The Cracker Jack of Disappointment
I was once being interviewed and I was asked what my biggest disappointment in life had been. I thought for a moment and then it came to me and I said, “It was the first time I tried Asti Spumante.” For those unfamiliar that is a sweet white sparkling wine made from fragrant Muscat grapes, often served as an apéritif or dessert wine.
I guess I’ve lived a charmed life if that is how I rank my disappointments. With this in mind I think I have to confess to a new disappointment. This would be Cracker Jacks. I recently purchased a small 1 ¼ ounce snack bag and was dismayed through the entire consumption process.
Yes, there is still a prize in every box or bag of Cracker Jacks, but I suppose due to the choking hazard the prizes have been reduced to prizes printed on paper. They don’t even have those cool tattoos that they used to have where you wet your skin and place the paper tattoo on your wet skin and the image would come off the paper onto your arm.
The caramel coated popcorn was fine, but they were not the large popped corn I remembered from the past. The disappointment was the nuts. Now peanuts are less expensive than dirt, but somehow they have now resorted to using the smallest nuts they could possibly find. The nuts were absolutely bitter and there were only nine and one half nuts in the bag…and they were barely coated.
Frito Lay has really dropped the ball on this product. I wouldn’t be surprised to one day see a tear in the eye of Sailor Jack and Bingo over the misrepresentation and treatment of a product that has been a national snack since forever.
I really hope that Frito Lay has blog spies out there and will render a comment here. My disappointment is vast. Yes, I am that shallow.
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 5:46 AM
6 Comments:
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Personally, I never understood the hype about Cracker Jacks. I just never liked them. In fact, I usually threw it to the squirrels.
Hmmmmm. Maybe THAT's why I'm a crazy animal magnet?
btw - Shouldn't they change the name? Isn't "Cracker" a racist term?
I too have also been disappointed by asti spumante. I prefer Prosecco; much dryer less sweet. I love bubbles in my wine though.
I also dislike Cracker Jacks. I liked them as a kid only to realize they are terrible. I must have had terrible taste as a kid. Now I only eat Moose Munch from Harry & David or now known as Bear Creek.
Try it; its awesome!!
You've fallen prey to the new version of 'China' syndrome. What they now use are called in Asia 'ground-nuts', and, although a kin of our familiar peanut in the US, they have a distinct bitterness to them. They're also much, much cheaper than dirt as they grow in larger quantities per hectare than US nuts.
When I lived in Asia for a coupla decades, I learned very quickly to avoid them and search for either African or American peanuts.
For as long as I can remember, people have pluralized the name of this product. The snack is actually called Cracker Jack (singular) as it's referred to in song. "Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack..."
Walt, Something tells me you've been called a cracker before.
Chantel, maybe we had more refined taste buds when we were children and we've now lost it due to all the stuff we've done to our taste buds over the years.
Mike, those dirty rat bastards are trying to poison us again. I've written about this before. I never knew of ground nuts. Rat bastards all of them. Thanks for the lesson.
Crowbar, you are correct, and another one is Smokey Bear, not Smokey the Bear.
Shallow? Maybe...
(About Cracker Jacks.)
Amusing? Very much so.
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