and had a room that was dedicated solely to housing his money. It was a very tall room with a balcony and a diving board. The room was devoid of decoration except for the money and there was nothing that Scrooge liked to do more than go swimming in all his gold. Even as a child I thought this idea was dumb. If you dove headfirst into a pile of metal you would kill yourself. But it was a cartoon so I went with it.

But what does some cartoon from the halcyon days of my childhood have to do with October Thoughts? Well, some people have a bucket list to visit Machu Picchu. Some want to sky dive, run with the bulls or take a picture with a celebrity. Me, I want to fill a pool with October monster cereal and swim in it. The realist in me knows that this would be extremely wasteful. I would have to donate the cereal to goats or a dog kennel or some other place that would take it. I'm not sure even I would want to eat cereal that I swam in. But the little kid in me, sees Scrooge swimming in his money and wonders why I can't do that with my breakfast cereal? I mean, cereal is a lot more pliant and less likely to kill me upon impact that gold coins. But since I can't swim in it, I will just have to settle for eating it out of a bowl like everyone else. Someday though......someday.

As a child I didn't care for so called "kid" cereals. You see, I was a 80 year old in a kid body. My breakfast of choice was Grape Nuts or Shredded Wheat (and not the frosted kind either). I liked Wheaties because they came with great prizes like wrist bands or mini basketball hoops. But give me a kid cereal and I just reached in, took the prize out and then left the remainder for someone else to eat. I was a weird kid, who grew up to be a weird adult.

Once I hit my 20's or so I started to like the kid cereals. But not just any kid cereals, the October cereals. I can't recall when I first came upon them, but it was magical. Count Chocula. Boo Berry, Franken Berry. Monsters in a box just waiting for me to devour them. (What a great reversal of the predator/prey complex. Scared of monsters, not this gal, I eat em for breakfast. Literally)  Ever since that fateful day when I purchased my first box I was hooked. No more sensible breakfast cereal for me in October. Bring on the ingredients that I can't pronounce and the artificial colors and marshmallows. Milk just isn't the same if your cereal doesn't bleed its colors into it.

But just because I like it doesn't mean it is readily accessible. To be a true October cereal fan, you have to work for it. Every year the grocery store has a fun little game they play with me. It is called, where can we hid the cereal so that Rebecca can't find it. Never once has it been in the same place and often they move it around the store just to keep me on my toes. Sometimes I can sort of see the logic in where they place it, other times I think they just do it to mess with me.

This year I found it no problem at all a week before October. I dutifully bought my 3 boxes and put them in the pantry. I exerted great self control and didn't eat them ahead of time. Then I got the bright idea to use them in my Halloween décor. So now my 3 new cereal boxes and my two old boxes are proudly displayed. This did cause me a bit of a problem though. With my cereal being on display and out of reach, what was I going to eat for breakfast? So back to the store I went and wouldn't you know it, the boxes were gone.

Now, I am pretty sure I am the only one who really obsesses about October breakfast cereal. I don't think that in the week since I was last in the store they sold an entire pallet of the stuff, and I know I didn't buy it.  So I checked the produce aisle (it has been lumped in with the potatoes before I kid you not) I checked the breakfast cereal aisle (where they NEVER are, cuz that would make too much sense). I checked the baking aisle, the ends of aisles, the front hallway and the place where they used to be just in case they had some sort of cloaking device on them that I of course hadn't noticed. No cereal. So I asked the first clerk I saw. He told me. Look at the front of the store. I told him, they aren't there. He looked confused and asked another clerk. She said, look at the front of the store. To which myself and the first clerk replied, they aren't there. The second clerk yelled across the store to the customer service rep, where are the monster cereals? And surprise, surprise, she yelled back. Check the front of the store. To which the 3 of us replied, they aren't there. Customer service yelled to a passing clerk and, well you get the picture. Finally someone asked the fellow at the meat counter who of course knew where the cereals were.................I'm building suspense....................they were in the................ frozen food aisle. Well of course, why didn't I think of that. Nothing says frozen peas and tater tots quite like a monster breakfast cereal. I guess they could be used as a topping for ice cream or waffles, but really, in a hidden corner of the frozen food aisle? Sigh. I guess that was better than the time they were hidden behind the Kleenex on a corner aisle and I only found them because I accidentally bumped into the display and dislodged enough that I saw the cereals. See, eating October breakfast foods is not for the easily discouraged. It's an endurance test that results in yumminess.
Anyway, the delicious trio was obtained and all was once again right with the world. In fact, I just enjoyed a scrumptious bowl of Boo Berry as I was typing this Thought. Isn't it funny how I had to grow up in order to enjoy a kids cereal, and it doesn't even have a prize. Though, the boxes now are kind of collectors items. This year, DC Comics has done special issues of each cereal. What a great blend, comics and my favorite cereals. A match made in October heaven.

