Daniel85

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!