If you have been inside a supermarket within the past few weeks, you may have noticed the same startling discovery that I have. There are no more Christmas cereals. This is strange, for a variety of reasons.
First, cereals usually keep up with holidays. Well, Halloween at least. But Halloween and Christmas are the two biggest holidays when it comes to making all sorts of themed crap. Candy, cereal, Ziploc bags, as well as approximately 11,000 other things get a packaging makeover during these two holiday seasons. The third biggest season, Easter, probably comes close to Halloween when it comes to sales, what with the candy and Paas egg dyes and all. However, society hasn’t found a way to completely secularize Easter, which is why it won’t be able to overtake Halloween for overall sales. I think that’s the top three, unless I’m forgetting one.
During the Halloween season, there were many cereals that were redesigned, be it in recipe, packaging, or both. Cocoa Krispies, Lucky Charms, and of course the monster cereals become a ubiquitous force during Halloween.
And yet here it is, Christmas season, and there are no Christmas cereals to be found. There aren’t even “holiday” cereals. There are Winter Lucky Charms, but that’s nonsense. That’s two degrees of separation from Christmas, which is too far to be considered.
Christmas Crunch, the re-colored Crunch Berry cereal, is gone. I don’t know if it was around last year, either. I don’t think I ever actually bought it. I know that I can’t personally be blamed for its disappearance, since there are thousands of people who will buy things like that, so Quaker Oats wasn’t missing my $3.79. I bought a few Snapples, it evened out. And Christmas Crunch was hardcore. It wasn’t “Holiday” Crunch, just no holds barred “Christmas.”
I would include a picture of Christmas Crunch, but I haven’t found one by the third page of Google images, so I gave up.
I also know that Super Golden Crisp used to get redesigned for Christmas. Sugar Bear used to have a Santa hat on. It also came with an ornament of Santa Sugar Bear, which is hanging on my tree right now.
That part of the tree is so awesome. I don’t know what’s up with the “Mommy’s Big Boy” ornament, though. That’s kind of disturbing.
And, the most conspicuous of the missing cereals, is Fruity Pebbles. They had the Christmas commercial. “Season’s greetings in our souls, yummy Fruity Pebbles in our bowls. Ho ho ho, I’m h-h-hungry…” That one. I haven’t seen that one for a while, either.
I do realize, in retrospect, that that commercial had some screwy morals. Barney dresses up like Santa in order to steal Fred’s Fruity Pebbles, Barney gets caught, Fred gets pressured by Santa into giving Barney some Fruity Pebbles, and they all partake in some Christmas cheer. So, basically, this teaches Barney that it is alright to attempt thievery of your supposed best friend; even Santa is fine with this. What will happen next time Barney attempts this? Barney will sneak into Fred’s house to steal some Fruity Pebbles, Fred will mistake Barney for a malicious intruder, and shoot him dead. All of this will happen because of Santa’s reinforcing of poor misguided Barney.
And what was the deal with Fred and his Fruity Pebbles? Did he manufacture them himself? If that was the case, I could understand Barney’s need to steal them; that’s the only way to get them. Although Fruity Pebbles are not something I would exert much effort to obtain, but whatever he’s into, I guess. I am assuming that Fred bought the Pebbles though, since a box of them and a box of Cocoa Pebbles always appeared on the table at the end of the commercial. So unless Fred has the ability to manufacture both a processed cereal and packaging, I have to assume he bought the cereal at the Bedrock market.
If Fred did buy the cereal, why couldn’t Barney do the same? Was he poor? He had a baby, he could get WIC checks and get cereal that way, although he would only be able to get Cheerios and Life and such. Oh well, looks like it will continue to be a life of crime for him.
As I was originally saying, I think, it is surprising to go from the once glorious cereal-Christmas relationship to the shameful, long distance relationship they now have. And speaking of shameful…
Evidently, Willy Wonka has jumped on the holiday bandwagon, and is whoring out his noble Gobstopper for a few pieces of Christmas silver. This wasn’t my initial reaction, mind you; this is how I feel after sampling the product in question. And what product is that? Why, Gobstopper candy canes.
It seems like such a perfect combination: Gobstoppers, one of the greatest hard candies ever, and candy canes, which are not one of the greatest hard candies ever. But they look cool.
Somehow, these manage to get everything wrong. Fruit candy canes just don’t seem to work. It also is missing everything that makes a Gobstopper so good: the rough, grainy texture of the first layer, and the awesome core. The candy cane has none of this.
The coloring is also odd. I know red and green are the official Christmas colors and white is in a candy cane as well, but the way the candy canes are arranged look dumb. Instead of being striped, they are solid colors. This leads to them simply looking unappealing. And, when placed next to each other, they look like the Mexican flag. Or the Italian one. It depends which order they are in.
Bottom line: big thumbs down to Gobstopper candy canes. Shame on you, Wonka.
And, in keeping with the tradition that every time the concept of Christmas is mentioned, other holidays must be mentioned as well, here is a short feature on Hanukkah. Unfortunately, I decided to do this after Hanukkah was actually over, so the selection of merchandise was somewhat limited.
Luckily, I was able to snag this sweet bag of Manischewitz Chocolate Coins. I think, except for Matzo crackers (which are delicious,) this is the first Manischewitz product I have ever purchased not for novelty purposes.
I assume that the chocolate coin thing is some sort of traditional symbol or something, although I honestly don’t know; although if it was, I would expect more of a Jewish theme to the coins. Instead, they are replicas of US quarters and half dollars. This provided me with an opportunity to make a tasteless visual joke, with Kennedy’s chocolate brains coming out of the back of his head, but the lighting just wasn’t right.
The coins come in a cool little bag, the kind oranges usually come in. The wrappers don’t skimp on the shine, either. The chocolate is just plain milk chocolate; not great, but not bad at all. Overall, chocolate coins get a big thumbs up.
Here is my impersonation of the principal from “Welcome Freshman” when he finds the quarter in the pay phone at the beginning of the show. However, instead of biting into metal, I am biting into foil and chocolate. So I sort of win.
When you have the phrase, “Do you trust me?” in your movie, or in the preview for your movie, people will inevitably notice that your movie is terrible, and that Aladdin was much better.
I don’t even know how this started. When in my basement, looking for canned pineapple chunks (we only had crushed,) I found a can of Cel-Ray soda. If you aren’t familiar with it, I will get to that soon. The point is, I decided that drinking a can of it and writing about the experience would be a good thing. That’s correct… I thought it would be a good thing.
So, I brought the can up to my room, and it sat there for a few days. I lacked the courage. I then decided that if I was going to ruin my day by drinking one horrid beverage, I may as well partake in a variety of frightening taste adventures. Luckily, this would not be difficult, since my basement contains a variety of peculiar drinks.
Armed with a not very good idea and no common sense, I headed down to the basement to gather other drinks of Cel-Ray’s caliber. I was able to find a few others, as well as a few legitimate sodas that had some extraordinary properties.
Since the idea started with Cel-Ray, I may as well start off with it. In order to get a clear idea of why Cel-Ray is such a suspicious beverage, you must understand what the can describes it as: a Celery flavored soda with other natural flavors. Celery? What are the other natural flavors, ranch dressing?
Oddly enough, Cel-Ray’s strongest flaw isn’t that it is celery flavored. The biggest drawback to Cel-Ray is that it is made by Dr. Brown’s, a company that is dedicated to producing creepy sodas like this, as well as terrible versions of good flavors. I recently was in NYC, getting dessert in a diner that was described as “great for dessert.” It turned out that the vast majority of the desserts were just slices of cheesecake the size of my head. So, I ordered what seemed like the safest bet on the menu, a root beer float. It was served in the following manner: a glass with a scoop of ice cream in it, and an unopened can of Dr. Brown’s Root Beer.
Here is a hint to any restaurant owners or potential restaurant owners: if you are going to use bargain brand sodas in your root beer floats, do not serve the soda still in its can. I don’t even know if Dr. Brown’s is a bargain brand, I just assume that from its horrid taste, that the price is fair to reasonable. Also, since I chew my fingernails off, opening soda cans can be difficult for me; I usually need the assistance of a quarter or a spoon handle. Anyway, the root beer float wound up being rather terrible, thanks in no small part to Dr. Brown’s sarsaparilla-gone-wrong flavor.
Which, somehow, brings us back to Cel-Ray soda. Given that very interesting back story of my experience with Dr. Brown’s soda, combined with the fact that it is a celery flavored soda, it goes without saying that it needed to be tried.
There is absolutely nothing that makes it appealing; even the can is the color of vomit. A good sign? Maybe, but it really depends on what you are hoping the outcome will be. If you are hoping the outcome will be me taking twice the recommended dosage of Imodium AD just to stop fluid loss, then yes, the green color is a good sign. However, if you are looking at the can in a supermarket, pondering its potential deliciousness, then no, this shade of green is not a good sign.
Luckily, if you are watching your calorie intake, but can’t shake those sweetened celery cravings, Dr. Brown’s has the answer: Diet Cel-Ray. As opposed to regular Cel-Ray’s pimento-less olive color, the diet can is a rather lovely shade of yellow, possibly canary. Unfortunately, the idea of an aspartame sweetened celery soda is about three and a half times more frightening than a regular celery soda.
And in case you might be thinking that the color of the can is the worst thing about Cel-Ray’s appearance, you would be wrong. The soda itself bears a very unsettling resemblance to another celery flavored liquid: urine.
Since dwelling on that fact was only making things worse, I bit the bullet, or swallowed the celery, whichever you prefer. Since I was bracing for the absolute worst, anything that wasn’t the worst would be good, or something along those lines. Basically, Cel-Ray wasn’t terrible, but it doesn’t even enter the realm of acceptable. It doesn’t even taste like celery, which really is a letdown. If it is going to be a gross soda, it might as well be a gross soda that tastes like a vegetable. At least then it would have the novelty factor going for it. Then it could be sold on eBay for $80 like green bean flavored Jones soda.
Instead, it is just some weird, almost citrusy (which, apparently, isn’t even a word,) piss drink. The diet is no better; in fact the diet is worse, much worse. It has the unpleasant taste of Cel-Ray, coupled with the harshness of the artificial sweetener.
End result: Cel-Ray does not taste as frightening as it appears. However, it appearance is enough to make sure it stays far, far away, where it should be.
Next up on the Carousel of Sadness is Moxie. Moxie has been a staple in my basement since I can remember. Growing up, I remember always seeing Moxie in the basement. I don’t, however, ever remember seeing Moxie anywhere in my house besides the basement. I’m barely through the first paragraph, and I am already sick of the word Moxie.
I don’t know too much about Moxie, except for the fact that it is coffee flavored, and that I never really see it for sale anywhere. Yet here it is, in both bottled and canned variety. Although the canned soda is the diet version, since even sensible drinkers need something disgusting to drink once in a while.
Despite the fact that I absolutely hate coffee and anything coffee flavored, I went ahead and tried both. And, surprisingly, neither of them tastes too much like coffee. The initial taste is very cola-ish, but then there is a fairly strong coffee aftertaste. The coffee flavor isn’t overwhelming; in fact I could probably make it through a whole can of it. I sure as hell wouldn’t be very happy about it, but I’d manage. The diet actually seems to have a better taste, although the coffee aspect is much harsher. It tastes like a good diet cola, then punches you in the face with an artificially sweetened coffee assault. The aftertaste of the regular Moxie is more of a slap across the face, but not as bad as diet’s aftertaste. The overall taste of regular Moxie is just kind of gross.
So far I have braved two frightening types of soda, in both regular and potentially disastrous diet versions. Surprisingly, they weren’t as bad as they seemed. Of course, I will never again drink any of them, unless I feel like cracking open a can of Cel-Ray so I can make the world’s most disgusting Tom Collins.