At first I was cocky and thought that October had the market cornered on holiday breakfast cereals. But then I remembered Christmas. Christmas gets everything. I could only remember 2 holiday cereals for Christmas, but when I looked it up online there were 14, which kind of depressed me. But then I got to thinking. Christmas is overdoing it. No one cereal is good enough, they need 14. But October, October has 3 tried and true monster cereals. Sure,  their used to be 5, and true, the boxes have been redesigned countless times over the years. Boo Berry looks kind of like a pale, somewhat stoned Frank Sinatra. The Fruit Brute used to look like a homeless hippi and now looks like a well coiffed jazz singer or 50's greaser. Count Chocula looked like either Ron Burgundy from Anchorman or a skeezy used car salesman from the 70's and now looks like you could sharpen knives on his cheekbones. The yummy mummy pretty much stays the same, though I don't know what ancient Egyptians would make a mummy multicolored and predominantly hot pink. But the one that is my favorite always somehow manages to look the most ridiculous. For the most part, Franken Berry looks like a pink monkey. This year his head looks like 2 pink loaves of bread with a smokestack attached. Or like Elton John. It is like a Rorschach test for breakfast cereal, I guess you see what you want to. In which case, maybe I need therapy.

But it isn't' what they look like that matters to me, it is the chase. The anticipation of the first cereal release date. The first sighting.  The stalking of my breakfasty prey and the acquisition of it. It is all about the hunt and I love it. Who else do you know that hunts a breakfast cereal? Maybe I could mount the box carcasses on my wall when I am done with them. October trophies. Just one more decoration to add to my collection and that wouldn't hurt my feelings at all.

Day 13: I Eat Monsters for Breakfast

If you haven't figured it out by now, I get a little obsessive when it comes to October. I turn into a raging GIMME monster who wants all the decorations, drinks, pumpkins, periodicals, and October wonderfulness for herself. Well, I am willing to share, but me first, me first! As I was mulling over what to write for day thirteen, the thought literally came to me in my dreams.

I dreamt about breakfast cereal. And not just any breakfast cereal, October breakfast cereal. Since I was a wee thing, I have not really liked sugary cereals. I was an old soul who much preferred the taste of shredded wheat and cereals with fiber. I didn't see the point of sugary breakfast foods. If I wanted sugar, I'd just go eat some. Though I did like the Rice Krispy cereal, mostly because it made noise, but I am getting off topic.

Anyway, it wasn't until I got much older that I discovered the joys of sugary October cereal. I don't know what made me buy my first box, it probably had something to do with the fact that there was an October theme to it and you know how powerless I am to resist those. The cereals didn't taste half bad, they had monsters on the front and they were for a limited time only. Thus was born my October breakfast cereal tradition.

Every October I would watch the TV for commercials and the aisles for a glimpse of my holiday cereal boxes. I am not ashamed to say that I often enlist the help of others in my search. I just can't properly celebrate the season if I don't have my Franken Berry. The mania has become such a thing that last year I was going to dress up as Franken Berry and had cajoled mom into being Boo Berry. But sadly, the house fire had other plans and the costumes were lost. But no big deal, I still have my Franken Berry doll and my October breakfast cereal pins.

