Sorry for the lack of updates the past few days -- as one might surmise from the tone of the two previous entries, it's been a week from hell. I can't even enjoy the fact that it's Friday night, because we're pretty close to Sunday night, which starts off another work week, which could spell DOOOOM.
But, I'll try. After several days of Tatooine-like heat, the gods have finally smiled upon my fair town with what's essentially perfect Halloween weather: It's cold and wet, with a barely illuminating purplish gray sky signaling a night best spent watching Halloween: H20 and laughing at the part where Michael Myers holds that Andy Garcia lookalike up in the air by a knife.
That's a little gloomy, and since I spent most of my X-E time this week being gloomy, let's mix things up with the boisterous good times of Betty Crocker's Fruit Roll-Ups.
We went grocery shopping the other night, which is another way of saying "beer and popcorn run." I couldn't believe how many different types of Fruit Roll-Ups were on sale. There's always been a ton of flavors and even a ton of specialized gimmicks, but I'm referring to wholly different "species" of Roll-Ups. Different box shapes, different Roll-Up shapes, different everything. I think the two shown above best represent this renaissance period of the Fruit Roll-Up, but even if they don't, I'm eighteen Fruit Roll-Ups richer for trying to portray them as such. Go me.
First up, it's "Crazy Pix: Wild Ones" Fruit Roll-Ups, with each snack featuring one of a number of multicolored patterns, ranging from tiger stripes to gator skin to army fatigues. Printing weird shit on Fruit Roll-Ups is nothing new, but these take it to a five star level. There isn't really much point in the effort since the snacks as most often seen rolled up or crunched into little fruity boulders, but I can at least appreciate my newfound ability to fantasize about a bedroom fully wallpapered with Fruit Roll-Ups.
There's a girlier variety out, too -- "Crazy Pix: Cool Chix." It's not really that girly, but it's indeed the cooler of the two varieties, featuring plaid patterns, bejeweled patterns and another pattern which is hard to decipher but looks something like the trail of superpowered idiocy left behind by fallen Marvel Comics icon, "Speedball."
Even more outside the box are new Fruit Roll-Ups "Stackerz," which may have been partly inspired by those old school candy buttons. Instead of getting a sheet, the fruit snacks are divided by color and flavor into neat little rolls of stackable discs. While I dig the effort in reinventing of the Fruit Roll-Up, I'm not sure I understand the point of these. Maybe it's because I'm trying to view them through the eyes of a fifth grader, when I really should be viewing them through the eyes of a preschooler. Fifth graders aren't going to sit around making little sandwiches out of fruit discs, but preschoolers might.
Then again, the discs are quite sticky and, if you gather up enough red ones, you can poorly fake the measles just like every dumb sitcom kid in television history did. That's fun for all ages. Also of note: The revised texture and thickness has done wonders for Fruit Roll-Ups -- the Stackerz are by far the best tasting I've ever had. They're as close to Slush Puppie fruit snacks as we've ever been.
That about covers it for the Fruit Roll-Ups. I'm off to build some kind of super mutant freeze ray with which I will end the world's rotation and let it remain Friday night forevermore. If I'm unsuccessful, see you in the SNT.
Posted by Matt on 08/10/2007. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
.
Nigel: No, I absolutely despise summer. I live in Oklahoma and I don’t do heat well, so summers are miserable. Some of the X-E regulars might remember that last year I decorated for Halloween on August 15th just because I was so depressed from the heat–that’s about the only thing that would cheer me up. lol