It seems that I may need to look outside the US for a truly horrifying beverage. I may need to look towards Mexico, or wherever Goya products come from. Next on the agenda is Goya Guava Nectar. I must admit that I really am cheating here, as I really enjoy some Goya nectars, and I have no problem with Guava. Goya has some much scarier flavors, including Guanabana and Tamarind, whatever the hell they are. I have tried both of those flavors, and neither was very good. In fact, one of them was downright disgusting, I just don’t remember which one.
I had to check the Goya website (whose server is probably running off a Packard Bell) in order to get the correct spelling of Guanabana. When I was there, I found out they also make a Sugar Cane flavor of nectar, which I don’t get at all. The Goya site is pretty interesting, actually. It has all the benefits of mocking those less fortunate than you, but with none of the guilt that tends to come with it.
I found out that Malta Goya, which I always thought was Mexican beer, is really just a soda made with hops and barley. That is both a let down and more than a little foul. I also learned that their “HOT PRODUCTS” include a new, light version of Adobo; which leads me to believe that Goya would be far more successful if they named all of their products after Double Dragon characters.
Except for those few that I mentioned, the Goya nectars are actually really good. They have enough sugar to give a diabetic person a halo, but are still delicious. So even though I knew ahead of time that the nectars I have had were good, I added this to the list because Goya is just creepy in general. Plus guava is a weird flavor; I think even Snapple dropped that one eventually.
If you think soda has a lot of a lot of sugar and calories, Goya laughs at you. This 12 oz. can packs 240 calories and 48 grams of sugar. Although it does have 100% of your daily RDA of vitamin C, so it evens out a little.
Tasting the nectar was difficult, because when I tried to open it, the tab broke off. Thanks to some ingenuity, and a screwdriver, I was able to get it open. The color is a very bold pink, the color of melted watermelon sorbet, or the vomit of a person with a stomach virus when the Pepto just isn’t working. The strongest aspect of the nectar is the smell. I don’t mean “strongest” like “best,” I mean it like “strongest.” And by “strongest” I mean I can smell it from over four feet away. The taste is actually pretty good, but it’s one of those “you’d never make it more than three sips into it” kinds of good.
I don’t know if the Goya is connected, but I suddenly have a pretty bad headache.
The next item on the agenda should not be bad at all. In fact, if the label is any indication, it should be awesome. I assume this, because I am about to sample Milligan’s Island AWESOME Root Beer. The label boasts that they have been “fooling the public since 1492,” and I have no idea what that even means. It is a fairly sinister claim to make on your product’s packaging.
Another interesting aspect is that they give you options as to what to believe are the actual ingredients. It lists its sweetener as “cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup.” Given the fact that cane sugar costs an assload more than HFCS (the health magazines’ abbreviation for the corn syrup,) I’m going to assume that cane sugar did not come out victorious as the chosen ingredient.
As far as smell and taste goes, here’s where it gets interesting… by pulling the ol’ switcheroo and being not interesting at all. It tastes and smells like any other root beer, except Dr. Brown’s, since it wasn’t disgusting. It was fairly sweet, more A&W than Barq’s. Barq’s has bite; the hot dog vendor told me so. A&W has Snoopy, so A&W wins. Mug sucks.
I do think that their claim of “AWESOME” was rather lofty, but they do a good job of walking the talk. Which is difficult with no legs. Wow, that was dumb.
For the final beverages, there isn’t any surprise as far as brand names go. Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, nothing shocking there. The reason they are being sampled here is because their expiration dates were from last millennium. That sounds more impressive than it actually is, but they still are quite old. The Diet Pepsi’s expired in January of 1998.
Even weirder is that I didn’t just find an isolated can; I found a whole 24 pack. The Diet Coke, which was by itself, passed its prime in 1996. That’s eight years ago.
The reason there are two cans of Diet Pepsi pictured is because on of the cans has mysteriously lost almost all of its contents. There are no holes or leaks anywhere on the can, and yet it barely weighs more than an empty can. WEIRD. While I could probably compile a pretty good one, drinking this will definitely go on the list of stupidest things I have ever done.
For some reason, the light can was very difficult to open. There is a distinct impression of the can’s tab in my index finger. And, not surprisingly, it didn’t even fill half the cup. It also didn’t make that thssss sound when you open a can of soda; there was no carbonation. It also didn’t pour like a soda; it was more of a brown sludge, almost like a thin Hershey’s syrup. It smelled okay, so, assuming that it couldn’t somehow turn poisonous in the can, I gulped it down.
It feels like I drank paint.
My throat is now coated with a very noticeable layer of Diet Pepsi syrup. Taste wise, it wasn’t the worst thing ever; it just tasted like really thick, bitter Diet Pepsi. The worst aspect of drinking it is the now overwhelming sense of fear that I will soon die, or develop some horrible rash in my throat. Luckily(?) I have the other can of Diet Pepsi to help wash it down.
The other can of Diet Pepsi, on the other had, had a huge rush of air when opened. It also has a really little mouth, which at first seemed quaint, then made me feel depressed for some reason. It smelled like normal soda, except maybe not as sweet. It also tasted the same way. After the first Diet Pepsi experience, this one was rather anticlimactic.
Saving the oldest for last, we now come to the Diet Coke of 1996. I tried getting a picture of the bottom of the can, but it just didn’t want to work. I have no clue how to work my camera besides pointing and shooting. I even tried changing the setting on the front of my camera to the flower icon, but it didn’t help. This was another can that was a hassle to open, because for some reason the can’s tab didn’t fit in the mouth. I don’t know if some craziness was going on for the past eight years, or if it was a defect all along, but the tab was about a half inch bigger than the mouth. I’m trying to make that tidbit of information interesting, but it really just isn’t working. I’m starting to feel dizzy from the Diet Pepsi Sludge.
The Diet Coke was somehow more carbonated than a normal can of soda, but didn’t have too much taste. The most interesting thing about the can is that they are promoting the brand new “on-line” Diet Coke web site. L337.
And, finally, as a bonus addition to the beverage bonanza, is Pepsi-Cola Holiday Spice. I’m sure that by know you have all seen it and either tried it or ignored it. It’s reddish, it’s thicker than normal Pepsi, and has more than a vague aftertaste of potpourri. It is actually quite good the first sip or two, then plateaus immediately. After that, it is an exercise in sheer will, can you finish the whole can / bottle without giving up? If you do, you will be rewarded with the knowledge that you accomplished a great feat.
Instead of drinking them, I recommend buying a few twelve packs, and storing them in your basement. Then, in ten years, sell the cans on eBay. It would be like being able to sell Crystal Pepsi now. The Urban Outfitters kids would go nutty over it.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go drink a lot of Pepto Bismol and Listerine. And no, I don’t mean rinse my mouth out with it. I mean drink it.
I love to whine about food products that have unfairly disappeared. Some of these go away for obvious reasons. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had some amazing licensed foods, including their cereal and pudding pies. Obviously, as their popularity faded, their licensed products went with them.
Some items are seasonal, but don’t manage to make it back the next year. This happened with the winter themed Whipper Snapple, which vanished. This eventually happened with the rest of the line, which is unfortunate, but somewhat expected. I couldn’t really be upset with its disappearance, if only for the fact that I bought about two per year, so I was partially to blame for its lack of success.
Other items go away simply because they didn’t sell well. Sometimes they get completely axed, while other times they get limited distribution. There are very few feelings as terrible as the day you realize that a product is gone. At first, you are inconvenienced, and have to get it at a different supermarket. Then you buy it less, simply because you hardly ever see it. The one day, when you are in the mood for Starburst Ice Pops or Fruit Wrinkles, you are unable to find them anywhere.
In recent times, the internet has made finding a product easier than ever. Put the item into Google, and see what you get. Either you can buy it or you can’t. This makes knowing the status of a product quite simple. This, however, wasn’t always the case.
Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, this wasn’t possible. I can’t begin to count the number of times I thought to myself, “Hey, I haven’t seen (INSERT KITSCHY/RETRO PRODUCT REFERENCE HERE) in a while, do they even still make it?” The answer would usually be, “Yeah, I haven’t seen that lately either, I wonder what happened to it.” This wasn’t always the response I would get; sometimes I wouldn’t get any type of response. This depended mostly on whether or not there was someone else in the room when I asked the question.
This is one time I am confident that I am not babbling on about something that has only happened to me. That’s not to say that I’m not babbling on, only this time it is about something that everyone can relate to.
One of the most common subjects of the “I remember that, is it still around?” topic are the General Mills monster cereals. And, if I may be so bold, I don’t understand their wild popularity. They’re good cereals, no doubt about that, but certainly nothing worthy of any type of cult following.
The ridiculous level of popularity that these cereals have achieved might seem strange, since their distribution is so scattered. Actually, the fact that they can be so hard to find is precisely why they are so sought after. There’s really only a few ways this scenario can play out. First, someone might think they like the cereals, never see them around, and therefore will always have that opinion. Second, a person might think they like them, and when they get the opportunity to try them again, they still hold that opinion. Finally, someone might think they like them, get the chance to try them, and realize that they actually don’t like the cereals.
If you are wondering where the scenario of someone not actually thinking they like the cereals is, don’t bother looking. Everyone thinks they like these cereals.
I wasn’t too sure where I stood going into the Halloween season. The only one of the cereals that I eat on a regular basis is Count Chocula. I love that cereal, but don’t recall liking the other two as a kid, the other two being Boo Berry and Franken Berry.
Since I hadn’t had them in so long, I tried all of them, going into each with an open mind and no grudges. And yes, all of these flavors became readily available in my area, for Halloween time. I guess the stores were expecting these to fly off the shelves, because every supermarket has hundreds of the boxes on display.
Please note that I am conspicuously not including the other two phantom cereals from this line, Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy. People like to claim that they have eaten these cereals, but they are lying. If anyone claims to have done so, do not believe them. I haven’t, but at least I am being honest. They both had a fruit theme, although the Mummy cereal had vanilla in it as well.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way, it is time for some mind blowing reviewing.
The first is the classic standby, Count Chocula. Its dry form seems good enough; it consists mostly of chocolate puffs, glistening with sugary coating. And, of course, there are the marshmallows. The only shapes I can clearly make out are bats, which makes sense. For some reason, many of the marshmallows are green. To find out why, I needed to consult the back of the box.
Apparently, something went wrong in the laboratory, and now “green goo is everywhere – even in your cereal!” Ugh. In order to find out who did it, you need to play a board game, which I can’t do right now. Not because I am alone, but because I can’t find any scissors; my desk is too messy. I’m going to assume Franken Berry did it, he looks like a spaz.
So far, Count Chocula has proven to be quite hardcore. It stays crunchy after being submerged in milk for quite some time. So far, so awesome. There is one question that still needs to be answered. Is the milk delicious???
The answer to that question is… hold on.
YES.
The final milk product has a definite chocolate taste to it, but it isn’t the typical Quik type of chocolate milk. It’s more like Ovaltine, which I can only assume is from all of the vitamins washing off the cereal and into the milk. The milk also doesn’t get very brown, so it is a covert chocolate taste.
I don’t even remember what type of reviews I used to give in the other cereal articles. Either letter grades or number grades… I’m going with letter.
Count Chocula gets an ass kicking A.
Next up is Franken Berry. Out of all of the cereals, I always regarded this as the least cool. Count Chocula was everywhere; it had the popularity and great taste. I didn’t know if Boo Berry was good, but at least it was mysterious. And while I didn’t see Franken Berry very often, I would see it once in a while at a random store, so it had nothing going for it. No great taste, no mystery, and that was also back when it was completely unacceptable for a guy to be into something pink. It still is kind of unacceptable, but at least now I’m old enough to not really care.
In every group of people you know, there will always be one person that claims Boo Berry or Franken Berry is their favorite. Despite the fact that they haven’t eaten it in about five or ten years, they still lie and claim this to be the truth. Franken Berry is the name to drop in the cereal world. If you say Boo Berry is your favorite cereal, or that you just bought a box of Boo Berry, it is met with hostility. “Yeah, whatever, shut up; nobody has seen a box of Boo Berry in a decade.” However, if you say that Franken Berry is your favorite, somehow you turn into a heroic figure. Anyone who is able to get their hands on Franken Berry, let alone eat it enough to declare it their favorite, must have something going for them. Bah.
