X-Entertainment | Oatmeal Swirlers, you can give it a swirrrl.

Oatmeal Swirlers, you can give it a swirrrl.

In the most shocking turn of events ever, I went and posted a real, regular article. Caveat is, it's a really short, malformed article. Actually, it was going to just be a blog entry, but I couldn't convince myself to sentence something as awesome as Oatmeal Swirlers to the depths of the blog archive, so, here we are. Oatmeal Swirlers delighted my childhood hands and tongue by letting me draw edible pictures all over oatmeal, and even if you weren't around for those joys, I hope this article will help you understand why they were joys. Includes poorly made spiral graphics and a download of the original commercial.

Posted by Matt on 12/11/2006. E-mail me!

Discussion Thread: 98 comments

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Matt, have you seen the hermit crab kits @ Target? They have Spiderman and the Hulk on the provided shells.

Chestnuts roasted by Joe H @ 12/11/2006 10:38 PM

Yes! These were the highlight of my breakfast when I could actually convince my mom to buy them. I had totally forgotten about them.

Chestnuts roasted by Cyclone @ 12/11/2006 10:39 PM

I can’t… figure out… if I remember this stuff. Argh.

Chestnuts roasted by Hey I'm Jeff @ 12/11/2006 11:00 PM

Dude! I totally ate these all the time in winter as a kid! Loved the icing. But if you made any shape other than a swirl, it tasted bland in parts cause it didnt’ soak into all of it.

Chestnuts roasted by Terror Claws Cole @ 12/11/2006 11:07 PM

I remember something very similar to these, but the stuff was green or red or some other bizarre hue.

They were so much a part of breakfast that I actually found it odd that my “Maple and Brown Sugar” packages didn’t come with them – which reminds me, I don’t know if it was just a Canadian thing or not, but does anyone remeber that they used to print little “animal profile” things on the individual packets of oatmeal (the Quaker stuff, natch)? It was like little greenpeace-propaganda with your breakfast, they were fun.

Chestnuts roasted by Roadblock @ 12/11/2006 11:09 PM

Mmmmm… I also loved Oatmeal Swirlers. You know what expired food product I’ve been hungry for lately? Mr. Phipp’s Pretzel Chips!

Has anyone seen the Disney red and green “Magic Middles” cookies in their grocery stores? I have yet to see any, and strangely the Magic Middles wiki has been gone for the past few weeks. It’s giving me this little sliver of hope they might bring back REAL Magic Middles, and I don’t want to get my hopes up. ._.

Chestnuts roasted by Mystie @ 12/11/2006 11:16 PM

OOOOOooooo this is the one gimmick my mom would let us buy! Because oatmeal was healthy……and we were allowed to pick out a fruit flavor(fruit is healthy). My sister and I only liked/agreed on the Strawberry red color….
Wow…. This was actually not included in my mother’s ‘you can’t get what you see on TV’ reign of terror! These things were great…It took my sister and I some time to figure out how to cut open the packages to make drawings. We would fold the packages over on themselves to make the opening smaller…. strategic drawings….
Nice.
ahhhhh nice memories

Chestnuts roasted by Fristine @ 12/11/2006 11:16 PM

Yet another product I remember, but did not try, nor did I want to try at the time. But yet again thanks to this place, I don’t think I can go on until I try it!

This stuff needs to come back!

Chestnuts roasted by IHAQ @ 12/11/2006 11:45 PM

Roadblock I totally remember the animal things! Did they also have random facts like the worlds longest yodel or something on them too? It made every breakfast my mom had time to make oatmeal fun!

Chestnuts roasted by Phil G. @ 12/11/2006 11:51 PM

God I miss this shit. I still eat oatmeal (Any kind with cinnamon and sugar in it) almost every day.

Chestnuts roasted by Bryan @ 12/12/2006 12:04 AM

My. that. was. bad. Really. really. bad. I mean Harvey was awesome, but other than that, just absolute shite. Bummer.

Only good part was their song. And that’s on Youtube, so I’ll take solace in that. I won’t even begin to tell you how much they mucked up.

Chestnuts roasted by K- @ 12/12/2006 12:04 AM

Awe, Matt, you think of everything!

Chestnuts roasted by Gemma @ 12/12/2006 12:12 AM

YES. Loved this stuff, and I miss it, too. One time I was just squeezing it in randomly, and I ended up with a deer. I still have the photo. Most of the rest of the time it was swirls. Always strawberry.

Chestnuts roasted by Rainbowfeet @ 12/12/2006 12:20 AM

Sweeet! I loved that stuff, except I never remembered the name of it. It could also be that I enjoyed a similar product that was in competition to swirlers, but anyway, fruity paste in oatmeal = happy.

