Happy Saturday. I spruced up the blog for the midcourse season (click here for archival purposes), basically because I've already found some Christmas candy worth writing about, and couldn't do it on a blog decorated for Halloween.

We hit Target last night, and it's true -- the 2006 Jones Soda Holiday Pack is already out, and it's just as swank as ever. Don't want to talk about it too much until I get to the real review, but suffice to say, one of the new flavors is by far the grossest yet seen in any Holiday Pack. Best of all, the sets were only $9.99 a piece.

Target hadn't quite finished their Christmas setup yet, but it was mostly there, save for the three aisles still devoted to the sad remnants of the Halloween season, with Everything Spooky marked down 75%. It's smart to take advantage of 3.00 Ninja Turtle costumes, but I've never really been one to buy the post-Halloween markdowns. I can do it with Christmas, but I always feel a little dirty buying Draculas in November for some reason.

After fighting with the woman in-store for turning my weekly "buy random stuff to wash the stink of another busy week from my soul" Target excursion into her weekly "buy cat food and cat litter and paper towels and shampoo and a hundred other things" Target excursion, cooler heads prevailed and I left with my first holiday-themed cereal of the 2006 season.

At least, I'm pretty sure it's holiday-themed. New "Ice Berry Pebbles" strive really hard to be nondenominational, but it doesn't seem to even be comfortable with the label of a "winter edition." War on Christmas, blah blah blah. I'm going to take the icy/snowy theme and the fact that the cereal bits are red and green as a sign that this is something to eat while Brenda Lee rocks around the tree in the background. On the other hand, the green cereal bits were meant to be blue, but came up a little short.

Weird thing: The strawberry flavoring makes this stuff smell like a dirty sock. No joke. This isn't one of those things I say just to say -- buy a box and you'll agree. You might have analogies other than dirty socks, but there's definitely something off about the way this shit smells.

Well, whatever, it's not like Fruity Pebbles was ever chiefly known for its true Christmas edition cereals. Sure, the brand has had some, but its real connection with the season was that old commercial starring Barney as Santa Claus, and that ad promoted perfectly normal Fruity & Cocoa Pebbles. War on Christmas, blah blah blah.

They taste pretty excellent, with strawberry undertones mingling with the pure sugar overtones, both conspiring to deliver an amazing crunch and visions of Fred Flintstone shreddin' shit up frontways and gettin' tweakablingly stoked. Shaa. Also of note is a legal line on the box mentioning that the pictured cereal had been "enlarged to show texture." If Post had to put that in by some legal mandate, it's time to start calling the world ridiculous.

Posted by Matt on 11/04/2006. E-mail me!