My girlfriend falls into the aforementioned category of people who lie and say Franken Berry is their favorite cereal. She had bought a box of it at Target recently, and considered herself fortunate to get that one box, since there were no others to be found. I don’t know about that; if I found a lone box of cereal that I hadn’t seen in years, and there were no others to be found anywhere else in the store, I’d be a little suspicious. The box had probably been found in the stock room, after it had fallen behind a shelf and stayed there for the past seven years.
Since she was willing to eat expired food in order to get her fix, I figured maybe she was serious about Franken Berry. So when I saw that the monster cereals had become readily available for the Halloween season, I bought a bunch. I gave her four or five boxes of Franken Berry, and one of Boo Berry. What I didn’t know at the time was that my brother had already bought her five boxes of Franken Berry for her birthday. As a result, she wound up with ten boxes worth of monster cereal love.
I must give credit to my brother; it would have never occurred to me to give cereal as a present. I mean, cereal is awesome, so it seems natural to pass that on to someone else on their special day. I don’t want to give anything away, but I think that all my friends can expect some rectangular shaped boxes on their birthdays.
Now it is time to decide: is Franken Berry good enough to eat ten boxes worth?
The initial impression of the cereal is rather startling. I knew that it was pink, but I didn’t realize it was this pink. If the color of the cereal was any indication of the flavor, I was in for some major league berry blasting action. I haven’t decided whether to add or subtract points for the color. On one hand, it looks awesome; I want a shirt in this color. On the other hand, I don’t like having to squint just to eat a bowl of cereal. Okay, I can’t deny it anymore: it looks awesome.
And as it turns out, the taste is pretty strong. It doesn’t really taste like strawberry, although when the cereal looks like bite sized glow sticks, I don’t think it is expected to taste like real fruit. The taste isn’t bad at all, although a more subdued berry flavor might have improved the overall experience.
The cereal, however, is not the best part… not even close. The real treat is what you get when the cereal is finished: the milk. Franken Berry turns the cereal into strawberry milk, which is infinitely superior to chocolate milk. Well, not infinitely superior, but better.
So, despite my initial misgivings, Franken Berry has proven to be a worthy addition to a cereal rotation, whenever it can be found.
Overall, it gets a solid B.
Today’s final course is the ever elusive Boo Berry. This is, without a doubt, one of the top “Do they still make that” items that are still, uh, made. This was a question that I used to ask, as a naïve youngster. This was before sacrificing a nice chunk of a normal social life, and perusing web sites that discuss cereal and beverages. As a result, I was aware of Boo Berry’s antics.
These antics, in my experience, are laying low and making the occasional cameo appearance. Then, when you see a box, you get all excited, and buy a few. Then you get home and realize you never liked it in the first place.
I assumed that this would be the case again, but I still went into the test with an open mind. After all, Franken Berry had a good showing, so the ghost might as well.
The initial impression is a very big let down. After the day glo pink color of Franken Berry, I was expecting a similarly Boo’s blue to be just as shocking. Alas, it is not. It is a very drab shade of blue, or grayish-purple. So the aesthetics are missing, but the taste might make up for it.
No.
Quite frankly, the taste sucks. It isn’t overtly disgusting, but it isn’t something I would look forward to repeating. It tastes like if you took all the Kix out of Berry Berry Kix and just ate that, except not as good.
The one thing Boo Berry does have going for it is the ghost. He is definitely the coolest of the three. Count Chocula is a vampire with one tooth, and Franken Berry is just way too happy. Boo is laid back, looking debonair in his bow tie and hat.
The cereal, however, doesn’t live up to the mascot… C-
Not only is General Mills coming at you with the triple dosage of monster cereals, it is offering a free video game available for play at www.countchocula.com. The game looks like it would fit in well on the NES, but it’s still good to kill some time. You run around collecting magic wands, so the monsters can stop the green goo. These things happen. You also need to eat marshmallows in order to replenish your health, which sounds like an average day for a typical American.
Finally, when all three wands have been collected, the monsters are able to stop the goo. To say thanks, you are treated to a door knob hanger that you can print out. Or, if you don’t feel like beating the game, you can just get it here. Lazy ass.
If you really want to get a good time in the game, you’re going to need some help. Luckily, each box of cereal contains clues on the side. These clues allow you to guess the password for each monster, which will give you extra power ups during their level. As you can see from the clues, it isn’t easy. If you are somehow able to crack the code, you will be rewarded. If you are unable to guess the password, be careful with the spoon when eating; you’re likely to stab yourself.
Get ready for the hardcore breakneck speed review: Count Chocula – You already know it’s good. Franken Berry – Better than expected, but not as good as the cult following might suggest. Boo Berry – Don’t waste your time eating it; get a tattoo of Boo instead.
Unlike the previous article, here we are going to focus almost exclusively on some of the more popular aspects of Halloween. This was actually intended to be longer but, quite frankly, this wasn’t as interesting as I had thought it would be. OH WELL.Break out your steroids and sponsors, this is the Halloween Olympics.
The first competition is among one of the more familiar aspects of Halloween time, and fall in general:
Pumpkins
In first place, comes the glorious carved pumpkin, the Jack O’Lantern. This is arguably the icon of Halloween; there is basically nothing more synonymous with the holiday. It can take many forms, from a crappy triangle face to an elaborately carved scene. But usually it’s the crappy triangle face. This takes top prize for how it looks during the day, but even more so for how it looks during the night. Few things look more bad ass than an illuminated Jack O’Lantern, except for possibly an illuminated Jack O’Lantern carved out of a watermelon. But that’s ridiculous.
Coming in a distant second is the classic pumpkin. Nothing added, nothing taken away, just a lumpy, orange, sphere-ish embodiment of the fall season. Please don’t get the terms “fall” and “autumn” mixed up. I refuse to say autumn; it’s stupid. The plain pumpkin is the perfect second place finisher. It is very good on its own, not quite as good as the first place finisher, and yet nowhere near as bad as the last place finisher…
… the painted pumpkin. Oh man, are these lame. It’s the worst of both worlds, the simplicity of the plain pumpkin is gone, and the awesomeness of the Jack O’Lantern disappears as well. They usually have “wacky” faces drawn on them, with their tongues sticking out and such. I guess they have such bad personalities and awkward social graces that they feel the need to try to be funny, so people don’t notice what deviants they actually are. Uh. Moving right along…
I wanted to include one category for a candy that is commonly given out to Trick or Treaters, so here it is:
Twix Bars
Peanut Butter is on top, as it should be. Twix brought this flavor back a couple of years ago, and I’m not sure what happened to it. I don’t know why they would cancel it again; it seemed to sell well. I did my part to keep it alive; I bought one.
Cookies & Cream – I hated this flavor when it first came out. I was into the other flavor that was introduced at this time, the one with the fudge. Once I realized that the fudge flavor was just a crappy version of Bar None, I focused my attention on Cookies & Cream. It was like a long, chocolate covered Oreo, except it wasn’t exactly the same. They made chocolate covered Oreos, and they didn’t taste like Cookies & Cream Twix. Maybe the Twix were like long, chocolate covered Oreos, but better. I don’t know. I can’t remember them that well.
I know I have already gone on record saying I hate caramel. I don’t take it back; I do hate it. HOWEVER, I am always willing to make exceptions, like in this case. (Caramel.) It works well in the formula. It complements the bar well, and isn’t so prevalent that it is all you notice. Well doneTwix.
Besides pumpkins, the other icon of the fall season, according to Google images, is the changing of leaves. Then it seems to be turkeys, pilgrims, and a few other things. But, eventually, we get to the other real important icon of the season:
Candy Corn
Candy corn has always been hit or miss for many people. Pure sugar that has been melted and formed into conical shapes, then dyed fall colors, I don’t see anything wrong with that. My excitement over the prospect of eating candy corn, however, varies depending on which kind it is. To the ill informed masses, which are only aware of the generic orange and white variation of candy corn, this may come as a rude awakening. And for that, I apologize. There is not just one type of candy corn, not just two, and maybe not just three, but I’m not going to look into that.
For these purposes, comparisons will be made amongst the most popular types of candy corn: the classic, chocolate, and pumpkin shaped. To me, there is no contest; but from talking to friends, acquaintances, benefactors, and such, I have discovered that candy corn is a controversial topic. I still stand firm in my beliefs.
The top prize goes to chocolate. Despite seeming like it is a completely unnecessary addition to the plain candy corn, the little chocolate end piece gives a welcome change of flavor. This is the problem with the plain candy corn, which I will discuss further…
… right here. Plain, which comes in second place, comes very close to the top spot. The only problem is that it is just too, well, plain. They are good to have a handful of, but halfway through it, you start to get sick of them.
Finally, we have the pumpkin shaped ones. These are just stupid. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but if you enjoy these, then you are dumb. I’m sorry; that was rude; let me rephrase that. If you enjoy these, then your taste in candy is dumb. Now, I eat as much sugar as the next guy. Unless the next guy is diabetic, in which case I eat way more sugar than he does. Point being, I have no problem with mass quantities of sugar. However, I must take umbrage at the fact that I am expected to eat an almost fluorescent orange colored lump of pure sugar. (At this point, I am starting to wish I looked up a synonym or word that could be used in place of “sugar.”) Anyone who readily admits that these are their favorite should not be trusted. Taking in sugar in concentrated amounts like this is an obvious replacement for another vice, such as cigarettes, sex, or cocaine.
If you are confused as to why a holiday themed article is actually early, well, don’t be. This is actually last year’s Halloween article. Well, no, but it wouldn’t be too surprising. Either a month after the fact or a month before, the timing isn’t quite there yet. But you can’t blame me for celebrating it early. I work in a mall; it’s been Halloween time since June.
My main goal here is to keep your house from getting covered in eggs, shaving cream, Silly String, or whatever else high school dickheads are trying to pass off as a legitimate costume. You won’t have to risk this if you can avoid certain Halloween pitfalls, by paying attention to one or both of the following lists.
The lists are based on opposite ends of the candy giving spectrum. One focuses on the best candy you can give out on Halloween, and the other focuses on the worst. The premise is that, ideally, you will follow the good list, and become a hero in your neighborhood.
I know this won’t happen with everyone, for a few reasons. The main reason is that most people are lazy and lack creativity. Because of this, almost everyone goes to the supermarket, buys the first thing they see from the big display, and that’s the end of it. This is why kids wind up with mostly the same four or five types of candy. The worst offender when it comes to being offered by almost every house is Snickers, the most overrated candy ever.
Snickers isn’t the only one to blame, others include Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Skittles, and even the noble 3 Musketeers bar. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part, these are all good types of candy. I can even see there being some reason for the popularity of Snickers, but the inexplicably large amounts of praise it gets baffles me. Point being, a big part of the fun of Trick or Treating is the variety of candy it results in. Even a kid has the money to buy a big bag of fun size candy bars, so coming home at the end of Halloween night with mostly the same candy sucks. I would rather come home with fifty different types of candy that I somewhat like than five types of candy that I really like. Variety.
Now you see that you should avoid buying these types of candy. These are the New York Yankees of candy, where there isn’t anything technically wrong with them, they’re just everywhere and you are completely sick of hearing about them.
In order to help your purchasing decisions, I have compiled a list of the best possible types of candy you can give away to kids. These candies are the perfect combination of being awesome by themselves, but combine that with the fact that they are less common means they are awesome in bold faced type.
10) Fruit flavored Tootsie Rolls
These are the bastard sons of the more popular chocolate Tootsie Roll. I think what I like best about them is how revolting they initially seem. When you see the sort-of-recognizable shape of a Tootsie Roll, you know what they feel and taste like. That taste is, unless you’ve been eating some bootleg candy, chocolate. And the texture is, unless you buy your candy at National Wholesale Liquidators, chewy. Given this, the idea of a fruit flavored Tootsie Roll is disturbing. It actually doesn’t sound that bad the way I described it, so take whatever disturbed notion reading that gave you and multiply it by six.
