Count Chocula Treats!
Hey, have you been keeping up with the Creepy Commercials Countdown? You probably should. Clarence Clemons is there. Now here’s Count Chocula:
I saw them in Target, and I flipped. They were on a rack right by the registers, but one of the store employees, who I guess had assumed the role of “greeter,” stood right in front of them. I really didn’t want to be the weirdo who asks people to move so he can get at chocolate bars, so I scoped out Target’s entire Halloween section and every food aisle, hoping to find more.
No luck.
Back I went, to the front of the store. The greeter girl was still there. Damn.
With a gulp, I approached. My mind flooded with silent prayer. “Please don’t think I’m coming to ask you a question, please don’t think I’m coming to ask you a question.”
But of course she did. “Welcome to Target! What I can help you with?”
There was no way out. My impulse was to just make something up. Maybe I’d ask her where the paper towels were. It sounded like a reasonable question. Anything to get out of saying what needed to be said.
For once, I manned up. Had to. Target was about to close, and I didn’t make that five minute drive to go home a failure.
“Actually, I just need to…”
That’s all I got out. Then I started twirling around her, using my big ape arm to swipe Count Chocula Treats from the display she so accidentally protected.
“Oh, I’m sorry – I’m in your way!”
With the grade school snacks now safely in hand, I calmly addressed my jubilant, red-shirted obstacle.
“No no no, I’m not, I was just.”
It was already an awkward moment, but “no no no, I’m not, I was just” put it over the edge. I don’t even know what I was trying to say, there. It just came out. I’d become the low-rent version of Serene Branson.
I scurried away, presumably to the pitying glances of everyone in the store. But at least I had Count Chocula Treats.
The box boasted of “spooky-fun marshmallows,” but they didn’t look too spooky to me. I’m willing to forgive this, since they’re still the most decadent logs I’ve ever seen.
It’s as if they gathered fourteen really good types of chocolate, and convinced them that they’d be unstoppable as a unit. There are drips, there are drizzles, there are hard chunks, there are soft chunks. Then, the marshmallows. They aren’t shaped like ghosts, but they’re still marshmallows. These bars are pure, concentrated dessert. At each treat’s core is a mutant black hole, capable only of sucking really delicious things inward.
If not for the wrappers, you’d never guess that they were Count Chocula’s. They’re more like inverted s’mores bars. Not sure what that means, but it sounds okay.
My only complaint is that the package lifts the same general design from the current crop of Count Chocula cereal boxes. This year, we did not get a great version of the Count. He looks too old, too female, and too much like a chipmunk/eagle hybrid. That would usually be okay, but this is Count Chocula.
Still, they’re delicious, and they’re covered in lots of lots of chips. Considering how Franken and Boo Berry already got their extra oomph from Fruit Roll-Ups and such, it’s only fair that Count Chocula get his own side attraction, too. So, this is it. Chocolate cereal chocolate bars, covered in chocolate. Alleluia.
