I had grand designs of writing something truly meaningful, helpful nad uplifting today but it’s Friday and my workday has been shitty enough to dash those hopes.

Instead I’ll fuel with sugar-coating your inner Saturday-morning-cartoon-watching cereal fiend by naming Cap’n Crunch: Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch

[Via Kottke]

MeFi covered the news and user-updated data stores Wikipedia and Everything2 jumped on the bandwagon.

Me, I’m just using this post as an excuse to lament the breakfast cereal toys of my youth.

During the mid-80’s I sent away for a glow-in-the-dark “Soggy”:

The Soggies, Sydney and Sydney, were some rough customers that the Cap’n and his doughty crew met in the late 80s. The soggies are weird milky-looking, vaguely-polymorphic fellows whose very being was dedicated to a single goal–making cereal soggy. This pathetic existence reminds one of the Cavity Creeps of Toothopolis (so brilliantly dramatized in the classic Crest Toothpaste ads), and it may be theorized that the Soggies are related, at least in spirit, to those creepy characters.

Sydney and Sydney were the pawns of Squish the Sogmaster, a wicked robot who got his kicks by spoiling kids’ breakfasts. To this end, the Soggies travelled around, searching for small children who enjoy crunchy cereal. Then, they would leap into the cereal bowl and squish up the cereal. A fiendish plan, indeed.

I think this was during the time when sugar cereals were routinely giving away large sums of cash or “toy runs” through Toys R Us stores. Either way, I sent in my gamepiece, proof of purchase, UPC and boxtop (no doubt to Young America, MN) and waited to win. I got a crappy piece of plastic instead.

I was always a big fan of Crunchberries and a hater of Peanut Butter Crunch, but nothing beats the original with it’s faux treasure chest pieces, hewn to ensure maximum oral damage.

I didn’t realize until I was an adult that he was a “Cap’n” and not a “Captain” but maybe that’s just Jay Ward and Daws Butler clouding my brain. They did an amazing job and it still ranks as the only sweetened cereal I’ll still seek out to eat. John K reaches for some of their styling and zaniness in some of his work (and the stuff he pitches) but The Cap’n is still the best.

Happy Friday