Cap'n Crunch Goes Blue, Yo:
It had to happen sometime, though I'm having trouble explaining exactly why. If you're a kid wrapped in a dirty old guy's body, you've probably seen the new Cap'n Crunch commercial, where everyone's favorite seafaring breakfast pusher teams up with those weird looking kids from Rocket Power to splash lots of water around and crash boats. Somehow, that led to the Cap'n's (is that correct?) Crunch Berries cereal to become available, for a limited time, with corn and oat bits that change color in milk!

We've been waiting for color changing cereal for a long time, all of us. Our prayers have finally been answered.

Anyway, I think this is how it goes: the usual Crunch Berries have been replaced with Rocket Power shapes -- that kid with the dreds, rollerblades, yadda yadda -- and some/all of these new additions have been thoroughly injected with food coloring that, when moistened in milk, lets loose with all kinds of radioactive blue breakfast action. Yeah, that's how it goes. I don't particularly care for the Cap'n shilling all these new shapes as actual Crunch Berries, one of the traits of this campaign that mucks up decades of Cap'n Crunch cereal commercial continuity. I guess it's a small price to pay to get a bowl of milk that looks like something guys who like Worf would compare Romulan Ale to.

Frankly, the cereal business in of itself has become really, really fun to watch over the past few years. I've done plenty of articles detailing some special promotion from eons ago, but these days, every cereal has a gimmick. Next time you're at the supermarket, stroll down the cereal aisle and try to make sense of what you're seeing. Color changing Cap'n Crunch doesn't begin to illustrate just how insane breakfast has become. I'd probably consider myself a spoiled child who had pretty liberal parents, but we never had more than one kind of cereal in the house at a time. When I visit my siblings and sift through their cupboards for stuff to steal, I can't help noticing that they're buying like, a dozen different cereals for their kids on each shopping trip. It's easily explained: kids who see these wild promotions need to take part in all of them, so if the Cap'n dyes his morning crap, that's just another in a long line of things children cannot possibly live without. Who wants to walk into the schoolyard and be the only jimmyjack who didn't shit blue the night before?

Anyway, I can't say the gimmick actually works too well. I mean, it works, but the milk is the only thing in that bowl that's truly blue and not just mud-colored from dried dye. I'm actually a bit surprised that Quaker pulled this stunt -- some of you remember "Smurfberry Crunch," right? Stuff got pulled off the market for -- and I swear this is true -- turning kids' excrement unpalatable shades of blue. It was all completely harmless of course, but still a turnoff. I did notice that Cap'n Crunch's experiment not only turns cereal and milk blue, but also bowls, spoons and lips. It's no Alien Fruit Monster, but few things are. Speaking of which, I'll give you an update on ol' AFM next time I feel like talking about cereal. So maybe tonight.