Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Cap'n My Captain

For some reason, when I mentioned Cap'n Crunch cereal to my son a few weeks ago, he got excited and had it stuck in his mind. When we reached the cereal aisle of the grocery store, he rushed over to the Cap'n Crunch display and insisted we buy some.

No harm done here -- while we mostly eat the healthier varieties of cereal, I was delighted to have one of the sweeter and more "fun" cereals in our home.

And Alexander's pitch to Francine to get fun cereals always go over a heck of a lot better than my own futile attempts.

Of course, speaking of Cap'n Crunch, I've always called it Captain Crunch -- but looking at the box recently made me wonder: How many kids out there never learned the proper spelling of "captain" because of this popular kids cereal box? And why did they call it Cap'n Crunch rather than Captain Crunch?

The cereal in the US apparently has all kinds of variations on it. Here in Canada there's the basic simple Cap'n Crunch flavour -- but in the US there are berry, chocolate and peanut butter versions of it, and even a really cool Halloween flavour -- yes, Halloween. According to the capncrunch website it contains crunchy biscuits and fruit flavored ghost shapes that turn the milk GREEN. How cool is that? I'm going to have to do a bit of cross-border shopping in the fall to get some of those for Alexander and I.

Here are a few bits of trivia on Cap'n Crunch for those curious minds:

  • The captain's full name as revealed in 2007: Captian Horatio Magellan Crunch
  • What flavor is Capn' Crunch? A combination of sweetened corn and oat.
  • Spider-Man and Capn' Crunch teamed up once in a cross-promotion campaign to fight The Soggies (a fictional race of blob creatures that dampened breakfast cereals.
  • Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club makes a Cap'n Crunch sandwich.
  • Here in Canada, our bilingual English/French cereal boxes include the French "Capitaine Crounche" (see, no silly abbreviated Cap'n there)

3 comments:

lime said...

ah, cap'n crunch aka the mouth shredder. hehehehe

i was always a count chocula and cocoa puffs kid myself, but that should be no surprise.

Zephyr said...

We always have to buy the crunch berries version. Pure sugar isn't enough for us... we need excessive food coloring to create a more balanced diet! :)

Steph said...

This is too crazy. I just found this blog by doing a search for the CC cereal after someone at my blog starting ranting about the "cap'n" bit as well as the French translation.

Cool, yes, but not as cool as immediately recognizing your pic, Mark, and remembering that I worked with you, however briefly, at Chapters in Ancaster (I left to open the one across from Limeridge, which I hear isn't there anymore)! I remembered about your writing (horror in particular, no?) and editing, and totally knew it was you.

Since then, I've been a freelance editor myself for some years, and just started a new venture, aside from the academic stuff I work on:

www.editquest.com

Glad to meet you again! What a neat way to have done so...

Steph

stephvandermeulen.wordpress.com