Daniel85

Let’s talk about Kit Kat Chunky for a moment.

I was just as excited as the next guy when they first came out. All the chocolatey, wafery goodness of Kit Kat at four times the size? Fuck yes!

But the Kit Kat Chunky was too successful. The junk food and drink world is a constant Darwinian struggle, and it seems the Kit Kat Chunky has won out against its lesser cousin, the regular Kit Kat. I can’t remember the last time I saw a normal, four-finger Kit Kat, much less ate one. I think you can still get them in the “Fun Size”, but eating one of those is about as enjoyable as dancing with your sister.

I think the demise of the regular Kit Kat is best summed up by the disappearance of the “Chunky” epithet. As you’ll see below, the big boi of the Kit Kat world is now just called “Kit Kat”, which would seem to point to its final victory.

There are actually three new flavours, but the Safeway I went to didn’t have the mint one. That’s okay, I’m kinda sick of mint. It’s like that’s the default flavour choice that chocolate companies go for when they wanna walk on the wild side.

It’s a bit strange that they would release a sudden flood of new flavours at once. I would’ve thought it’d be safer to just do one at a time, to focus attention on that one product. These trial flavours never last for long, so it seems wiser to just have one out at a time, considering that consumers are buying less luxuries these days due to fuel prices and stuff.

But hey- I’m not complaining. It’s just more blog fodder for me!

Kit Kat Honeycomb

Hey, they even come with the ingredients listed so I don’t have to type it up. How’s that for convenience?

The Kit Kat Honeycomb is pretty nice. The fact that it’s “shattered honeycomb” makes the taste not so overpowering as it might be if it were a solid hunk of honeycomb like in a Violet Crumble or something. I rate it three and a half out of four Kit Kat fingers.

Kit Kat Cookie Dough

Of all the new flavours, this one should have been the stand-out. It should have been like Michael Jackson to Jermaine, Tito, and the rest (yes, I can name all the Jackson brothers and sisters, but I want to make it appear that I’m all devil-may-care).

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t live up to the awesomeness that the words ‘cookie’ and ’dough’ are usually synonymous with. The cookie dough flavour kind of gets lost amongst the caramel and chocolate. I don’t know why they even included the caramel. What, Nestle, cookie dough isn’t enough of a flavour by itself? Has to have its hand held by caramel? Huh? Cookie dough is a taste sensation, okay, and you have to respect that. One finger out of four.

I’ve probably blogged about my birthday enough already, but I couldn’t let another week go by without blogging about one of the coolest presents I received- the 15″ Stay Puft Marshmallow Man figure from Ghostbusters. Check him out in all his fluffety, puffety glory:

That is one awesome chunk of plastic. There’s a bit of a backstory behind me and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but I’ll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say that this was a heartfelt and much appreciated gift.

To the intense discomfort of my guests, no sooner had we finished eating and caking than I whipped Stay Puft ‘out the box’ (as the rappers say) and started making a photocomic (or a “fumetti”, as we comics nerds call them).

For your entertainment and edification, I present the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Spider-Man, and the Konami Code in…

PIZZA GLUT!
(You’ll probably want to enlarge the pics to read the word balloons.) 

Less than half an hour later…

I love happy endings.

As promised in an earlier post, here’s the photo my step-dad took when he and mum ambushed surprised me on my birthday.

Click to enlarge.

I went to Safeway today to pick up the three new Kit-Kat Chunky flavours that I alluded to recently. In true Geelong fashion, though, the store I went to didn’t have them. A fucking Foodworks in Melbourne had them, but Safeway in Geelong didn’t. It’s Sleepy Hollow, alright.

Before I got too unreasonably pissed off, however, I noticed not one but three other limited edition chocolate bars on the shelves. Naturally I picked them up for blog fodder.

From the top, and very nicely arranged in order of size (looks like a pyramid!), we have Mars Triple Chocolate Hit, Twix Mint Slice, and Picnic Hedgehog.

Now let’s strip ‘em down and humiliate ‘em.

Mars Triple Chocolate Hit.

Not much different to a regular Mars Bar, here. The wrapper proclaims that the ‘triple chocolate hit’ comes from the regular nougat and caramel both being chocolate as well. It didn’t taste much different to a normal Mars to me, but I guess if you’re really into chocolate it’ll be your thing. A Mars a day helps you work, rest, and develop diabetes.

Oh, and I like the drug connotations from the word ‘hit’ as well.

Picnic Hedgehog

This one’s been out for a while, but I’ve never been able to summon up the enthusiasm to try it. That was before the Kit-Kat Disappointment, though. The hedgehog connection comes from the fact that it has chocolate biscuit ball pieces scattered throughout, which kind of get overshadowed by the already incredibly rocky terrain of the Picnic bar. It’d be far more effective, I think, if they took a smooth, wussy chocolate bar like the Mars or the Milky Way and pimped it out hedgehog style. GIVE ME A JOB, CADBURY OR MARS!

