Not THIS Boy's Best Friend

Shreddies cereal recently launched a new campaign in which they released their new "Diamond Shreddies" -- it's a really cute campaign actually, since all they did was turn their classic breakfast cereal on it's side and called it a whole new flavour.

The ads and billboards are fun, too: talking about about their new geometric superiority and that it's no longer hip to be square. Of course, along with the campaign they have a "You could WIN 1 of 10 diamonds" promotion. Simply smart of them.

I wouldn't shut up about how much I enjoyed their campaign, so Francine bought me a box of Shreddies, which I'll admit I haven't eaten for years.

Unfortunately, smart campaign or not, the flavour didn't really do anything for me.

Not even when I tipped my head at a 45 degree angle.

Sigh.

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)