These are the candies that always rescue me in Target when I am looking for candy to sneak into the movie theatre. I see all of the typical candy, then I start browsing through the 99 cent bags of candy, where I spot them. Unfortunately, it is a tough decision as to whether or not I should actually buy them, because they include the vanilla flavor. The chocolate and fruit Tootsie Rolls are great, but the vanilla is awful. And there are always a lot of vanillas mixed into the bags, so I have to make the brave decision to actually purchase the bag. Apparently, they make variety bags that have only the fruit flavors, but I have yet to witness this. If you do buy these to give out on Halloween, be nice and just throw the vanilla ones out. Unless you like them, in which case eat them instead of giving or throwing them away. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
9) Rolos
I still have no idea where the name comes from. Granted, they do come in a roll, but then it would be Rollos. Whatever, it’s probably some European thing. What I do know is that Rolos are terribly underappreciated, except by myself. I appreciate them at exactly the right level.
8) Sugar Babies
They are basically condensed pellets of pure sugar. Why would anyone assume kids aren’t going to want to eat these? They say they’re caramels, but that’s a lie. It’s just brown sugar. Which is basically what caramel is, but it doesn’t matter. Sugar Babies are one of the very few candies that I really can only eat a little at a time of. Sure, I can only eat about a handful before I start to get excruciating headaches from the sugar rush, but that handful is delicious.
7) Moon Pies / Little Debbie Cakes
I understand that these technically aren’t candies, but whoever you give them to won’t be complaining. To give you an example, I can point out the exact house in the town I grew up in that gave away Moon Pies, despite the fact that I haven’t lived there in over a decade. Hell, I don’t even like Moon Pies that much. However, the very concept of that house giving out something so big means I will always remember that house.
And Little Debbie Cakes, come on, I just can’t get enough of that white trash goodness. They come in all sorts of different varieties, although they mostly boil down to cream sandwiches and frosted yellow cake pastries. Sure, they’re not high cuisine, but then again, neither is Twix. And Little Debbies are about ten times as big as a Twix. Advantage: Debbie.
6) Dots
Dots are one of those candies where every time you see them in the store you think, “They still make those? Huh.” Then you proceed to not buy them. But you should. The chewy texture of Dots isn’t like Starburst, where you worry that your fillings are getting pulled out. Rather, they have the texture where you know you will be picking little pieces of them out of your teeth for the rest of the day. I see that as a good thing. Usually, when I get candy, I wolf it down with no regards to my candy desires later on. This way, I can eat Dots as fast as I want, and I’ll still be able to find a little more to enjoy later.
5) Reese’s Pieces
Reese’s Pieces are the younger, cooler brother of the Peanut Butter Cup. Even though I think the pieces have been around longer. I don’t actually know. And there’s no father, so that analogy sucked. The pieces had their moment in the spotlight when they were in ET, but it’s been pretty much downhill since then. The Peanut Butter Cups have achieved very high popularity, like I mentioned earlier. There have been several variations, from crunchy to white chocolate, and many others in between. As for the pieces, they have remained essentially unchanged all these years. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since they used to be great, and since they remained unchanged, that still means they’re great. Unfortunately, the pieces get jerked around every Halloween. Hardly anyone gives them away, and that’s garbage; Reese’s Pieces deserve glory and accolades, or at least purchase and distribution.
4) Those Orange and Black Peanut Butter Flavored Chews
There are a few variations of these, although I recently found out that there are Mary Jane based ones, which seem to be the most widely available. Don’t let the fact that they’re made by the crap producing Necco fool you; Mary Janes are hardcore. Mary Janes are another old school candy that has continued to kick ass for decades. They have also slowly become less and less popular, to the point where you can only buy them for $6.40 for a half a pound, or in one of those “classic” candy catalogs that sell Blackjack gum. So apparently Mary Janes got fed up with this nonsense, and just said, to hell with it. Mary Janes knew they were great, and they didn’t need anyone’s approval. So for Halloween they didn’t even come dressed in their traditional wrapper with that little girl on it. They simply threw on some ratty black and orange wax paper, and said here’s my awful costume; we can’t afford a better one because all of you bastards neglect to buy us. Besides the fact that the wrappers are very plain, they also tend to be very loose. This always gives it that mysterious “possibly poisoned” appearance, which is always a hit with rebellious children, who whip them out of their plastic pumpkins and eat them in front of their horrified parents.
3) Popcorn Balls
I don’t understand why popcorn balls aren’t more popular. They are a fairly traditional Halloween treat. Even though they are also traditionally homemade, there are a fair amount of mass produced popcorn balls. The ones I bought are made by Act II, which is a company that I am familiar with from the eleven hundred bags of their product that my family purchases at BJs. Maybe they aren’t popular because they aren’t as nutritionally empty as most Halloween candy. They’ve even got fiber. This is the Heart Healthy choice for 2004. There are very few things a child will get on Halloween that will keep them regular. Increase those odds; give out popcorn balls.
2) Red Licorice Pipes
These things are flat out bad ass. First of all, it’s a pipe that you can eat; you don’t see that too often. And as everyone already knows, pipes are inherently cool. This candy is also very old school, they’re another one that you don’t see except in good candy stores or catalogs. You can, however, buy them in bulk from catalogs, and they’re not too expensive at all. Do not, DO NOT confuse these with their nefarious evil twin: The Black Licorice Pipe. NO. Black licorice, and there can be no arguing on this point, is the single most vile flavor that has ever existed. I have actually known people who LIKE this flavor. Normally, if someone likes something that I don’t, I just think well they can eat it, I sure as hell don’t want it. But when someone tells me they enjoy black licorice, the only reaction that can occur is to tell them no. No, you are wrong. You don’t like that flavor. There is no conceivable way that a flavor like that is slipping past your taste buds undetected. And there is no way in hell that those taste buds are giving any sort of approval. The absolute animosity towards black licorice can actually work in your favor if you do choose to give out the red pipes. A kid will see it, and say, ugh, I got a black licorice pipe. But then, when the pipe’s true color is revealed, it is a complete one eighty into the realm of total delight.
1) Any Full Sized Candy Bar
No matter where you grew up, what neighborhoods you went Trick or Treating in, or anything like that, you have been given at least one full sized candy bar on Halloween. It might have been a Snickers bar, a Kit Kat bar, or even something as below average as a 5th Avenue bar, it doesn’t matter. The strain in your pumpkin arm let you know that whatever was just dropped in there had some impressive weight. Then, when what just happened sinks in, you are instantly placed into a state of sheer elation. This is why you should take it upon yourself to be a role model to the children in your neighborhood. You can change lives by buying your Halloween candy at BJs, by buying the full sized bars. Because once you give these away, people will know that you are not the type of person that should be messed with. If you have the confidence to wield such large pieces of candy on Halloween, who knows what you are capable of? Total awesomeness, that’s what.
Runners up: Bit O Honey, Gobstoppers (not the chewy variety), and Bottle Caps.
And, as with any great Best Of list, there must be a Worst Of list. It is preferable to avoid the middle of the pack candies, and stick to the best candies that I already listed, but that probably won’t happen. So, at the very least, avoid giving away any of these atrocities.
10) Johnny Apple Treats
Johnny is part of an awesome line of candy that includes Alexander the Grape, Lemonheads, Boston Baked Beans, and Atomic Fireballs. Johnny, unlike the other kinds, just didn’t have a whole lot going for him. First of all, he’s apple, which is almost always a recipe for disaster. The rule of thumb for apple candies is simple… they suck. They even tried replacing flavors of Skittles, Starburst, and other candies with apple, but luckily that failed in most instances. Apparently the candy’s name has been changed, and it is now called Apple Heads. They can change their name, but they can’t erase their shameful past.
9) Candy Cigarettes
I’m not going to get into the stupid “candy cigarettes encourage kids to smoke,” argument, because it’s utter nonsense. If anything, all it teaches kids is to settle for ass crack quality candy. These sticks come in a variety of boxes, but for some reason the most common ones around Halloween come in a Popeye box. A cartoon character that hasn’t been relevant for decades, used to promote a wretched candy. That is one hell of a recipe for success. Another problem with candy cigarettes is that they stole the glory from the better faux cigarette, cigarette gum. They had the paper wrapper, and when you blew through them, a puff of “smoke” would come out. They were amazing. Candy cigarettes taste like a Fun Dip stick that you found under your bed.
8) Plain M&Ms
Why do people still give these out? I don’t see why these are offered at all. It’s like selling Lucky Charms without marshmallows. Sure, it would still taste decent, but why would you eat it when there is an infinitely superior version right next to it on the shelf? I am not saying which M&M version is the best, I’m simply saying which one is the worst. It is “plain,” in case you’re not paying attention.
7) McDonalds Gift Certificates
I had trouble deciding whether these were a really good thing to give away, or a really bad thing. On the plus side, it is a change of pace, it’s something other than candy, and it’s almost like getting money. On the negative side, you don’t get anything right then, plus you have to go to a McDonalds to redeem them. Also, they’re never for anything anyone would want; they are always for children’s sundaes or McDonald Land cookies. They should make Boston Market Halloween gift certificates, redeemable for one small side of mashed potatoes. I’d give those out.
6) Necco Wafers
These are known the world over as being disgusting, and they were such an obvious choice that I wasn’t even going to put them on this list. Then, on a recent trip to Waldbaums, I saw that they were selling “fun size” Necco Wafers. This, I will not stand for. My earliest memory of Necco Wafers was when I was on a field trip to the Old Bethpage Restoration, and one of the fake colonial people was talking to us about horses. He said how when the horses were good, he would give them one of “these,” then pulled a stick of them out of his pocket. He let us try one, and I was somehow able to find a candy that I had no interest in ever eating again. Don’t give horse candy to children on Halloween; although I do recommend keeping a small pack in your pocket. That way, when you are eating a good type of candy, such as a stick of Chewy Spree, and someone asks you for a piece, just slip a Necco Wafer out of your pocket and give one to them. This will possibly stop them from ever asking for more candy.
5) Milky Ways
While there certainly are worse tasting candies than Milky Ways, they always remain one of the great disappointments. The fact that they’re not bad makes the situation worse. It’s got the caramel, nougat, and chocolate. It sounds like a good combination, but it fails. First of all, ditch the caramel. Caramel sucks. If you rid Milky Ways of the caramel, you would get a 3 Musketeers bar. That would be an enormous improvement, but it probably wouldn’t make much business sense to release two of the exact same products. Or you could say, even though you would be wrong, that caramel doesn’t suck. Fine, but you’d still need to add something else, to get rid of the texture blandness. You could add peanuts, but then you would have Snickers. So I guess we have to leave the Milky Way bar alone. And that’s why it gets classified as “candy I would never buy from a vending machine, unless the only other choices were Beechnut gum, Lotsa Fizz, and Chuckles.”
4) Saf-T-Pops
Basically, these are plain lollipops, which are lame to begin with, with a “safety” handle. Instead of a regular stick, the handle is a loop. First of all, anyone that isn’t physically capable of using a normal handle probably shouldn’t be eating hard candy. It’s a choking hazard, and a poor candy choice for impatient youngsters. They’re likely to chip a tooth. Plus it ruins the whole Riverdale bad ass look of having a lollipop in your mouth, with the lump in your cheek and the stick poking out.
3) Good and Plenty
Man, talk about one of your all time misnomers. I can officially say that “Good” is way down at the bottom of the list of words I would use to describe this candy. “Plenty,” well, they got that right, since there will be plenty of this crap left over once they realize it tastes like black licorice. The packaging is fairly devious as well. Usually, when a candy is black licorice flavored, it is plastered everywhere, giving fair warning to all consumers. The Good and Plenty package has “licorice candy” written in purple ink… on a purple box.
