Every once in a while, Mary and I crave cereal.
We don’t want it for breakfast and we don’t keep it in the cupboard – we just occasionally have the desire to pig out on it while watching the ID Channel.
Last week, she decided she wanted Life while I always choose Cap’n Crunch. She has several different cereals in her rotation but not me; as far as I’m concerned, Cap’n Crunch is the only cereal.
There has never been a better blend of corn flour, sugar, oat flour, brown sugar, palm and/or coconut oil, salt, reduced iron, yellow 5, niacinamide, zinc oxide, yellow 6, thiamin mononitrate, BHT, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, and folic acid.
I started eating it as a kid to get a sugar-jolt start to my day, and immediately fell in love with its golden crunchiness. Plus, Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch always seemed quite friendly and accessible.
(Yes, that’s his full name and the ship under his command in the S.S. Guppy. Many people confuse it with the S.S. Minnow, but that was the ship carrying Gilligan, the skipper, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann and which is a crown on the shore of an uncharted desert isle. To the best of my knowledge, the S.S. Guppy was always incident-free and is currently docked where the rich Quaker Oats people keep their yachts).
Anyway, I decided to hop in the car head to the local supermarket so we would have something to gnosh on while watching another life-affirming episode of “Evil Lives Here.”
Once I arrived at the store I went straight to the cereal aisle and had no trouble finding a box of Life.
What I had did have trouble finding, however, was Cap’n Crunch.
Let me clarify this.
What I had trouble finding was original Cap’n Crunch.
You know why?
Because apparently the Cap’n has expanded his fleet.
There is Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Oops! All Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch, and Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch.
What the hell?
I looked and looked and looked and couldn’t find just plain ol’ Cap’n Crunch.
There were what seemed like 500 boxes of Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, but that’s not what I wanted. I like peanut butter, but I don’t want it to crunch under any circumstances.
Something with “butter” in its name should never crunch.
Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries looks like some Fruit Loops escaped and joined the Federal Breakfast Food Protection Program in hopes of blending in with regular Cap’n Crunch.
It didn’t work.
Cap’n Crunch’s Oops! All Berries? Nope.
It’s just all berries with no Cap’n Crunch in sight. It’s kinda like when you see a famous band playing at a state fair but the band doesn’t have any of the original members anymore.
Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch, frankly, just seems ridiculous.
If I want a doughnut, I’m going to Krispy Kreme.
And finally, there’s Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch.
Again, pancakes are sacred and should be treated as such.
As for original Cap’n Crunch, why on earth would you mess with perfection?
All it needs is milk (in my case, soy milk). Actually, it doesn’t even need that. You can rip open the box and eat it like a savage and I won’t judge you. I’ve done it before and I might do it again.
As far as you know, I’m doing it right now.
But being the flagship franchise, it should always be front and center. Instead, I had to root around all the other “specialty” Cap’n Crunch cereals before I finally found a box of the good stuff, where the man himself is saluting in one hand and holding out a cereal-filled spoon in the other – a spoon full of sugary joy.
In summation, I have nothing against those of you who buy and consume Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Butter Crunch, Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Oops! All Berries, Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch, and Cap’n Crunch’s Blueberry Pancake Crunch.
That is your right.
However, you’re wrong.
There is no substitute for Cap’n Crunch which – to me – is the one and only.