Daniel85

My mum was in one of her twice-or-thrice-annual nostalgic moods tonight, so she had all our old photo albums spread out across the lounge room. This poring over photos may have something to do with my impending 21st birthday, and the threat that she's been making since I was about ten years old to print a picture of my naked tush in the bath in the birthdays section of the newspaper on my 21st. I don't really care; I don't even want a party for my 21st. Not a big deal to me.

Embarassing child nudity pics aside, though, I was pretty excited to see this happy snap that mum turned up:

Looks like I was having fun there. It's strange- I have never seen that photo before. I remember the Superfriends pyjamas, and that guitar (it only played an electronic rendition of "You Are My Sunshine"), but not together. I guess it's in about '88 or '89. That's pre-Turtles for me. A year later and I would've been wearing a Donatello costume to bed.

I'm a bit freaked out about the Superfriends thing, actually, in light of the terrible loss of Alex Toth on Saturday morning. I was just watching some episodes of Space Ghost on the Friday before his death, and now this picture of me in my Superfriends jammies shows up. Scary.

Don't you just love comics panels taken out of context? I know it's an old concept, but I still get a kick when I see a panel that could be taken as homo-erotic or toilet humour if seen by itself. I'm immature like that.

 Here's one from Amazing Spider-Man #200:

Leave the guy alone! No means no, Spidey.

Less than a week in business and I'm already relying on eBay for most of my posts. Shame, shame, shame.

Anyway, check this out:

Batman Logo Cheerio 

If you read the item description, the seller fucking lied. The item title says it's a Cheerio, but it's actually a Nutri Grain. (What's the spelling of Nutri Grain anyway? One word? Hyphenated?) Now, as a longtime eBay user, I know that sellers often throw misleading words into the item titles to attract attention (like 'rare' for comics that had print runs of several million only ten short years ago, or 'awesome' for Pete Murray CDs), but come on- Cheerios? Do they really think 'cheerios' is a big search term on the eBay? Probably better off going with something more general, like 'cereal'.

And they're charging $6.00 for postage, which is ridiculous. You could wrap this in some bubble wrap and put it in a $0.60 envelope, for sure. I guess the seller is just trying to pad some profit, cos he knows that if he does actually manage to sell this, it'll only be for the starting price of 99 cents. Surely there aren't two people in this world stupid enough to bid on a vague approximation of the Batman logo in cereal form? 

This caught my eye as I cruised eBay this morning:

THE PHANTOM - 15 Inch HANDPAINTED PLATTER BY MONKEYS 

As it turns out, 'Monkeys' is Monkeys of Melbourne, maker of terribly tacky platters and, I can only assume, mugs.

Now, if the platter had actually been painted by monkeys, I would have been all over this auction, but without primate involvement I think I'll pass.

As promised in yesterday's post about Nestle's World Cup sugar balls, here's my review of another World Cup promotional product, what I've come to call Coke Gold.

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As someone with only a passing interest in soccer, I wasn't over-excited when the news hit that Australia had made it into the World Cup. I mean, I thought it was good and all, but I wasn't exactly running around my living room with my shirt pulled over my head. I know this is heresy, considering the great importance Australia places on sporting achievements, and that several of my friends are huge soccer fans, but there haven't been any severed pigs' heads thrown through my living room window yet. Fingers crossed.

That said, I was walking through my local Safeway yesterday, and was struck by a marvellous sight. A solid gold bottle of Coca-Cola! It caught my eye within like two seconds of my entering the 'way, cos I'm always on the lookout for whatever crazy shit Coke or Pepsi are gonna pull next. I echo the sentiments of Matt over at x-entertainment.com when he says that he's absolutely in love with the craziness that has been the soda/soft-drink industry over the past few years.

The cereal aisle is another pitstop on my race around the worl– I mean my grocery shopping. The cereal world has been pretty lacklustre in the last few years, at least in Australia, so I'm always happy whenever something cool or weird pops up. Well, thank you FUSSBALL!!!!!, because now there's cereal in the shape of soccer balls!

Here's the loot:

I must apologise for the shoddiness of my camera work. Peter Parker I ain't. But anyway, without further ado, here's my review. Rooby rooby roo!

Nestle/FIFA Limited Edition Vanilla Flavoured Toasted Rice Cereal

I'm a bit unsure what they're trying to achieve with the marketing of this product. I haven't seen any ads for it, so I can only speak about the packaging.

The cereal is just your basic, unabashed sugar bomb, so it would seem to be aimed at kids, but they haven't really followed through on that with the box design. They could've given it a cute name, like, I dunno, "Soccer Balls" (or "Sokker Ballz" to be more extreme).

Another disappointing aspect of the packaging is that the cereal's main drawcard for kids, the magic soccer ball appearing act, is relegated to a tiny picture up in the corner:

They've obviously decided that soccer fever is what's going to put bums in seats (breakfast seats) as far as this cereal goes, and the kid stuff is secondary. All I'm saying is kids need to know this shit! This is the kind of stuff that they're going to be reminiscing about on their virtual reality goggles connected to the cyber-net in like 2025, just like we children of the 80s do today, except with our fingers on keyboards.

The box designers really did go all-out on doodads and possibly doohickeys, though. There's a nice little hologram sticker down in the bottom corner, which is reminiscent of the holo-foil that's a trademark of the Upper Deck line of sports cards (pretty much my main involvement with sports as a child). The FIFA logo you see is also tricked out, raised and shiny blue. Raised "blister" bits on cardboard always appeal to me, which goes right back to the Goosebumps logo. I used to rub those Goosebumps logos until the covers were bald.

Now onto the aforementionted gimmick to this cereal the 'magic' soccer balls hidden amongst the regular, shitty cereal. Just add milk. Now we all know that this stuff mostly never works out as well as on the box, so I'll be putting Nestle's crazy Swiss magic to the test right now!

Here's the back of the box, with simple to follow instructions that even a (insert the name of your most hated Premier League club here) fan could pull off!

So, I'm all set up here with my Kelloggs bowl and my home-brand milk:

Let's take a closer look at the dry cereal, before the magic happens.

I think I can pick out the magic ones already. I think I've said magic 300 times already.

And in goes the milk:

Not a spectacular result, but let's have a closer look anyway.

Looks appetising, huh? It'd be kinda cool if they could've worked some colouring into it. Looks more like some kinda cone or nut that falls off a tree in tree mating season than a soccer ball, but I do admit there was some change there. Is it magic? You decide.

Oh and hey, here's a bonus round. Try and guess what cereal mascot is at the bottom of my bowl.

Can you guess? Oh, the shape's still too vague? Okay, try this:

Got it yet? You'd have to be a complete idiot not to.

Yes, that's right, it's Toucan Sam!

Okay, this blog entry has gone on way too long. I'll review the gold Coke tomorrow. Cheers!

Yo.

I've been wanting to start a blog for a while, but never got around to it, due to a combination of being too busy with university, too lazy to sit down and write entries, and being daunted by the awesomeness of the blogs I regularly read.

I figure if I just write an initial post, then maybe through the domino effect, or the snowball effect, or some awesome amalgam of the two, that'll lead to more posts.

I was actually going to write a big manifesto of what I want to do with this blog, but then I realised nobody cares. Probably best to actually get a readership before I develop any delusions of bloggeur.

Anyway, I've got an idea for my first 'real' blog entry, which I'll probably write tomorrow. It involves Coke, cereal, and the World Cup. Be there.

 Oh, and here's a little taste of what you can expect from this blog:

OLD PEOPLE ABOUT TO KICK THE SHIT OUT OF SPIDER-MAN!