And at least most black licorice candies have the decency to not hang out in the good candy section, and usually sticks to the weird movie theatre candy, or in the 99 cent bags. Good and Plenty has the audacity to sit right next to the likes of Mamba and Twizzlers. Although Twizzlers is guilty of making a black licorice version, but at least with them, there is no mistaking what is inside. Speaking of Good and Plenty, when the hell did they stop making Good and Fruity? Those were delicious. Stupid candy companies always canceling the wrong product.
2) Pennies
Yes, I know, this isn’t even close to being candy. It doesn’t matter. Everyone has gotten repeated doses of pennies, and no matter how many times it happens, it never gets any easier. You never get numb to the fact that some wretched neighbor has put so little effort into Halloween that they are reduced to giving out whatever they have in their pocket at the time, or digging from their giant Poland Spring bottle full of change. I had a neighbor that would carefully measure out a teaspoon of pennies to give to me. She couldn’t even make it a tablespoon? And for those of you thinking, hey it might seem like just pennies, but those pennies add up. No, they don’t. The amount of time you waste waiting for someone to distribute the pennies, you are wasting valuable time that could be used to collect legitimate candy from more respectable households.
Pennies also represent a dangerous trend. Once pennies becomes accepted as a giveaway, more and more ridiculous crap will flood the Trick or Treating marketplace. People have already attempted to make toothbrushes, activity pads, and spider rings acceptable, and I refuse to allow it. However, once pennies are given the go ahead, these other fringe novelties will be next. And, after that, there is no telling what will come next. In ten years, we will be a nation reduced to accepting AOL CDs, hotel soap bars, and empty cans for the bottle deposit. I am not having any of that. I am thinking of a way to combine the two lamest elements of Halloween, and turn them into a force of good. If you are given pennies, just disperse them all over the house’s walkway. This can be a new international sign for the shaving cream kids that this particular house needs a healthy spray of Barbasol. Spread the word.
1) Circus Peanuts
Do they even give these away on Halloween? I don’t actually know. It doesn’t matter anyway; any list that has the words “worst” and “candy” in it must contain Circus Peanuts. There are so many things wrong with them. First of all, the name is confusing. Actual circus peanuts are, well, peanuts, and even these can go either way. Peanuts are, of course, good, but peanuts still in the shell? Forget it. They’re not worth it. You crack them open and get the peanut shrapnel all over you, then you have to deal with that weird brown skin surrounding the actual peanut. Are you supposed to eat that part? There’s something overtly amniotic about it. Forget peanuts.
The name Circus Peanuts implies something that could be good, but is just too aggravating to be worth it. Even worse, it turns out that Circus Peanuts have nothing to do with anything. They’re just giant orange puffs in the general shape of a peanut. It looks like Mr. Peanut without his exoskeleton. As for the taste, oh man, I can’t even describe them. The taste is equivalent to having splinters shoved under your fingernails while someone stretches the opening of a full balloon, and it’s making that “RHEEEEEEEEEEEEE” noise. And that isn’t even getting into the creepy texture. Ugh, that’s it. I’m through talking about these things. God damned Circus Peanuts. They make me so angry.
There have been so many movies I have considered talking about, due to how amazingly bad they are. However, it really isn’t interesting to read only about how bad something is. This is why I only talk about the best kind of movies, movies that are the perfect blend of total awfulness and total awesomeness.
This brings us to the topic at hand: “Street Fighter” the movie. I have always loved this movie, but was never quite sure of a few things. Is the movie supposed to be like this on purpose, or was it simply a wonderful accident that it turned out so terribly? Do the majority of the people who like this movie enjoy it because they think it is a legitimately good movie, or because it is an astoundingly entertaining bad movie? And, somewhat tastelessly, but it must be addressed, is Raul Julia buried in the M. Bison uniform? These are questions that need to be answered. And since most people can’t be bothered to devote the free time needed to answer these questions, I guess I will be the one to do it.
As far as the story behind the movie, it’s based on the video game Street Fighter 2. It was a fun game with good graphics for the time, where the basic premise is two opponents beat the hell out of each other. It was strange that the name of the movie itself wasn’t Street Fighter 2, since the original game Street Fighter was awful and no one liked it. I guess if the movie was given the out of nowhere “2” suffix, it would have seemed like a blatant rip off of Leonard Part 6; except, of course, for the fact that Leonard Part 6 is missing one important factor that Street Fighter has. That factor being, of course, the previously mentioned total awesomeness.
I really don’t want to give any more of an introduction, because I want to jump right into action.
The story starts out in the made up country of Shadaloo. It is in the middle of a civil war, with General M. Bison on one side, and something else on the other side.
As you can tell from the art based on the video game, the casting of Raul Julia as Bison is nothing short of genius.
A reporter named Chun Li is talking about the battle between Bison and the Allied Nations army, which I assume is like the European Union for poor people. Bison has taken sixty people hostage, both civilians and from the army. His demand for their release is twenty billion dollars. What? If you’re asking for something like that for only sixty people, you might as well load the executing guns right away, because there is no way in hell any government is going to pay $20 billion for sixty people. They might spend $20 billion to kill sixty people, but definitely not to save them.
The leader of the Allied Nations (AN) army, Colonel (pronounced “kernel,” not “colon-al” as I originally thought it was,) Guile arrives on the scene Chun Li is reporting from. Guile refuses to comment about the war, but decides to address Bison instead. Keep in mind, this part actuallyhappens; it was scripted, filmed, released to the public, and everything. Facing the camera, Guile says, “I know you like to look at yourself on television, you sick son of a bitch, so take a look at THIS, HI YAH!” Then he makes a karate chop arm muscle pose. ON INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION.
Also, since Guile is played by everyone’s favorite All American, Jean Claude Van Damme, none of his lines are spoken clearly. “Son of a bitch” becomes “sunuffbeach.” And so on.
Guile also decides to totally screw up his friend Carlos Blanka’s life by yelling that they were “coming to save Charlie.” So, of course, Bison figures out who Charlie is and decides to make him the subject of a genetic experiment. Good grief.
We then go on to meet the next of the main characters, Ryu and Ken. They arrive in a giant warehouse type building, where some hardcore street fighting is going on. Except it’s indoors, not in the street. Also, it’s in a cage. We then go on to meet the next of the main characters, Ryu and Ken. They arrive in a giant warehouse type building, where some hardcore cage fighting is going on.
They are going to meet Sagat, who is in charge of a local gun running organization. They are doing this, because they are selling guns to Sagat, which makes sense. That is a good reason for someone to meet with a gun runner. See, this movie has a great plot. Ryu and Ken were trying to screw over Sagat; however Sagat pulled the ol’ switcheroo and screwed them over. The ol’ switcheroo meaning Ken and Ryu get jumped by a gang. They are able to beat up the gang, and seem ready to make their escape. However, they are surprised when the gang subdues them with some guns that the gun runner Sagat had lying around.
Back in Bison’s fortress, we learn that Charlie is currently undergoing some mind warping, courtesy of some Clockwork Orange-esque video watching. They are trying to turn him into the perfect soldier, first by showing him looped clips of random violence. I guess that is supposed to screw up his mind, to make him want to kill. I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know if that actually works. They are then going to mutate him, using some Kool Aid looking liquids, which are actually DNA Mutagens and Anabolic Plasma. Don’t ask me how I know what they are, it’s a secret.
Back at the fighting warehouse, Sagat is making Ryu fight the local champion, Vega.
Vega would be a pretty badass fighter, since he wears a mask, has long metal claws on one of his hands, and has a giant snake tattoo. The badass factor is somewhat dimmed by the fact that Vega appears to be either a flaming homosexual, an extremely effeminate straight man, or a buff woman. Vega, incidentally, was always my favorite character in the video game. This might have been the first in a long line of effeminate people that I am interested in, including Davey Havok and Morrissey.
The fight is interrupted by Guile driving a tank into the warehouse. This also serves as a good analogy of the subtleness of Van Damme’s acting ability. He arrests everyone in the warehouse, which results, as arrests sometimes do, with everyone in jail.
Sagat has wasted no time taking charge of the prison. And judging by the way they are standing together, he also has wasted no time making Vega his prison boyfriend. Ken and Ryu get jumped again, this time by literally every single prisoner, except Sagat. They also manage to beat up every single prisoner, except Sagat.
Guile gets the idea to infiltrate Sagat’s organization, in order to follow Sagat to Bison. He solicits Ken and Ryu to help him out, but they don’t want anything to do with it. Ryu asks to leave, and Guile replies with a big grin that the only way they are leaving is over his dead body. Ryu and Ken then give each other one of those confused sitcom “Whaaaa?” stares, and the scene awkwardly ends.
The next day, while being transported, Ryu and Ken initiate a prison break by hijacking the prison truck. Sagat and Vega come along for the ride, along with some of the movie’s extras. Guile attempts to stop the prison break, but Ken shoots him. Chun Li, who is allowed to be on the scene for some reason, plants a homing device on the getaway truck, in hopes of catching it later. She then reports the tragic news that Guile has died. Bison sees this, and gets all emotional about it, saying how he wanted to meet Guile on the battlefield. He also bugs his eyes out a lot, and sticks his ears out as well. Although the ears are more of a biological thing than acting; I can’t tell about the eyes.
After noticing that the getaway truck has two homing devices planted on it, Chun Li, E. Honda and Balrog, get suspicious. So Chun Li does what anyone would do in her situation, she breaks into the AN headquarters.
After sneaking inside, she makes her way to the morgue, and tries to cop a feel off of Guile’s corpse. Guile sits up, makes an awful joke, and reveals to Chun Li what had happened. He had recruited Ken and Ryu, and staged the whole getaway and shooting, with the help of some prop blood packs to simulate his bullet wounds.
Guile then attempts to arrest Chun Li, but she escapes and goes with her team to find Bison. They arrive at Bison’s camp, somehow learn how to put on a magic show, somehow introduce themselves to Bison, and then put on said magic show. Chun Li’s plans go awry when she sees Ken and Ryu, and realize that she can’t blow up the camp with them inside it. Oh yeah, Chun Li plans to blow up the camp.
While Chun Li is off trying to get Ken and Ryu out of there, Bison and Sagat talk business. When Sagat opens the briefcase that contains his payment, he is less than pleased. That is because he is being paid in Bison dollars, which is something of a more liquid form of Disney Dollars. Sagat starts arguing with Bison, which leads to the crowd being split into two sides, Bison’s and Sagat’s, ready to fight. They stand there, ready to go at each other, until they hear noise coming from a closet. This noise is a prerecorded video of Chun Li explaining to Bison that his weapons are about to get blown up. Because when you are destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars of merchandise belonging to someone who could have you and anyone that looks like you murdered, you want to give him a video of yourself declaring that you did it. And if you are going to do that, you might want to, you know, leave first.
During this part, another legitimately funny line is given by Bison’s Russian henchman Zangief. When they are watching the video of the explosive truck coming towards their camp, Zangief yells, “Quick, change the channel!” At least the writer of the movie knew one recipe for guaranteed laughs: stupid foreign people.
So, Chun Li and her team are taken prisoner, thanks partly to the fact that Ken ratted them out. They all leave the camp, and go to Bison’s fortress. Apparently Bison and Sagat have kissed and made up, possibly literally, which would explain why Vega appears to be in such a bad mood.
From there, we move to the AN headquarters, where the army is planning an attack on the fortress. The plan is to drive a single boat “with the latest in stealth technology” to sneak in. This scene is extra awesome because the only two people who have dialogue in it are Guile and someone named Charlie, neither of who can speak any sort of clear English. Guile of course has the Van Damme effect going, where what he speaks sounds like the English language going through the Ronco Food Dehydrator, then soaked in bourbon, then being spit out. Charlie, on the other hand, has no problematic accent, he just really seems to not be able to remember his lines.
When the army is about to leave, Guile is told by a government agent that the attack is off. The government is planning on paying off Bison. Huh. I guess I was wrong about that. Anyway, Guile doesn’t seem too happy about giving up on the attack, and letting Bison get away with it. He then steps up to the podium, which is always a recipe for excellence with Van Damme, and goes on to deliver the most emotionally charged, inspirational speech ever. It’s true.