Chestnuts roasted by Mattman @ 12/12/2006 12:42 AM

Great stuff matt the commercial was so awesomely 80s

Chestnuts roasted by thejyav @ 12/12/2006 12:45 AM

I have a few notes from the last two blog entries, since Matt is being kind and making so many.

First, Predaking could totally take on Voltron all by himself. I said this once before, and I’m saying it again. Also, someone asked the names of the Voltron force. They are Keith, Hunk, Pidge, Lance, and Sven (who was replaced by the dumbest princess in the unviverse).

Second, while it’s kind of hard to see, the hardwood floor in Matt’s apartment looks pretty nice. I’ve always kind of wanted hardwood floors, but I heard they are cold in the winter. True? False? Also, Matt why the heck would you spend the time and money to upgrade an apartment? Do you own the place, or is the landlord paying you? Please tell me you’re not screwing yourself.

Third, Spazz is not Spaz307. It should be patently obvious since s/he managed to hold it to a couple of sentences.

Fourth, Cameron T., I was incorrect when I said iTunes converted everything in my My Music folder. It actually duplicated everything. This is good because I can still go back to Creative and just delete iTunes and all the files it created. This is bad because my media now takes (at a guess) 120 gig instead of 60 gig. I think I actually found a half-ass way to delete stuff on the fly from the iPod. If I rate the craptastic stuff like “Star Wars Disco” as one star, I think I can tell iTunes to only sync unrated stuff and ratings higher than one star. It’s still slower, because it means I have to actually cue the song, but it’s better than nothing. I haven’t actually taken the iPod back yet, and it might be growing on me. It still annoys me that I have to find work arounds when a software update could fix almost every problem I have with this device. (The audio quality still isn’t great, but I think that may have more to do with the file compression than the hardware. I haven’t done enough research yet to know if I’m right about this.)

Chestnuts roasted by spaz307 @ 12/12/2006 12:47 AM

Yeah, those animal facts were the only reason I ate oatmeal. Now I don’t touch the stuff.

Also, Advent Calender = Crack. I’ve been reloading ehre for the past 15 mintues waiting for the Dec 12 entry, hoping it won’t be updated at 5 PM tommorrow. Maybe I should sleep on it.

Chestnuts roasted by Roadblock @ 12/12/2006 1:23 AM

I remember Oatmeal Swirlers, too. I loved the strawberry, and still eat oatmeal with strawberry jam on the rare ocassions that I actually eat oatmeal.

I’d also like to mention that the Advent calendar update was particularly awesome today.

Chestnuts roasted by Sami @ 12/12/2006 1:34 AM

I think I remember eating these, but I’m probably mistaken.

Chestnuts roasted by Mike P @ 12/12/2006 1:36 AM

Knacks and Tigerboy sure found a way to make the time pass up there.

I know what they’re doing up on that Advent Calender

Chestnuts roasted by K- @ 12/12/2006 1:39 AM

I loved, loved, LOVED Oatmeal Swirlers when I was a kid. I was always one to play with my food, and any food that was MEANT to played with helped my cause greatly.

Chestnuts roasted by MissJess @ 12/12/2006 1:39 AM

This is an ideal product for those of us who love the tons of flavor and sugar all in one spot. I used to love it in regular oatmeal when I’d get a chunk of the undissolved powder flavoring. But then you don’t want to eat the rest of it because it’s so bland.

Fristine – did your mom ever realize that it wasn’t really a healthy meal at all?

Chestnuts roasted by Jessica Marie @ 12/12/2006 1:50 AM

I remember trying these on a few separate occasions, but I really despise strawberries and I don’t remember trying any other flavors of goo. I ate a heckuva lot of Toaster Pastries, though, and got my artistic kicks out of those (while trying to be as frugal as possible with the frosting so I could orally mainline the rest).

Chestnuts roasted by Special K @ 12/12/2006 1:52 AM

Know what I remember from my Childhood that I’d like to place a name on?

(I’m from Canada so I’m not sure if you had them in the States)

There were these cookies right? and they all had a medieval theme to them. (knights,dragons,princesses ,etc) and I vividly remember the commercials where it would show the cookie morph do something than morph back to a cookie.

If any one could help me out here so I know that I’m not insane that’d be great.

Chestnuts roasted by Phrat Pirate @ 12/12/2006 1:53 AM

I was all about Apple Cinnamon.

Chestnuts roasted by Ragnarok @ 12/12/2006 2:17 AM

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 10:31 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.