This year I didn't even have to go in search of the sugary treats. My wonderful uncle found them first and sent them to me in a giant package well before October. I have been happily munching ever since. This year, I was tipped off that the General Mills company was going to rerelease all of the monster cereals, even the discontinued ones. My heart did a little flip of joy when I heard that. But alas, I have not seen the proof of that press release yet. I have found Count Chocula, Boo Berry and Franken Berry. But no Yummy Mummy or Frute Brute. They are supposed to have been released at Target in September, but when I ask about them, I get funny looks from the employees like I am speaking Farsi. Ah such is my hard life during October.

But what does this all have to do with my dreams? Well, last night I had a doozy. It involved Oprah (why I'll never know, I don't watch her show, I don't read her magazine), Costco, a minivan and a bunch of people I had never met. For some reason we were going to Costco and it seemed like it was an emergency. Once we got there we all split up to find whatever it was that we were searching for. I was hot on the trail of whatever it was until suddenly I turned a corner and there were the October monster cereals. The mission suddenly went out of my mind. I then became SUPER focused on how to smuggle several boxes of Halloween cereal out of the store. Yes, it seems I had turned into a cereal shoplifter.

So as I was trying to smuggle my ill gotten gains out of a huge side door, Oprah showed up and gave me a talking to. She called security on me (which didn't endear her to me very much) and then i had to run around Costco dropping cereal boxes as I ran trying to evade an irate Oprah and security. From there it was a frantic chase and I woke up to the sound of my alarm going off. I never did get my holiday cereal. So the day has been going downhill ever since I woke up this morning. That said, I did have a nice heaping bowl of Franken Berry just to show my dream and Oprah who was boss. Clearly me. Clearly

So, with 18 days left in my favorite month, I will not give up the monster cereal hunt. I will also call on all of you to keep your eyes peeled. If you happen to be around Target or some other store that has monster cereal, be sure to look for Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy. They will be hanging out next to Count Chocula, Boo Berry and Franken Berry. I will pay you in pumpkin cookies or cash money, whichever you prefer. But like my crazy dream illustrates, I've got to get me some October monster cereal. mmmmmm

October Obsessions: OT Day 9

We’ve come to the point in the OT’s where I take things that are meant for small children and try to convince you that they are ok for adults too. I will fail miserably, but feel better for the trying. Aren’t you glad that I use you all as my guilt guinea pigs.

October is the only time of year when I get a little crazy with my purchases. For 334 days, I may hate a certain product, but slap a Halloween/October theme on it and I am suddenly all over it. For example, I really don’t care for marshmallow peeps, but if you color them orange and make them into the shape of a pumpkin I will eat them like they are a fine truffle. Or say you have an experimental candy that tastes a little suspect but glows in the dark and has a ghost on the packaging. I’m your girl. And don’t even get me started on Berttie Botts Every Flavor Beans. I still can’t get the taste of grass out of my mouth and it has been at least 10 years. Oh the things I do for my favorite month. Maybe it is a good thing that it only comes around once a year. All year long I wait for October to come around so that I can indulge in these marvelous goodies. Only in October does Arctic Circle bring out its square pumpkin and the grocery stores display their monster themed cereal.

This year on October 1^st, Arctic Circle had their first Halloween advertizement. I exercised a modicum of self restraint and waited a whole three days before I zoomed off to the establishment because I couldn’t take the waiting anymore. I had to have that square pumpkin. HAD TO! One would have thought it was Christmas morning as giddy as I was. I took my Halloween cassette tape with me and belted out songs all the way to the restaurant. Once there I giggled like a fiend while I waited for the drive-thru attendant to take my order. I think I freaked her out with my enthusiasm. She gave me a choice of which toy I wanted in my kids meal and I gleefully announced that I wanted all four. This seemed to confuse her and she kept explaining to me that I would have to pay for the extras. I said that I understood, and that I still wanted four. She really didn’t know what to do and just told me to pull forward.

Let me tell you this, when you order a kids meal and extra toys, the person at the window expects you to pull up with an SUV or minivan full of children. She was quite puzzled to see me and only me grinning from ear to ear with no kids in the vicinity. I could really care less about the food in the kids meal, it is the box it comes in and the toys inside that I want. Last years toys were big jelly skinned spiders with strobe lights in their stomach. So COOL! This year it was a set of four tiny flashlights in various shapes. A ghost that is cuter than it has a right to be. A pumpkin, a skull that is a bit frightening and a witch, which I usually would pass on, but she is the cheeriest green witch that I have ever seen, plus she has a jaunty hat. I giggled all the way home and couldn’t wait to show mom my new October acquisitions. My favorite is the ghost. I spent way longer than I will admit showing the puppy how each spooky flashlight worked, and I may or may not have made light saber type wooshing noises while using them.