So, the attack is back on.
Back in Bison’s fortress, Ken and Ryu are given their trademark red and white outfits by Zangief. We then learn why Chun Li hates Bison so much. She gives a ten minute story about how when Bison was just a petty drug dealer, he and his gang were driven out of Chun Li’s town by her father and a bunch of farmers. On the way out of town, Bison shot Chun Li’s father.
After this dramatic speech, Bison begins one of the more excellent bits of dialogue in the movie:
Chun Li: (long, emotional story)
Bison: “I’m sorry, I don’t remember any of it.”
Chun Li: (very shocked) “You don’t remember?”
Bison: “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me… it was Tuesday.”
Nice.
E. Honda and Balrog are able to escape from their cell, and jump Ken and Ryu. This doesn’t bother them too much, since they’ve been getting jumped the whole movie. But I guess that is to be expected when you appear in a movie with the word “fighter” in it. However, they reconcile pretty quickly, and decide it’s time to start the climax of the movie.
Bison and Chun Li keep talking, until Chun Li breaks out of her handcuffs and then begins beating the crap out of Bison. She gets distracted when the four guys come running in, and Bison is able to escape to some secret chamber. He then gasses the five of them, and bugs his eyes out extra far in celebration.
By now, the experiments done to Charlie have made him unrecognizable. He is now huge, with green skin and a giant mane of orange hair. This is the version of Blanka that is familiar to those that have played the game, except for the fact that in the game he looked cool, but looks ridiculously stupid in the movie. The head doctor working on Blanka, whose name is Dhalism, finally decides to man up and halt the experiment. Then, instead of feeding him images of violence and war, he switches the feed to show Blanka images of weddings, dolphins, and babies. Apparently Dhalsim is trying to turn Blanka into the strongest unwed thirty five year old woman ever.
We then go to the river, where Guile is knocking out the radars, so the rest of the boats can attack. That is, until Bison starts releasing mines into the water, thanks to the help of his Street Fighter II arcade joystick. Guile realizes the situation isn’t looking too good, so he decides they should abandon ship. No one in Bison’s fortress notices this, so when the boat blows up, they all think they died. This results in a vulgar lack of subtlety by Bison, who shouts “Game over!”
One of Bison’s henchmen discovers what Dhalsim is up to, and attacks him. This results in one of my favorite movie linesever. The goon says to Dhalsim, “So you think you’re smart, eh? Let’s see how smart you are when you’renot breathing!” Dhalsim gets knocked around, and winds up getting the mutagens spilled on him. Blanka then escapes, and tosses the henchman around.
After breaking in, Guile gets attacked by Blanka. Guile somehow recognizes him, and convinces him that he is his friend. Blanka asks Guile to help him, and Guile says he will. So, naturally, Guile picks up his gun and is about to shoot Blanka in the head. Gee, thanks for the help, jackass. Guile doesn’t get to finish “helping” Blanka, because Dhalsim interrupts him.
Since Bison never received his $20 billion, he is going to execute his hostages. However, instead of executing them normally, he is going to have “his creation” Blanka do it. But when Blanka’s chamber is raised, it isn’t Blanka who comes out of it, it is Guile. Actually, let me be more specific. It is Guile, who comes out doing flying karate kicks at Bison.
As soon as this happens, the Street Fighter really hits the fan. Bison’s guards, who look like the love children of the Imperial Guards from Star Wars and HISS Drivers from GI Joe, start firing everywhere. Bison commands them to shoot the hostages, but they are thwarted by Guile’s closing of the hostages’ prison door.
All of the important prisoners, the ones who have already had speaking lines in the movie, escape, and start to fight the HISS Guards. Everyone either punches or kicks at other people, or they shoot at other people. That sentence covers about twenty minutes of screen time.
Eventually, the two sides come to a standstill, and their respective leaders begin trash talking each other. I discovered that the trash talk lines that are used in the video game sound cool only when used within the context of a video game. When the lines are spoken by human beings, they sound ridiculous.
Another poor video game to movie translations is the characters’ special moves. Guile starts doing flash kicks, which are essentially kicks in a back flip, Ryu is throwing fireballs, and Bison is doing a horizontal flying attack. In the game, all of these moves are impressive and deadly. In real life, they look kind of odd. Ryu’s fireball, besides being completely random in the context of the movie, looks more like he’s taking a flash picture with his hands than shooting anything out. When attempting to take a screen cap of his fireball, I discovered that the special effects were even more special than I had thought. Instead of using ANY type of computer animation for the fireball, all that happens is the entire screen goes white. That’s it. This is his fireball, frame by frame:
Bison’s flying attack in the game moves quickly, which makes it a good attack. In the movie, he sort of hovers towards Guile; the speed at which Bison flies would give Guile enough time to go online to a video game web site and read up on how to win the fight. And Guile’s flash kick is, well actually it’s pretty cool. So we’ll leave that one alone.
Meanwhile, Ken and Ryu proceed to kick Vega and Sagat’s asses mercilessly.
During Guile and Bison’s battle, Bison starts doing all kind of random things. He starts flying everywhere, with his glowing boots. He also shoots lightning out of his hand, in either a nod to the Emperor from Star Wars or a complete rip off of it. When Bison does another one of his “flying at the speed of public transportation” attacks at Guile, he winds up getting spin kicked in the face. This results in Bison flying into a group of TV screens and blowing up. Guile, of course is ready with another Van Damme gem, “Bison, you’re off the air.”
By the way, Honda and Zangief have been fighting. Honda stops fighting to help get the hostages out, which leaves Zangief to talk to another one of Bison’s goons, the Jamaican Dee Jay. Zangief yells at Dee Jay for running away, to which Dee Jay explains that Bison is actually a complete jerk. Dee Jay tries to explain that Bison had been paying him a ton of money to stick around, but now that Bison was gone, so was he. To this, Zangief replies, “You got… paid?” I told you, he’s awesome.
While this is going on, the army is trying to help the hostages escape before the building blows up. Oh yeah, when Bison blew up, it screwed something up which means everything is going to blow up soon. Anyway, the emergency exit gate is rapidly closing, and it becomes apparent that the army and the hostages aren’t going to make it out on time. That is, until Zangief comes and saves the day, by holding the door open for them.
Guile tries to rescue Blanka and Dhalsim, but they aren’t going anywhere. Blanka doesn’t want to go back to society looking like a freak, which is understandable. Dhalsim is going to stay with Blanka, as some sort of self-inflicted punishment upon himself. Guile questions this, since Dhalsim said he didn’t do anything to hurt Blanka, and that it was Bison’s forces that did it. To this, Dhalsim replies “If good men do nothing, that is evil enough.” Awwwww. That’s one Oscar Wilde – type refrigerator magnet quote right there
Outside the fortress, everyone has gathered to escape the explosion. Everyone, that is, except for Guile. When the fortress explodes, everyone gets concerned, since Guile is their ride home.
Sagat and Dee Jay have made their way outside, carting a giant crate full of money. However, when they open the crate, they discover it is full of Bison dollars. That’ll teach you to think crime pays. Sagat can’t even sell them on eBay to collectors of memorabilia from the movie, since there are probably only three of them.
Then, back at the army’s gathering point, Guile has returned! YAY! He gets mad props from all his main men and women, and delivers a few more jokes that are more painful than crotch punches.
Then suddenly, the fortress explodes, which prompts all of the characters to jump up and do their victory pose from the video game. I know I’ve mentioned other examples of this, and I KNOW I shouldn’t have to point it out in this instance, but this is just another tragic example of the video game translating poorly to live action.
So, there you have it: Street Fighter the movie. That wasn’t so bad, was it? No, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was great. Despite the fact that everything associated with it is awful, the movie stands strong. I have already discussed the intricacies of the game based on the movie, way over there.
When I was looking online for merchandise based on the movie besides the game and the action figures, I found some eBay auctions for the video game. I knew the game came out in the arcade, but I forgot which consoles it came out for. Apparently, it came out for the Sega Saturn. This has to be something of a tough sell. First of all, I can’t imagine the demand for the game itself to be too great, even with all of the kitsch demand. More importantly, who the hell owns a Saturn? It sold about a hundred units when it was first introduced, and I would assume the majority of those have stopped working by now.
There were also GI Joe figures made based on the movie. There were also ones made that were based on the game, and not the movie, so I don’t really know what’s going on with that. The only other cool merchandise I found was a trading card set, with a full ninety cards. It was $10 on eBay, and normally that would be a slam dunk purchase for me, but something told me not to buy it. I feel that if I bought it, and made someone else lose, that I would be acting very selfish. I know that if I bought it, I wouldn’t use it to wallpaper my room, and that would be wrong. So, hopefully someone more deserving will win that auction.
My advice to everyone is to go to their local Best Buy and pick this up on DVD for $5.99. Or you can also go on Amazon and buy it for $10, which is what I recommend doing. If you pay four dollars and one cent more for it, it means you will get that much more out of the movie. Of course, I’d probably also recommend dying your skin green and your hair orange, so take what you will from my advice.
I was going to make the opening sentence to this, “I hate KISS.” But then it got me wondering if I really do. I mean, obviously the music is terrible; that goes without saying. However, KISS does wind up being associated with some great things, like Beavis and Butthead video clips. Actually, I think that is the only good thing they are associated with.
Ahem.
I hate KISS.
Actually, is it “KISS” or just “Kiss”? The big neon signs at their concerts always spell it with capital letters, but nothing else seems to spell it that way. Normally, I would think that anything giant and glowing would have to be correct, but given the fact that holding down the shift key for four letters is annoying, I am going to go with Kiss.
Kiss always seemed cool when I was a kid. There were the costumes, which looked cool to a child. So basically, they were these evil warrior guys playing heavy metal. Kiss also had a bad ass reputation, because when I was younger, my parents were big into how music was evil. They read up on back masking, and all of that stuff. One thing that caused a big controversy was that Kiss supposedly stood for “Knights in Satin’s Service.” You have to understand, this was a time when it was not acceptable for men to display effeminate traits, so dressing in women’s fabrics was viewed as being evil.
I remember the first time I heard a Kiss song. It was during Beavis and Butthead, the one where Butthead goes, “Whoa, that dude’s got a comb in his back pocket.” The video was for that I love it loud song. Needless to say, any preconceived opinions I had of the band went out the window. They went from being metal warriors to soldiers in the army of fruit rock.
My fascination with Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park goes back a while. I was watching TV with my goth friend Dersh, when something came on VH1 about the movie. I don’t know why we were watching VH1, maybe this was back when Pop Up Video was still on. Anyway, I don’t remember anything about the show, except when they showed a certain clip from the movie. Gene Simmons yells, “STAR CHILD,” which is followed up by Paul Stanley shooting an orange star beam from his eye.
Since that fateful night, there has been something of a void inside me. My inability to fully understand what was going on in that scene left me feeling empty. Are Kiss (or is it “Is Kiss”?) supposed to have magic powers in real life, or was this something that was made up for the movie with no explanation? Or, even worse, were their magic powers EXPLAINED in the movie, and I am left out of the loop?
My fascination with the scene faded in time, save for the occasional outburst of “STAR CHILD!” at random points. Then, while perusing a site that lists multimedia files that, theoretically, are available for download, I came across the movie. My reaction to seeing it listed was similar to the reaction you would get if you saw a dinosaur on your front lawn. At first you see it, and might just think, huh, a dinosaur. Then the double take occurs, where you realize just what you are seeing, then the mixed reactions of excitement and fear.
Yes, fear. I was worried, what if the movie wasn’t totally awesome? What if “STAR CHILD!” was taken completely out of context, and it was part of a lame dream sequence? What if, for some horrible reason, “STAR CHILD!” wasn’t even in the movie at all?????
So while I waited for the movie to download, I pondered these possibilities. I also wondered about the really important question: would the movie be just bad, or would it be bad in the best possible way?
So here it is. No more introductions, no more beating around the bush: Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.