Twix Mint Slice

Here’s one that I was really pumped for, but which was ultimately disappointing. Twix doesn’t need me to say anything for it, and I love Mint Slice biscuits (and thanks to the recent outbreak of Mint Slice flavoured ice creams and chocolate balls and whatnot, I think most of Australia agrees with me). The two of them together should be an exercise in awesomeness, right?

Unfortunately, it just wasn’t executed very well. The Mint Slice flavour totally overwhelms the Twix texture and flavour, so what you get is basically a Mint Slice bar. And they’ve tried that before, which makes this bar a complete waste of time and shelf space that COULD BE USED FOR THE NEW KIT-KAT CHUNKY FLAVOURS.

I’m about to go into a sugar coma from all this chocolate, so I’ll catch y’all later.

Remember my post about Kinder Surprise’s Monster Hotel, and my backstory for just why the monsters were hanging out in those digs? Yeah?

Check this out: 

* Hotel Transylvania - 2008

Marks the theatrical debut of longtime TV director/creator Dave Feiss (Ren & Stimpy, Cow & Chicken), where he’s joined by Stacchi. The film proposes that the classic movie monsters of the past have gone into hiding from humanity in a properly dilapidated old hotel. Their security becomes threatened when the hotel’s owner passes away and the heir comes to stake his claim. No voice cast has been announced.

From Newsarama’s “Animated Shorts” column.

I’m a prophet, man. A prophet.

Well, it’s been and gone. My 21st birthday.

There’s this great significance to the age that I just don’t understand. It’s a cultural artifact of 21 being the Age of Majority back in the olden days. I think that if we’re going to celebrate anything, it should be 20. We do work on a decimal system, after all.

Anyway, what was going to be a glum, lonely day here up in Melbourne turned into a surprisingly enjoyable one. When I came back to my room after my shower in the morning, my mum and step-dad were waiting there in the darkess, which scared the absolute shit out of me. They took a photo of it too, which I’ll post as soon as I get a copy. There’s a look of pure terror on my face, straight out of a 50’s B-Movie. (They’d talked the landlord in his shop downstairs into letting them up into my room.)

For presents I got The Chipmunk Adventure on DVD, a hoody (love my hoodies), and a digital video camera. The most heartfelt present was the DVD. The Chipmunk Adventure was my brother’s and my favourite movie when we were little. We had it on VHS, and used to watch it incessantly. That was until my mum’s deadbeat boyfriend of the time taped over it. It was something of a tragedy, because the movie wasn’t really available anymore. Secretly, though, I think mum was glad that she didn’t have to put up with “Wee are the boooyz of rock and rooooooollll-uh!” and “Wooly Bully” twenty times a day.

After that they took me out for lunch. We were originally going to go to a cafe, but Ron suggested we should hit McDonald’s for a couple of El Macos. Family joke: I always have Mexican food on my birthday. He probably wasn’t serious, but I was like ’shit yeah’, and so we drove up and down Rathdown and Nicholson Sts looking for a McD’s. Eventually we found one in bloody Coburg or something. It was the worst McDonald’s ever: icy thickshake with no flavour, fries that managed to be both burnt and stone cold at the same time, and the burger had that dark-yellow cheese which is always a telltale sign of any McDonald’s Family Restaurant’s quality.

Later in the day, after I’d been to class and was at home making a simple dinner (cheese and salami toasties- the best!) and pondering how I’m gonna rock YouTube with my new camera, dad rang and asked what I was up to. I told him, and he told me to ’chuck the toasties in the bin. I’ll be over in half an hour and we’ll go out for dinner’. Well, I wasn’t about to let good food go to waste (cheap student here!), so I put them in the fridge for breakfast.

Dad and I had a few beers at the North Fitzroy Star before heading to The Empress (his wife’s mum’s pub) for a meal. It was the first time I’d been to the Star. Pretty nice ambience as they say, but maybe a bit pretentious for me. I prefer a dark, grungy pub (like The Empress), although even that involves some measure of pretention these days. Fuck, I’m such a misanthrope.

I had a nice talk with dad, and I think for the first time ever I actually told him what I want to do with my life (which is write, as long-time Daniel85 readers will know). I’ve always kind of dodged the issues of career and ambitions with dad, and I guess part of that is being so indecisive and unsure myself of what I want.

Anyway, dad gave me carte blanche in deciding what my birthday present from him and Michelle would be. I immediately thought “Back To The Future and Indiana Jones trilogy boxsets”, but that’s not really a 21st present, is it?

Thanks for reading, and again to the people who wished me a good one.

Thanks also to the good people at Nestlé who, I only found out yesterday, have released three new limited edition flavours of Kit-Kat Chunky. I can only imagine that some Nestlé exec was like “Crap! It’s Danie85’s birthday! What do we have in R&D? Anything? Just release whatever we’ve got in R&D!” There hasn’t been much on the food & drink front lately, so I’ll definitely be reviewing all three of these fuckers.

Oh, and I have a new article up at Retro Junk: http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/898/. It’s a review of a charity fundraising comic starring the X-Men in a fight against African famine, released in 1985. In true Daniel85 can’t-keep-the-focus style, I also use it to talk about 80s music and 80s society. Check it out.

