Dino Drac’s Advent Calendar: 12/4/12.
Well, this is more like it! The roar of the engine meets the roar of the vampiric Tyrannosaur!
Dino Drac is thrilled with his new motorcycle, but I can’t help raining on his parade. “It’s actually more of a dirt bike,” I shout. “Dirt bikes are motorcycles too,” he shouts back. We are at an impasse.
Racing around the Advent Calendar in what he believes are concentric circles but actually aren’t, the constant skidding of rubber tires puts the cardboard ground to the test.
I pleaded with Dino Drac to slow things down. He argued that only top speeds could make his cape flap in the wind, all picturesquely. Apparently, flapping capes are very important to Dinosaur Dracula. The truth is, he never listens to me, and I’d do well to employ reverse psychology.
Best of all, the motorcycle (dirt bike) is red and orange…as are mixtures of blood and cheese…which just happens to be Dino Drac’s 2nd favorite dish. His 1st favorite dish is too disgusting to describe on a site that is otherwise pretty okay for tween readers.
Christmas Cookie Crisp, from 1991!
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 Mills’ Lucky Charms might not be doing it this year, but in the past, they too made dark pacts with Santa. Most of the “big cereals” gave Christmas a shot at least once, so long as it made sense. Sometimes, a “big cereal” gave Christmas a shot even when it made no sense.
Case in point: Christmas Cookie Crisp, from 1991.
Rare during its time and all but forgotten today, I have never once eaten Christmas Cookie Crisp, but I am still IN LOVE WITH IT. Rightly believing that it would take extreme measures to pass Cookie Crisp off as holiday cereal, Ralston went incredibly over the top. This wasn’t a measured bet. Ralston put it all on the line, and they used enough red food dye to mimic 100% of the bloodshed from both world wars.
Before we talk about the cereal, consider its box. It’s a tricky box. If you look at it too quickly, you might not notice its many justifications for acoustic tribute songs.
Let’s start with the logo. The “Christmas” part makes it seem like Ralston was aiming for old-fashioned sincerity, but the “Cookie Crisp” part throws a serious wrench into the works. I guess they were trying to convey candy and icing, but by using two shades of green, it comes off more like slime, as if this was a Halloween version of Cookie Crisp, masquerading as a Christmas thing for reasons we don’t want to know.
Then, there’s the trio of characters. Officer Crumb, the Cookie Crook and Chip the Dog. I love how they maintained the illusion of strife even when it was so obvious that all three were friends, because come on, only friends would conspire to don equally accentuating Christmas costumes.
It doesn’t end there. Check out that cereal bowl. Not what it’s in it, because we’ll get to THAT in a minute. I mean the bowl itself. There’s a goddamned ribbon tied around it. And wait, what’s that? Look closer! The whole bowl is actually in some kind of miniature sleigh!
“Boring white box?” My ass. If Ralston was guilty of anything, it was a poor sense of arrangement. Read More…
Dino Drac’s Advent Calendar: 12/3/12.
Dino Drac isn’t thrilled with today’s device and map. For one thing, he has no idea what the map represents. It says nothing on it, and seems to only detail a thirty foot area consisting of a bridge and a bonfire. What is he supposed to do with a map like this?
The device is even more troubling. I call it a “device” because God only knows what task it’s intended to perform. Dino Drac enjoys pushing the illuminated buttons, but it’d be way more rewarding if they caused any perceptible action. I suppose some garage door fifty miles away could be crashing up and down, but it’s a reach.
42″ Dinosaur Dracula, Christmas Edition.
Thank you, Home Depot. Thank you for selling an animated holiday Tyrannosaur.
One devil medallion and a cut-up t-shirt later, and I’m now the proud owner of a 42” Dinosaur Dracula, Christmas edition.
Life is weird, and good.
Mad, hysterical love to the few of you who tipped me off. And to the guy at Home Depot who so generously offered to climb up a giant orange ladder so I could buy the store display version. (They were otherwise sold out.) Best $65 bucks I ever spent.