Having acquired the mini flashlights and square pumpkin early in the month, I now turn to my next dilemma. It is nine days into October and I have yet to devour a pink box of delicious marshmallow monsters. How can this be? Personally I think all the cereal boxes know that I am coming and are either using some sort of cloaking device or chameleon like shift of their front covers to look like some sort of bran flake. Why cereal boxes, why?

You guessed it, my other favorite October treat is Franken Berry cereal. It is sugary, doesn’t really taste all that spectacular, and is a regrettable pink color, but I am preconditioned to like it because it has something to do with October and I therefore eat it with great gusto. Growing up my mother was sensible enough never to let me eat sugary cereals. I didn’t have my first taste of one until I was in Jr. High and I thought it was awful. I did however find that I liked the holiday Crunch Berry cereal, but that is getting off topic. I don’t remember when it was exactly that I started to eat Franken Berry, but I know I sought it out because I saw a commercial for it on TV. See, advertizing really does work. The add had Count Chocula, the Franken Berry monster (who has a British accent YAY) and the Boo Berry ghost all around a cereal cauldron and I think they showed the marshmallows floating out of it. Then came the obligatory tag line "part of a nutritious breakfast" Yeah, if you didn’t actually eat the cereal and had some wheat germ and a banana maybe. Really, who are you trying to kid General Mills. Play to your strengths. There are monsters on the box and marshmallows in the cereal, of course kids (and by kids I mean me) are going to want it.

Of the big three (there used to be a Fruit Brute and a Yummy Mummy) I like Count Chocula the least. It tastes like chocolate flavored chalk. Boo Berry is tolerable, will do in a pinch and tastes vaguely fruit like. Franken Berry is my favorite and sorta tastes like strawberry if you use your imagination. The milk turns a really interesting shade of pink as the cereal dyes wear off and it always makes me think of the dyes they inject you with before an MRI. Which is kinda cool, because one, I like MRI’s and two, Frankenstein grew up in a mad scientists lab so maybe it is radium dye that I am eating and Dr. Frankenstein himself will show up one morning. Either that or I will grow a third eye from eating the cereal. So it’s pretty much a win, win scenario any way you look at it. ;)

Over the years the characters on the boxes have changed to stay hip with the times. Being stodgy and old I like the way the monstrous crew looked in the 80's. Now they are more streamlined and animated and it doesn’t feel the same. The original Count Chocula reminded me of a creepy uncle that you only invite to family gatherings hoping he won’t show up. Franken Berry looked a bit like a slow witted monkey and the Boo Berry ghost I’m sorry to say looked like a stoned Frank Sinatra. Where do they come up with these drawings? Now the Count looks like a very enthusiastic used car salesman from the 70's. Franken Berry looks like he’s had about twelve five hour energy drinks in a row, and the Boo Berry ghost still looks like he has eaten one too many funny brownies, but at least now he is really happy about it. On the back of the boxes last year, the trio tried to solve a mystery. So at least I had some lite reading entertainment as I ate. This does not however make up for the fact that there are no longer toys in the cereal boxes. I feel vaguely cheated. Maybe the third eye I will grow is the prize. A girl can dream.

Anyway, I don’t just stop at monster cereal buying. I like them so much that I have expanded my collection. A good friend gave me collector pins a few years back with the cereal box pictures on them. Each of the five monsters had a pin and then there was one with the whole group. I love them so much that they stay up year round on my bulletin board. Then last year, I found a 7 inch plush Franken Berry doll. It looks rather ridiculous and I had to wait months for them to ship it, but it was so worth it. So now, when I eat my Halloween cereal, I can have my plush monster beside me and my pin on my shirt. How is that for dedication. Have I scared you yet? I’m curious, does anyone else have an October obsession like mine? Man I love this month!