It’s time once again for me to fall back on a Daniel85 standby; Spider-Man panels! Rrrraaaaahhhhh! (That’s supposed to be the crowd noise from, oh, pretty much any NES sports game.) This one also features that other constant of the Daniel85 universe, McDonald’s Family Restaurants. (Yeah, the full name. I’m bringing it back. Get on board.)

I should probably just bite the bullet and add “Mcdonald’s” and “Spider-Man” as post categories, cos I pretty much write about them 95% of the time.

Today’s selection comes from Amazing Spider-Man #141, back in the Gerry Conway/Ross Andru days. I seriously do not remember what was going on in this issue. I found this scan on my computer, so it must have tickled my fancy back when I was reading those issues.

Reading through a long run of comics is a bit like watching an entire TV series on DVD, rather than at the whim of the networks: all the episodes/issues tend to blend together, and it’s hard to really enjoy or remember them. Too much of a good thing? A side-effect of the TV-on-DVD age, I guess.

Anyway, the context doesn’t really matter, cos this little sequence just plain kizzicks assiz. Err, izzass. Just how do you render ‘ass’ in “fo’ shizzle speak”? I think I’ll stick with ‘izzass’, cos I don’t really want a couple of ASIO agents rocking up on my doorstep to talk with me about consorting with terrorists. Oh yeah, I went there. Coming up next: jokes about Michael Jackon’s nose and the banana shortage in Australia! 

(Click to enlarge if you can’t read it. Or get glasses, but if you’re using a computer you probably already have them. Nerd.)

So Spidey can’t go into McDonald’s, cos everyone would, like, totally freak. I’m inclined to think that most people would probably just think it was an in-store appearance. Hell, I’d play it like that. Ya know, do a couple of random poses, ruffle a couple of kids’ hair. The chicks behind the counter would probably be so confused that they might even give him a free meal if he asked.

There’s an interesting contradiction here. Spidey doesn’t want to cause a riot in the restaurant, but he’s okay with STEALING A GUY’S MCDONALD’S?! See, this is what people mean when they talk about all the deep ethics and morality and ’shades of grey’ in Marvel Comics. It’s not Frank Castle and his fight-fire-with-fire crusade. It’s not even about ‘The Hulk: did he or didn’t he?’ (ever kill an innocent). It’s about stealing. A guy’s McDonald’s.

With great power comes great responsibility*.

*Exception: great taste.

Earlier this afternoon I was coming home from uni on the tram down Swanston, and I saw Jamie from Big Brother strolling past RMIT. I don’t know what I’m more ashamed of; that I recognised a Big Brother contestant by sight and name, or that I was excited enough about it write a blog entry. Suggestions welcome.

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a legit celebrity in public. I have seen Lee Troop out on the piss in Geelong about a hundred times, but is he really a celebrity?

I don’t really have much to write about at the moment (that’s never stopped me before, I know), so I thought I’d do a little tribute to one of my favourite chocolate bars, the Cadbury Curly Wurly.

I like the simple, effective design of the wrapper. It’s pretty much as I remember it from when I was a kid, although I think it has had a bit of an update-on-the-sly in the intervening years. The typography and the curly guy just look a little bit too clean-cut to have remained unchanged since the early 90s.

The best thing about the Curly Wurly is that it’s so damn cheap. They don’t go for any more than 60 cents these days, and I seem to remember them being as cheap as 35 or 40 cents when I was a kid. When you hold that up against the similarly priced Milky Way, what are kids gonna go for? The Curly Wurly looks like three times as big! Plus, you could buy three of these for the same price as a Mars Bar or a Snickers. There’s a certain appeal to a kid in carrying around a fistful of individually wrapped chocolate bars. Quantity over quality.

Of course, the Curly Wurly is pretty light and that lattice effect means that you’re paying for empty holes in your chocolate.

You do get some decent mileage from the Curly Wurly, because it’s incredibly chewy. You practically have to be one of those snakes that can unhinge its jaw to get one of these down. I ate this one like twenty minutes ago and I’m still feeling it. 

One of the things I liked about the Curly Wurly as a kid was that when you bent it, the chocolate kind of flaked off the caramel. Dunno why that was so appealing to me, but hey- I was the kind of kid who liked to get sunburnt because peeling the skin off is fun.

Yes sir, the Cadbury Curly Wurly is one fine chocolate bar. Probably the only other bar that could give it a run for its money is the Chomp, but that’s a blog entry for another day…

… I submit the greatest picture in human artistic history, since the first caveman drew a dick and some boobs on a cave wall for kicks:

The only way that could be any more 80s is if Eddie Murphy was to E.T’s left, and Mr. T was standing behind them with his hands on his hips, looking all menacing.

That’s from The E.T. Storybook, by the way, a fabled collector’s item which comes with a record (those big, black things that look like CDs) of Michael Jackson reading the story. I’ve yet to get my hands on a copy, but I just have to believe that the signal to turn a page is not a chime or a twinkle like other books-on-tape, but one of Michael’s trademark ‘hoooo’ cries.

Seriously, though- that twinkly chime sound is the stuff childhoods are made of.