The movie starts off with a montage of amusement park rides and Kiss playing their instruments. They are playing the only Kiss song that I know about half of the words to, “I Want to Rock And Roll All Night And Party Every Day.” I don’t know when the song title ends.
This is also the first time I can remember hearing the studio version of this song in a long time, and it serves as a reminder that Kiss is not good at making music. Gene Simmons (bass/vocals/”The Demon”) doesn’t have a bad ass voice to go with his image. Paul Stanley (guitar/vocals/”Star Child”ß-YES!) at least looks like a fruit, so his womanly singing isn’t such a strange juxtaposition. But Gene should have a voice like the guy from Pantera, so it’s something of a letdown to hear him sing.
Also, my spell check suggested that Pantera should be spelled Pant era, which would have made a much more awesome name for the band.
After the intro, it cuts to a parade of some sort, and we learn that Kiss will be playing concerts at this amusement park, which happens to be Magic Mountain, for three nights in a row. The management is talking with security, about concerns over safety. Some are worried that their will be a riot, while the others assure them that the kids are only there to see their heroes. When I say, “which happens to be Magic Mountain,” it makes it seem like that is of some importance. It’s actually not.
The next five minutes consist solely of watching a couple on a roller coaster.
We then discover that this couple will probably be central characters, since they are given speaking lines, and more screen time in the opening ten minutes than Kiss. The guy works at the park, and the girl is his girlfriend. Or they just have a very cool friendship, going by their opened mouth kiss.
Then, the real stars of the movie are introduced; the denim clad, white trash biker comedy relief. They decide that the line for a ride is too long, so they just walk right to the front of it, and cut the line. They are forced out, so they console themselves by taking a beverage right from someone’s hand, and drinking it. Awesome.
Next, we see a group of teenagers making a human pyramid in the park, for no apparent reason. I have about a hundred things in my head that I could say about this, but I can’t narrow it down to just one. So I will just say that right after they get the pyramid set up, the previously mentioned denim trio walks over, and kicks the arm out of the lowest pyramid guy, causing the entire thing to collapse. I don’t know how wise it was of Kiss to have this trio in their movie, since they have already shown themselves to be infinitely more entertaining than the band itself.
The trio is then scolded by a creepy man. When they ask who he is, the owner of the park comes up and explains that the creepy man built the entire park. And if they can’t behave themselves, he threatens “You’ll be out of this park before you get in.” Despite the fact that they’re standing… in the middle of the park. Oh well, chalk that up to minor editing glitch.
In the meantime, the boyfriend from before, whose name is probably Tom, wanders onto what appears to be the set of the movie The Black Hole, a movie I’m never actually sure existed or not. He bumbles around, and eventually falls through a trap door. Followed by an amazing segue featuring a log flume.
Creepy Guy and the owner of the park then walk around discussing budgets for the park. Creepy Guy complains he needs more money for research and development of his rides, while the owner says he doesn’t have enough money to give him. This goes on for a few minutes, but I’m actually surprised this scene didn’t go on for longer. Because if there is one thing the average Kiss fan can’t get enough of, it’s budget discussions.
Creepy Guy keeps referring to “his work,” and old guy continues to call Kiss “the biggest band in the world.” These two phrases are repeated about three hundred times in the movie. From this conversation, we learn that the rides that Creepy Guy has recently developed have been malfunctioning. Creepy Guy refutes this, whining that you should never argue science with a book keeper. Apparently you should also never argue against tourists’ deaths with a ride designer.
Denim trio continue to cause havoc in the park. This time the main denim man, Chopper, is dry humping an animatronic gorilla, and then proceeds to punch the gorilla in the stomach. And for anyone that knows me more personally, it now becomes evident where I learn all my love techniques from.
Soon, a Scrambler type ride begins to spin out of control. The ride is going about eighty miles per hour, as you can tell from the sped up film. This malfunction is due to, you guessed it, Creepy Guy trying out experimental engines in the rides.
The girlfriend mentioned earlier eventually arrives at Creepy Guy’s office, looking for her boyfriend, who has gone missing. He allows her to enter his totally scientific office by activating the “elevator mechanism” which is an, uh, elevator. Creepy Guy then shows her around his lab / office / movie set. He introduces her to the androids he has created, which are clearly humans standing as still as they can. There is then an inexplicable barbershop quartet song.
Finally, Creepy Guy makes her leave, because he notices that the denim trio is making their way into the fun house that he designed. He then announces that the denim trio has arrived, to his army of people standing very still. He also announces this to the missing boyfriend, who is under the control of Creepy Guy, thanks to a conspicuously bleeping and flashing device attached to his neck.
Chopper is wandering around the fun house, smoking a cigarette. A family is unhappy with this, and tells him that he isn’t allowed to smoke in there. To which Chopper replies with the most amazing comeback ever: “I’ll smoke you!” Then, one by one, the gang is captured by Creepy Guy, and they are sent through a tube while a “blooooooodododooop“ sound effect plays.
At this point, since we all have seen how well balanced Creepy Guy is, the worst possible thing to happen to the park would be if they upset him. And, of course, Creepy Guy is fired ten minutes later. Despite his protests of “What about my work?” mentioning his “creations” about eleven times, the owner of the park remains steadfast in his decision. Bye bye, Creepy Guy. Luckily, they are able to part on good terms. “You will regret this day,” Creepy Guy says on his way out.
By this point, it has become rather obvious that Creepy Guy is the titular Phantom, so from now on, he will be referred to as the Phantom, since it requires less typing. So, we have been introduced to the Phantom, now where the hell is Kiss?
Oh, what’s that coming over the park’s PA system? MEAN GUITAR LICKS! That can only mean one thing… Kiss is getting ready. According to the announcement, all the generators are running, and the stage is at full power. Because pumping the music of Kiss at anything short of full power would be unacceptable.
And, just in case you were wondering what the Phantom was up to, he is back in his lab. Apparently being fired doesn’t mean having to go home right away. I remember the last time I got fired from a job, they wouldn’t even let me punch in that day. Granted, on a job satisfaction survey that was sent to the top management, I said that I hated customers, but come on. At least I didn’t sit in the security booth, watching the customers on the monitors, yelling “I will destroy you, all of you!”
Finally, after a full half hour into the movie, Kiss decides to make an appearance. They are playing a concert at the amusement park. They open with some song that I have never heard before. I would write down some of the lyrics, but I can’t remember any of them. I was too entranced by Paul Stanley’s chest hair.
Actually, I think I have heard this song before. It’s that “Shout it out loud” song. I’d probably recognize a good amount of Kiss’s songs by their choruses. During the verses, however, I have no idea. I also wish Gene Simmons didn’t have giant holes cut out of the thighs of his pants.
As Kiss is leaving the stage, towards a huge crowd, the Phantom sends the kidnapped boyfriend, whose name turned out to be Sam (I was close) to take pictures of Kiss. The security is holding back the crowd, insisting that only press people are allowed in. I guess “press” means “holding a camera,” since Sam has no problem getting up close to the band.
Sam’s girlfriend, who I think is named Melissa, although IMDB is very cryptic about it, spots Sam taking pictures, and tries to run over to him. Since she doesn’t appear to be holding a camera, security rushes to stop her. She protests, saying she needs to talk to him. Kiss notices her distress, and Gene Simmons utters the aforementioned line, which is sure to go down in history as one of the most awesome movie lines ever… “STAR CHILD!”
Paul Stanley then blasts eye lasers at the girl, projecting a giant star onto her. In just the last five seconds, the movie has already gotten a hundred times more amazing. She then walks over to the band, and is told by Gene, “Your mind speaks to us.” Meanwhile, Paul’s eye continues to glow. So apparently the band has both physical and mental super powers. Huh. Later that night, some security guards are attacked by Gene Simmons. He breaks through a brick wall, breathes cartoon fire, and proceeds to throw all of them around.
The next day, security finds Kiss sitting in lifeguard’s chairs around the pool, inexplicably wearing cloaks. Security questions them, while Ace Frehley (Space Ace) and Peter Criss (Cat Man) crack wise. Apparently, Peter Criss was so drugged out of his mind while making the movie, they had to dub over his voice with a studio actor reading his lines. The voice of Peter Criss was done by the same guy who did the voice of Aquaman on Super Friends. This makes sense, since both characters are the lamest one in the group. The dubbing of the voice is somewhat surprising though, since Peter looks fairly normal, or at least as normal as one can look while wearing cat face paint. Ace is the one who I would assume was stoned the whole time, every line he says is squeaked out in a ridiculous falsetto.
Kiss also refers to each other by their stage persona names while talking to each other, even when no one else is around. In regards to the security questioning, the following dialogue actually occurs:
Peter: “I wonder who could have done it.”
Paul: “Good question, Cat Man. What do you compute, Space Ace?”
Ace: “Insufficient data at the moment Star Child.”
Peter: “We better look into it.”
Gene: growl
Gene growls a lot in the movie, because he is “The Demon,” and demons are apparently known for growling. Also, every time he speaks, his words are accompanied by more blooping noises, which makes it almost impossible to understand what he is saying half the time.
The band then takes Melissa to their swinging pad, to show her their talismans. These are objects that give the band their powers, otherwise they would just be “ordinary human beings.” To which Gene replies, “Not quite ordinary,” Uh, alright. At least he went one scene without growling.
Kiss then has their nightly concert, only this time I definitely have never heard this song before. After the concert, the band sits around a fountain, serenading Melissa with a performance of “Beth,” which is a Kiss song I actually have heard before. I remember this mostly because it is one of the worst songs I have ever heard. It is an acoustic song, sung by Peter. It really sounds like one of those songs you would hear being recorded at Six Flags, in the booth where you can make your own music video. The song is so bad, even Melissa gets up and leaves. The band finishes the song, because I guess they still like performing it even after playing it at the past hundred or so concerts. I’m sure Peter is just glad he has the opportunity to sing in public, given his lack of “being born with a good voice.”
While Kiss is singing around the fountain, Sam is rummaging through Kiss’s room, looking for the talismans. He tries to take them, but gets shocked when he tries to pick one up. Kiss returns and discovers than someone has been trying to take the talismans, so they leave in search of the culprit.
The band then proceeds to get into a terribly uninteresting fight with a bunch of animatronic animal people. Paul Stanley makes a lot of faces like these:
Then, after this fight, they get into a fight with animatronic karate fighters. These two scenes make up two of the least interesting fight scenes ever. The biggest downside to the action is that there is less of the awesome dialogue.
We then cut to the Phantom ordering Sam to return to get the talisman (talismans?) He gives Sam a hair dryer-resembling ray gun to use “in case,” and demonstrates its awesome power by using it to blow up an object on a desk. Sam then goes back to Kiss’s room, and uses the ray gun to neutralize the protective force field. Huh? Why didn’t the gun blow up the talisman like it did to the desk? Bah.
Kiss, meanwhile, take a breather while sitting on a carousel. Suddenly, the carousel starts, which freaks out the band, because who would ever expect a carousel to start spinning around? They get off the carousel, and head to the Chamber of Horrors. And that, hopefully, is the ideal location for the CLIMAX.
The band gets jumped by a bunch of movie monsters, which leads to more growling and cartoon fire breathing from Gene. UNTIL, that is, the Phantom uses his ray gun to destroy the talisman, and stop the animation of Gene’s fire from working. Kiss then proceeds to get their collective asses handed to them, which leads Gene to shout threatening remarks to the Phantom. Which, in return, leads the Phantom to say this. We all win when things like this happen.
The movie continues, which leads me to believe that the last scene wasn’t the climax. The next day, the crowd is on the verge of rioting, since there has been no appearance from the band so far. Oh, this is why: they’re locked in a cell made of, you guessed it, animated laser bars.
The reason the Phantom had Sam take all of those pictures of the band before was so that he could make animatronic versions of Kiss. The fake band members then take the stage for the evening’s concert. The band comes out and sings a song, typical Kiss music. Something, however, is wrong. The crowd is booing, and appears very unhappy with the performance. It’s either because of how it’s being performed, or lyrics being changed, or something. The odd thing is, until the crowd’s reaction, I had no idea this bad performance was out of the ordinary for Kiss. I figured this is how they normally sounded.
