Food – Retro

You’ve all heard of Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry. The “Monster Cereals.” Many of us grew up on them. Those who didn’t can at least count on ‘em to turn up every Halloween season, in progressively smaller boxes at progressively higher prices. But among the trio’s f

It’s time for the second edition of The Popsicle Parade! In Part 1, I beat you over the head with ten different historically significant desserts. This time, I’ll be gentler to us both and only cover five. Moving forward with #11-15! #11: Screwball! If you’ve never heard of this, you

Surely you remember Cinn*A*Burst! The legendary gum was Warner-Lambert’s attempt to do battle with Wrigley’s Big Red. How on Earth did they lose that war?! Cinn*A*Burst hit the scene in September of 1991, just as I was entering the seventh grade. I hated all of middle school, but the s

New video! Back in 1994, Wrigley teamed up with Sega to bring us SONIC THE HEDGEHOG LIFE SAVERS. There were two types. “Blue Rad” was a tongue-coloring raspberry flavor, while “Hot Rings” was a spicy beast that I actually still had a pack of. This is their story, complete with a Ho

With summer just over a month away, I’m only a little early in launching Dino Drac’s latest recurring feature. Introducing The Popsicle Parade, a multi-part series celebrating dozens of the wonderful things we used to buy from ice cream trucks! There’s a certain “artistry” to pop

If what we ate had no consequences, I’d live on Chicken McNuggets. Yeah, I’ve seen the photo of that pinkish, chemical-soaked goo they’re made from. I don’t care. In this fantasy, there are no consequences. Chicken McNuggets debuted in 1983. By the time I was consciously aware of w

Back in 1992, the weirdly named “Street Kids” company sought to capitalize on Batman’s box office successes with TORTILLA CHIPS SHAPED LIKE HIS LOGO. Street Kids already had major product tie-in successes with the first Batman flick, but the chips coincided with Batman Returns – ea

Guys, I made you lunch. You better eat it. It’s a sin to waste food. See that? It’s a Kraft “Singlestamp” cheese cutter, with a Cheesasaurus Rex theme. If you’ll recall, Cheesasaurus Rex was Kraft’s beloved Macaroni & Cheese mascot back in the ‘90s. He was big, he was

It sounded so easy, but nothing ever is. I’d been waiting for the right moment to make use of this, and last night seemed like it. Released in 1999, it’s Wilton’s “MEGASAURUS” cake pan! I was drawn to it for obvious reasons, but that won’t keep me from naming them anyway. One,

I’d been staring at a blank Word document for more than fifteen minutes, too crippled with anxiety to begin this review. The annoying thing was my inability to pinpoint the reason for this anxiety. My deadlines were met, my bills are all paid, and I’m not on fire. Then it hit me. About

Let me get something off my chest. I loved Chips Ahoy cookies as a kid. So much, in fact, that I invented a new way to eat them. I’d chew one cookie into a disgusting paste, and then spread that paste over a fresh one. The result was a Chips Ahoy cookie topped with some

Crazy ’90s Bubble Gum!

Oh yes. These things. Staples of my childhood diet! No kid could resist bubble gum rocks that poured from tiny juice cartons! Made by Topps in the early ‘80s, “juice gum” survived until long after I’d stopped paying attention. For all I know, they’re still out there somewhere. Le

Kids of the ‘60s loved astronauts arguably more than anything else, thanks largely to the Space Race. A quick browse through any photo collection of ‘60s toys will show an unmistakable lean on spacemen and rocket ships, and really, the old cliche of kids “wanting to become astr

A new feature is up, covering ten more old comic book ads. Good ones, too. Everything from Game Genies to Brach’s Rocks. Read it. …or read it after you watch today’s video, in which I examine Popeye Shredded Bubble Gum. Made in 1981 and likely inspired by Big League Chew, Popeye’s

I hadn’t intended for this to become an ’80s week on Dino Drac. It just worked out that way. And now I shall make it official by opening a box of cereal from 1986. I don’t know exactly when Rocky Road Cereal went out of production, but it did, and people miss it. Not all

Nintendo Cereal System, from 1988!

This morning, I dived deep into my collection of ancient recipe books, looking for the kind of snack ideas that no book published after 1975 would dare include. After choosing my “subjects,” it was time to gather the ingredients. Good God, I spent a fortune. I’m not sure what happene

Yes – more Christmas Crunch content! Don’t complain. I have a good reason: This is a sealed box of 1991 Christmas Crunch, with a SURPRISE GIFT BOX glued to the top. What treasures will we find inside? It will only take nine minutes to find out: After filming, I was left with a box

You might think that I’ve exhausted the well of Christmas Crunch posts, but nuh uh. I may have written about that cereal fifty times, but I never told you about the time it came with cake frosting. This super special version of Christmas Crunch came out in 1995, and if not for Coolio, wo

Christmas Crunch may be the most known “holiday edition cereal,” but friends, there are OTHERS. Or at least, there were others. While Cap’n Crunch surfed the red-and-green wave to obscene heights of glory, other cereals tried to do the same. Post’s Pebbles cereals and General M

When you hear “Fruity Pebbles” and “Christmas” mentioned together, it’s usually in reference to that classic commercial – the one where no less than Santa himself persuaded Fred to give Barney cereal. But Post’s Pebbles brands did more Christmasing than that! Look no further

Through crooked senses, “Bigg Mixx” rhymes with “brilliance.” And it should. The cereal was named after its mascot, a beast that was part chicken, part wolf, part moose and part pig. Think Foghorn Leghorn, after a mishap with Seth Brundle’s telepods. I could try to come up wi

Berry Blue Jell-O arrived in 1992, and the fanfare — at least in my imagined version of things — was enormous. Here were raspberries and blueberries, finally putting aside their differences to take over the planet. This was perhaps the first signal of the “blue candy” craze

I didn’t get a chance to post yesterday, duh. Got smacked in the face with several new gigs that required immediate attention, and will continue requiring attention over the next few weeks. I guess this is the part where I remind everyone, but mostly myself, that Dinosaur Dracula is a ho