Erik Eats Cereal: Corn Pops

One of the ad campaigns I remember the most growing up was for the cereal Corn Pops.  It followed the same basic formula of- well, let's let The West Wing and Psych's Dule Hill explain it to us:

Something gets between young person and cereal, kid starts to suffer a full mental breakdown because apparently Corn Pops are laced with opiates and withdrawal is a horrible thing to see someone go through.  Situation winds up being resolved casually, and kid acts like it was no big deal.

Repeat that same formula for years with the same theme music from Jaws, and you've summarized every Kellogg's board meeting involving the cereal during that time period.

Some of them got a bit creepy, though.

I'm pretty sure that mother arrived seconds before he beat that little girl to death with a grapefruit.  Maybe it's the crazed look in his eye, maybe the way he just casually asks "Where's Mom?" while reaching for the largest blunt object on the counter, I don't know, it just feels like it was seconds away from being a Dateline episode.

I've had Corn Pops twice in the past few weeks, once just yesterday, and here's my summary of the flavor:

It tastes ridiculously sweet, with a faint popcorn like flavor buried underneath it all.

That's it.  I had to struggle to remember that much, because there really isn't anything innovative or unusual about the flavor.  It didn't offend me, it didn't astound me, it just felt completely safe and inoffensive.  That's not necessarily bad, and it might've worked when I was young, but for an adult palate I want something that interests me.  The taste of honey, or a touch of cocoa, those are flavors that are interesting.  Feeling like I just poured milk over popcorn doesn't really feel like breakfast to me, it feels like something I'd eat when I was broke and had to scrounge what food was left in the pantry and fridge.  Even then, I'd probably eat the popcorn and drink the milk.

Before anybody assumes that I just want to rag on every cereal I taste, I'll point out that I actually liked Cocoa Puffs, and there's one more coming up next week that I actually thought was really interesting.  This one just... it just doesn't stick with me or make me crave more.

Oh, and it seemed to get soggy ridiculously fast when I poured milk over it each time.  I'm guessing the cereal is 40% sugar, 20% corn, and 40% air.

So I guess if I had to rank it from one to ten, I'd give Corn Pops a five.  It's dead middle of the road, not strong either way.

Ask Erik: Episode Forty-Six

Here at Ask Erik we've spent a lot of time reading novels and comic books, playing video games, and watching television and movies in order to amass a deep vault of pop culture knowledge.  While constantly trying to still gather new information, it seems only prudent to share some of what we learned to help solve some of the world's greatest questions.

Will the next Olympics be any riskier or somehow safer than ones in large cities?  Do actors who are typecast for "bad guy" roles ever feel insulted by it?  Why can't people I know figure out that just because someone links to something on Facebook it doesn't mean it happened recently?  That girl accused of witchcraft in Oklahoma was in 2000, people, read the article!

...where was I?  Oh, right.  Once a week Erik tackles a question asked to him and tries to answer it in a method that handles the topic with the respect and attention it deserves.  Failing that, he'll at least try to make it funny so you don't regret the time spent reading it.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

The Uncharted series falls in with the Halo series, the Gears of War series, and other games from the past generation of systems that aren't likely to die any time soon.  Each game has received mountains of accolades, and multiple sources have named various entries in the series as the "Game of the Year" for that year.  However, as we all know, I'm terribly behind when it comes to "big" titles, but having played more recent games from Naughty Dog studios, will these hold up to my eye?  Can they tolerate being overthought about?  Was that last sentence even grammatically correct?  At least two of these questions will hopefully be answered in the upcoming weeks.

So let's start out with the first game of the series, the rookie entry that managed to be picked as Ign's game of the year of 2007 for the PS3 and maintains a score on Metacritic in the high 80s.

The "M" Stands For Mighty Part Eleven

Looking back at my youth, I wasn't nearly as spoiled for entertainment options as kids these days.  I couldn't load up games on a phone, I had a Game Boy and I had to carry around any games I wanted to play in a pouch.  Plus, they didn't cost just a few dollars to own.  I didn't have hundreds of channels to pick and choose entertainment from on giant screens that made movie theater technology of the time seem quaint.

What I did have was what might be the second golden age of cartoons after the days when Disney and Looney Tunes first erupted onto the scene, with such greats as Animaniacs, Duck Tales, Gargoyles, Freakazoid, and any number of other great programs who knew that in order to survive on television you had to be great because there wasn't a minor cable channel you could hide on to maintain a cult following.

One show that I think gets swept under the rug and forgotten about way too much is Mighty Max, which is why I'm doing an ongoing project of reviewing the series and seeing how it holds up.  I'm leery about this one, because cartoon episodes featuring mixing humans and animals almost never turns out well.

Review: Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons

So I guess one advantage to being back in the stage of "trying to get as many job interviews lined up as I can" is that it gives me some down time between emails and calls to catch up on a few things that were always on my "to do" list.

For instance, I kept meaning to play a game from Xbox Live Arcade (though it's also available on PSN and Steam) called Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons, but just never found the time.

Well, that's one thing off the list.

Now, let's talk about an early contender for my top eleven of 2014 and the first week isn't even over yet.

Erik Eats Cereal: Trix (With Fruitalicious Swirls!)

First off, a bonus point to Trix for not trying to get away with something like "Frootalicious."

Minus one point because "Fruitalicious" is still a stupid word.

I'm almost sure that Trix came about because a random cocoa puff tried to mate with a froot loop, and this was the result.  It has the same lightness and shape of the cocoa puff, but the coloring is clearly from something that tries to get away with its own spelling.

Funny how two bird mascots would wind up producing a rabbit, though.

So let's get down to the review.

Top Eleven: Top Eleven Of 2013

So yesterday I decided to revisit the source of most of the pain I felt doing this blog and look at the eleven worst things I had to deal with.  So let's turn it around for the eleven things I enjoyed reviewing, discussing, or simply prompting like an unpaid advertiser in the year 2013.