Fruit Brute it ain't.

Just a quick one tonight, long, long day. My head is fudge and I spent the day repeating myself.

So Mr.Moonbird is a mascot of sorts for Sugar Jets Cereal. A late 50's General Mills cereal that hung around till the mid 60's. It was one of those puffed rice types dipped in sugar. I was just at the grocery store and bought some Lucky Charms in an attempt to buy the sugary-ist stuff I could find. I wonder how the ingredients compare? Me thinks Sugar Jets were heavy on the syrup.

So, other mascots for this delightful food were Johnny Jet (yeah) and Googol the Alien. Of course the responsible sobering adult figure is some guy named Major Jet the Space Pilot.

Let me think here, was marketing (again) on a word budget? Couldn't the major have a lousy name even? Ted would have worked, only 3 letters.

Doesn't sound very good in the bowl . . .

The 60's saw the release by General Mills of Clackers, a breakfast cereal that was a spoon size gear shape with a hole in the middle. Supposedly it was graham cracker flavoured also, but not surprisingly, it was on the sweet side. For the first 2 reasons alone I could get into this cereal. Graham flavoured car parts, sounds delicious.

Now any poking around on the Internet I did mainly turned up the above brief description and then alot of moaning about their goofy TV ad's. Seems the script for every ad was pretty much a cliche scene with the obvious being replaced by a box of Clackers. Don't see what's so irritating about that. Sounds like any reality show really.

They had nifty toys in each box though. Like Wacky Racers (a la Penelope Pitstop and Compact Pussycat), or the Clacker Quacker, a particularly annoying plastic flute thing.

Tomorrow we will lift the lid on the Sugar Jets and Mr. Moonbird. Seriously.

3 Muskateers

I was gently reminded by a reader to cough up the names of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch bakers. Wendell, Bob and Quello.

Really big shoe, really big . . .

Seems like January 27th was a big day in history, so big in fact, I gotta write about it. So, let's get going.

Lessee, first we have on this day in 1948, Wire Recording Corporation of America came up with the first magnetic wire recorder called the Wireway.

1926 saw that wiley Scotsman, John Logie Baird, demonstrate the first television. First golf, now this. Shudder.

In 1964 DuPont invented Corfam. Don't remember? Neither does ANYONE else. It was fake leather. Good business move in a world awash with the real item. And the name, Corfam, c'mon.

That scallywag, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was born this day in 1832. Better known as Lewis Carroll. Mathematician, and yes, writer.

And who can forget that in on January 27 1918, the Finnish civil war started?

And that really cool plane above, that's a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, first flown on this day in 1939.

Curse you Red Baron

So here's where you get the idea that the marketing department live in a camper in the parking lot out by the back gate. Anyways, today's cereal of note is something called Baron Von Redberry, a General Mills offering from 1972.

The idea was to make taste like fruit punch and quite possibly look like it too. Sorry, I was never lucky enough to have generous enough parents to actually pony up for a box of this stuff.

It was an oat-ish cereal with flavoured dried marshmallow fruit things (my favourite cereal add 0n by the way). people who have tried these cereals claim they had a strong fake fruit smell to them in the bowl. But hey, the weird marshmallows dyed the milk red!

If you are curious, the Baron had enemies. His name was Sir Grapefellow and he touted essentially the same damn cereal except it was grape flavoured. Now that sounds harsh. But again, you get nifty purple milk.

No doubt they were aimed at Post's Frankenberry and Count Chockula. What a war!

Hey, do you know the names of the three bakers from Cinnamon Toast Crunch? Come by tomorrow and I'll tell you.

"Pim! Pum! Pam!"

This post begins a series on that morning favourite, cereal. I was originally going to go with a general run up to modern times like I usually do, but became totally locked on the history of Rice Krispies. That gave me the idea to pick a few good looking cereals and go find out what's up with them.

In digging into the background of this food there sure are some damn weird varieties out there. And some pretty messed up ideas (the part I like) of what some crazy ass marketing department thought we'd like to eat.

So, Rice Krispies. Brought by Kellogg's in 1928, they have remained virtually unchanged for over 80 years. Breakfast cereals came from a more scientific background (more on that in a later post), but Krispies were conceived to be just plain fun and yummy, and they're called Rice Bubbles in Australia, hilarious.

Not all was a good time for the Rice Krispie. The banana flavoured version, Banana Krispie's (or Banana Bubbles) didn't fly and was let go in the 90's after a short run. Razzle Dazzle Rice Krispies was another early 90's flop. They were apparently sugar coated. That had to be hard to do, and they must have been sweet. That's OK though. There is a multi grain (!) version sold in the UK.

And, oh yeah, today's blog title is Snap, Crackle, Pop in Spanish.

Have a nice day.

runs on anything.

Sometime around January 21, 1954, Chrysler introduced an automobile powered by a gas turbine engine. The car was a standard Plymouth sedan of the day with the old engine yanked and the jet engine put in. When an engine like this is used, the burning fuel, which causes the turbine to spin, is partially recovered so as not to set fire to things. The cars drive train is connected to above mentioned spinning turbine, thus moving it about.

The idea of harnessing the spinning gas turbines power was very tempting to engineers. All they had to do was get the rotating turbine down to car size and deal with the 1700 degrees F exhaust.

Chrysler's little Plymouth came out with little fanfare. The following year saw the machine embark on a cross country trip to promote the technology and give the thing a good shakedown.

The company was serious about giving it a go. The original 1954 power plant was redesigned many times and by the early 60's they had got the kinks worked out. In 1961 they unveiled the Turboflite, a futuristic model with amazingly up to date lines (for 2009!). It had a very Japanese tuner styled spoiler and a molded roof/cabin they gave it a mean, aggressive look. They never built any though.

It took a shakeup at Chrysler and the hiring of Ford's old designer, Elwood P. Engel to move the project into near reality. With his design skill and the Ghia automobile plant in Turin Italy, they produced a new, half decent looking car that they were to take on the road for an extended real world test starting in 1963. Why the Christ they had to build the thing in Italy is beyond me. You'd think they had a spare Assembly line stateside.

The program limped along through the 60's and 70's with various body designs, including an early version of the Dodge Charger, but the company opted for a conventional power plant.

GM had it's hand in gas turbine powered cars too with 3 different Firebirds. The series were show cars developed for the Motorama Auto shows and were featured in the 1953, 56 and 59 shows. The brainchild of Harley Earl, the vehicles were definitely not dumpy sedans. In fact the first one, built in 1953, looked like a jet on a wheeled dolly. The 2 other prototypes were super slick looking too, but they at least looked more like a car.

The 1956 and 59 models had titanium bodies, disc brakes and a rudimentary guidance system that allowed the car to follow wires embedded in the street.

That's the Firebird on the left.

We'll see what 2009 brings to these 2 companies, hmmm?