Ahhh, the first (real) post of 2009. I think I’ll blow the milestone on Cap’n Crunch.

On a hot tip from a reader, I found myself paying the ridiculous $8 bridge toll to get to the nearest Wal-Mart over in Jersey, just for the chance to own the latest in an incredibly long string of Cap’n Crunch spinoffs. It’s called Touchdown Crunch, and though it isn’t even the first time our friendly captain has dressed as a football player, I still find the idea of football-themed Cap’n Crunch 100% insane.

Maybe it’s because I can see the lie on Cap’n Crunch’s face. He’s sold out, and he knows that we know he sold out. Yet, there he is, grasping the pigskin and forcing a smile, silently wondering if he’s crossed the invisible line that determines acceptable behavior for a naval hero with loose ties to pirates. It’s not for me to say, but football has to come close to crossing that line.

The real problem is the cereal itself. The box boasts a “limited edition” inclusion of football-shaped green and blue pieces, but as you can see, they are decidedly NOT football shaped, looking completely like normal Crunchberries — albeit blue and green ones. These cereal bits aren’t even close to football-shaped. If I poured you a bowl and made you guess, you would never respond with “footballs.” Never!

All told, we have a terrible mix: A theme that I don’t care about, a totally nonfunctional special feature, and nary a plastic army man freebie to keep me occupied. Three strikes and I’m ready to kill Cap’n Crunch. The only reason I haven’t is because I still appreciate what he did for me last month. But ol’ Crunch can’t ride that wave forever. If he screws up again, you’ll be hearing about both of us on the evening news.

I was probably the only person on the planet who asked for the 25-page Free Stuff For Everyone guide this Christmas, but I’m glad I did. For years, I’ve been lamenting the loss of one of my favorite childhood books, titled 1001 Things Free. “Book” might be a strong word; it was only a “book” in the sense that it was made of pages and bounded together. Published annually at least until the early ’90s, 1001 Things Free was always on my order form when I blew money on shit from the Johnson-Smith catalog.

Printed on phonebook-style paper, 1001 Things Free featured an enormous list of samples, doodads, pamphlets and novelties that were ours for the asking. All we had to do was send letters to random companies, chip in for the shipping and wait 6-800 weeks for our worthless baubles to arrive by mail. In the pre-Internet age, it was a terrific way for us shut-ins to pass the time. With diligence, I managed to get more mail than anyone else in my family, even if all it amounted to was horse stickers, half-inch magnets and sheets of paper that told me the proper way to collect seashells.

1001 Things Free was only the most popular in a fairly large series of books that rattled off random freebies. (If you’re around the same age as me and liked ordering from grade school book clubs, you might remember a similar entity titled Free Stuff For Kids.) This “freebie guide” genre has largely gone extinct, due in no small part to the thousands of upstart websites that do the same thing, but in more up-to-date fashion. The shitty pamphlet shown above was published pretty recently, and seems to be one of the only freebie guides left that lives on honest to goodness paper.

While not as thorough as 1001 Things Free used to be, there’s a fair amount of amazing crap to be found within the guide’s 25 pages. Just from the photo above, you’ve got a chance to score everything from glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs to bug magnets — and there’s at least a hundred other offers just like those. I wouldn’t spend the energy to pick this stuff up off the ground if I walked past it, but there’s just something about getting random nonsense in the mail that will forever intrigue me.

Why do companies make these offers? Many reasons, and they have nothing to do with charity. For some, it’s an opportunity to get you on their catalog mailing lists. For others, even the nominal shipping charge is enough for them to make a small profit, which is then multiplied by tens of thousands into a larger profit. (In the case of the glowing dinosaurs offer, we can assume them to be those flat, lightweight wall decorations that are usually sold in multi-packs. Assuming they send you two of them, the shipping cost will be less than half of the two bucks they’re charging, and even after you factor in the cost of the actual dinos, they’re pretty much ripping you off.)

This particular pamphlet has a few bad reviews on Amazon, and I can see why. The authors really stretched the idea of what people would consider a “freebie.” In many cases, they simply tell you the URLs of food companies who include recipes somewhere on their websites. Still, if you dig deep enough, there’s enough here to give your pen a busy afternoon. I’m sending away for around a dozen freebies tomorrow, and once some of ‘em get here, I’ll do a follow-up. Won’t that be exciting?

As for the Advent Calendar, don’t fret. I won’t let 2008 (2009?) turn into 2002. We’ll get there, and I’ll figure out some way to turn this lateness into a positive thing for the story. I’m also hoping not to kill all of the site’s December momentum just yet, so expect new blog posts pretty much everyday. Stay tuned; beware the crabs.

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!