Barbara's Bakery Fruity Punch

As a wheat free/dairy free alternative to Trix or Froot Loops, Fruity Punch is a small victory for the organic cereal world, unambiguously refuting the idea that organic cereals can't be "normal" or "tasty" or "fucking yummalicious."

It's quite good, although I can't entirely get behind the slogan "the punch with a crunch." Shouldn't that be "the crunch with a punch" or even "the punchiest crunch" or perhaps "crunch the m'f'n' punch!?"

Not to mention that the back of the box has all sorts of "fruity facts" on it. Can someone tell me what the enduring fascination is with how much it would take of any particular thing, if lined up end to end, to reach the moon or wrap around the earth a certain number of times? That information might seem impressive, but it is really so impractical.

I seriously doubt we shall ever see the entirety of California's strawberry crop lined up berry to berry and wrapped around the world 15 times. How would they deal with the problem of continuing this unlikely string of strawberries across the world's oceans, or in parts of the world where food is so scarce that those fly-covered starving children wouldn't just help themselves, out of sheer desperation?

And anyway, why make it a single string around the world 15 times when it would be much more potentially hilarious to just blanket a smaller area with an dense and impenetrable shield of strawberries that would suffocate all that had the misfortune of being beneath it?

Well, I suppose it's better than the transparent multicultural corporate BS you'll find on a box of, say, Kellogg's Corn Pops or something. At any rate, the cereal itself is subtle and satisfying, like one of those whores who actually turns out to be a bored suburban housewife with a Master's in Germanic Literature. (?)

One curious aspect of Fruity Punch is that on the box, it clearly depicts four variant "fruits," which correspond roughly to bananas, mangos, strawberries, and grapes. But once you actually pour the cereal into the bowl, you realize with some disappointment that there are actually none of the "strawberries." It seems as though the marketers have instructed the design people to falsify the apparent bounty by coloring some of the "grape" pieces with a reddish tint to give the impression of "strawberries" being included. That is mighty deceptive.

Although to be fair, I should mention that I got this box from a coworker, and it was not sealed, so there is a remote possibility that she had actually removed all of the "strawberry" pieces for herself before passing the box along to me. But that seems highly unlikely, don't you think? It would be way more trouble than it could possibly be worth, seeing as all of the "different" "fruits" actually taste exactly the same.

Say, have I even reviewed the cereal yet?

Review by K*Pax Reginaldo