Anyway, the Phantom had the fake Kiss change the lyrics to one of their songs to try to make the crowd tear the park apart. And, since Kiss suggested it, the crowd begins to do just that. “Let’s tear this place down,” one crowd member declares.
Meanwhile, Kiss apparently still has magic powers, as they are able to levitate the box containing their talisman into the cage with them. I guess the ray gun didn’t destroy them. Hm.
Outside, the crowd is going insane, threatening to destroy the entire park. That is, until the REAL Kiss flies out of the sky to attack the fake Kiss. The crowd doesn’t seem confused in the least by this, and just cheers the fight on.
The fight, like all of the other fights in the movie, sucks. For some reason, fake Kiss explodes, which leaves just the real Kiss on stage. And, after all that fighting, there is still one important task left: ROCKING OUT.
“Are you ready for the real Kiss,” Paul asks.
Hell yes.
Kiss then plays the Rock and Roll All Night song. After the show, Kiss, Melissa, and the park owner go to the Phantom’s lab, to try to turn Sam back to normal. Paul uses his magic talisman powers to spot the flashing metal object on Sam’s neck, and uses his magic talisman powers to realize that this isn’t something that is normally on one’s neck. After it is taken off, Sam wakes up and there is much happiness.
The Phantom’s fate is then revealed: he has frozen himself into one of his own robot creations. Although this effect is somewhat ruined by the fact that he is clearly blinking. “He created Kiss to destroy Kiss, and he lost,” the park owner declares.
If there is one lesson to take away from this movie, that is it. Do not try to create Kiss. Do not try to destroy Kiss. And, most important of all, never try to create Kiss in order to destroy Kiss… because you will lose.
There are few things as amazing as being in a supermarket at 2 AM. I should clarify that by specifying that I am talking about your typical 24 hour supermarket. These are the types of stores that when you go in the middle of the night, are very quiet and empty. There are a few customers, some wandering in basically pajamas, coming in just to grab some forgotten essential. Beyond them, there is pretty much no one in the store. So if I happen to go there with a friend in the middle of the night, we are pretty much by ourselves, free to reenact Career Opportunities. Ideally, that friend would be female.
Luckily, I do not live near any of those types of 24 hour supermarkets. They can be useful, but they are a bit too bland. Luckily, I live near a 24 hour supermarket where the environment is less similar to a supermarket, and more similar to Tijuana. Luckily, I live near Pathmark.
Since this site, for some reason, is read by people around the country, I should explain Pathmark’s story. As there are always a few exceptions to anything, I’m sure some Pathmarks that are actually very nice supermarkets. That being said, the one near me is definitely not one of them. I’m sure there is something like this near you. Be it a Piggly Wiggly, a Kroger, or whatever the hell it is you non-New Yorkers shop at, there are rogue supermarkets everywhere.
Nobody expects a supermarket to be perfect. All day long, brown boxes full of products ready to be placed on shelves sit in the middle of an aisle. Normally, this happens in only a few aisles, and employees do their best to keep the boxes out of the customers’ way. And, unfortunately, there aren’t always enough registers open to keep up with the crowd.
None of this applies to Pathmark.
First of all, any time after midnight, there will almost never be more than one cashier open. Whether you have two items or a shopping cart full of them, you are waiting on the same line. And don’t expect to have the shopping cart people let you go ahead of them if you only have a few things. These are hardcore veterans, who know that if they let one person ahead of them, everyone behind them will want the same treatment. Or they’re just jerks.
And forget about a few isolated boxes. At night, the store turns into an Indiana Jones adventure. Cardboard boxes are strewn everywhere; no aisle is safe. It’s the most organized garage sale you will ever see.
Given all of that, every time I go to Pathmark late at night, I know something awesome is going to happen. And by awesome, I mean terrifically unfortunate at the time, but funny in retrospect. I had come home from a hockey game to discover that I had no milk; which, of course, won’t do. So I decided to make the five mile round trip journey to Pathmark, unshowered and disgusting. I figured it would be good camouflage; no one would bother me since they would see that I was one of them.
Since I only planned on getting a couple things, I didn’t grab a cart or a basket. Eventually, arms filled with items that I hadn’t planned on getting, I made my way to the register. Of course someone with a full cart was ahead of me, in the midst of being checked out. Somewhat unexpected was the fact that this person had neglected to bring any sort of payment. What this meant was that each item the man had, an entire shopping cart, needed to be voided off, item by item. This is no simple process, either. This involves scanning the item, then entering a piece of paper in the register every time. And of course, there was only one register available.
Since I had plenty of time before I would be rung up again, and my arms were growing tired from holding my awkwardly stacked mountain of food, I decided to wander around. It was then that I found this.
Frosty Paws, an ice cream for dogs.
I had actually purchased a box of these a long time ago, however they disappeared from my freezer. So this time I put them in a Ziploc bag with “DO NOT EAT” written on it. The fact that I have to write “do not eat” on a box of dog ice cream should speak volumes about the household that I live in, although that is beside the point.
The box describes it as a healthy replacement for ice cream. I am not a dog owner, so I am speaking with a bit of ignorance when I say this, but what the hell? Why does a dog alternative to ice cream need to exist? The box claims that dogs love Frosty Paws because it is cold, like real ice cream. Again, my lack of dog knowledge might be showing, but I don’t think dogs like ice cream because it is cold. I have a feeling it has to do more with the fact that it doesn’t taste like dog food. A dog will eat a cold steak or a warm fruit salad; it doesn’t give a damn about temperature, just so long as it is a change of pace from dog food.
And apparently dairy is bad for dogs. I knew cats were lactose intolerant, but I did not know that about dogs. This is because I have grown up on the image of milk being enjoyed by cats and dogs alike. You feed a kitten a saucer of milk, you give a dog a Milk Bone, so what’s going on? Campbell’s doesn’t name a soup Cream of Arsenic, so why name a product Milk Bone when the intended recipient can’t even drink milk?
The whole thing with dairy being bad for dogs is just strange. Even stranger is when I looked up Frosty Paws on Google. I got a bunch of sites with a “home made” recipe for it, and almost all of them invariably included vanilla yogurt as the main ingredient. Huh? One site listed the ingredients as honey, chicken broth, raisins, and peanut butter. Gross, yes, but at least that fits into the whole “dairy is bad” scheme. Although the site I got it from was written from the dog’s perspective, so I don’t know if I can trust a dog’s knowledge of the recipe.
Talking about the concept of Frosty Paws is one thing, but I had to know how they tasted. Stupid and disgusting, yes; but I knew avoiding it would compromise my journalistic integrity. So I sat down with a cup of it, favorite ice cream spoon in hand. Yes, I have a favorite ice cream spoon.
The thought entered my mind that it would be just as easy to throw some of it out, and take a picture of an empty cup, without ever having actually eaten it. But no, I had to. I had to know as much for my sake as yours.
Opening the cup, I had only one hope: that it doesn’t taste like dog food. I’ve never actually eaten dog food, but the smell is just so horrifying that I assume the taste is on par with it. I have eaten dog biscuits before, which really aren’t bad. I wouldn’t eat them as a snack, but if someone pays me a dollar to eat one, or has a dog biscuit eating contest, hell yeah, I’m in.
The ice cream didn’t smell like anything. Ice cream normally doesn’t really smell like anything, but the fact that there was no pungent or even faint dog food aroma was a good sign. I took the first bite, and braced for the worst. Luckily, it wasn’t bad at first; it just tasted like a dog biscuit. It’s not exactly Breyers, but it could be worse. Then, once the ice cream actually melts in your mouth, it starts to get worse. The initial cold temperature masks the flavor well; all you really taste is cold. Then, once the heat of your mouth warms it, it gets pretty bad. It tasted like what I would imagine a mother dog’s milk to taste like. Although I don’t spend too much time imagine what that would taste like, so that could be an inaccurate description.
I made it a few more bites in, but had to stop. I wanted to eat the whole thing, just to say I did, but couldn’t do it. The more bites I took, the stronger the aftertaste was getting. I also hadn’t thought to have a beverage in my room, so I had to leave and get some orange juice. Unfortunately, orange juice wasn’t the best follow up; it was kind of like the gross taste you get when you drink orange juice after brushing your teeth, only creamier.
The nutrition facts for each cup are seven grams of fat, 128 calories, 196 mg of sodium, and 9 grams of sugars. I couldn’t find the carb count for it, so I don’t know if Frosty Paws are Atkins approved. They do, however, have plenty of “Crude Protein.”
As a snack, I can not give Frosty Paws my seal approval. It is a shame, since I am a big fan of novelty foods. I also wish it tasted better, since it would be entertaining to eat dog ice cream at a party. Although this line of thinking is probably why I don’t get invited to many parties.
Even though I wasn’t a big fan of it, my cat seemed to somewhat like it. She took a few bites, and then ultimately decided that ice cream wasn’t her scene. I have ultimately decided that cats do not like food that isn’t room temperature. I once microwaved my cat’s food, and he was not pleased whatsoever.
So I give Frosty Paws a hesitant thumbs down, and I can’t really tell what the cat’s rating of it was. She did take a few bites, but that doesn’t indicate much. One of the other cats has eaten half of an almond joy bar, which indicates that this cat is much smarter, also because he was nowhere to be found when I was taste testing the Frosty Paws.
In conclusion, pass on the Frosty Paws, and cats are way better than dogs.
If this had come out a couple of weeks ago, I could have started this by saying, “A new article, it’s a Christmas miracle!” Instead, I just sort of reappear awkwardly. Ah well, why break tradition, I suppose. Well, the holidays are over, to the delight of many a parent, shopper, employee, or pretty much anyone. Maybe if the Christmas decorations in my mall didn’t go up mid-October, the season wouldn’t seem to last so damned long. Instead, we get to experience a nearly three month test of monetary endurance and emotional integrity. The holiday season claims many a victim.
I feel somewhat sorry for Jewish people during this season. They have to put up with the Christmas madness, and they don’t see any shred of a reward from it; aside from suing businesses that say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” but that’s beside the point. Actually wait, it wasn’t, it was quite related to the point. There just wasn’t much of a reason to say that, except the hope of rumor spreading that I run a hate site, thereby increasing the traffic here. Jeez, that probably isn’t the best method to go about bringing in visitors.
Anyway, the holiday season has come to an end, so I figured this would be the best time for you to read an article… about Christmas! Yay!
I’m not writing about Christmas exactly, rather a movie inspired by the Christmas season, which really seems to be quite an untapped market. You know, businesses really should start making some Christmas related products and events; I really think they’re missing out on a potential gold mine.
This movie will make you feel infinitely better about your life, and your holidays; if only for the reason that you were not involved with the making of this movie. Unless you actually were involved, in which case I guess there would be a much different reaction. That reaction would most likely be immense pride in the fact that you contributed to a movie that completely obliterates the line between a movie that is just bad, and a movie that is so amazingly bad it rises to an entirely new level of cinematic greatness.
By now, I’m sure there really is no question as to what movie I am referring to… there can be no other. This movie is Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2.
Sequels surpassing the original movies are very rare. Many of them were mentioned in “Scream2” (which wasn’t one of the previously mentioned kinds of sequel.) “Terminator2” and “Aliens” both rise about their predecessors, as does “Godfather 2.” Actually, I don’t know if it does; I haven’t seen any of the “Godfather” series. I just say I have to avoid the typical movie fan, “What?! You haven’t seen it? Oh my God you have to see it, you don’t know what you’re missing!” reaction.
The original “Silent Night, Deadly Night” actually has quite a strong cult following. It was unrated, due to extreme quantities of violence and nudity. Much of the said violence was committed by a man dressed as Santa Claus, so there are some valid reasons for the movie’s audience. Part 2 (or SNDN2, as it will be referred to from now on) also has a strong cult following, mainly consisting of a group of friends and myself. Our love for the movie is based on completely different reasons, however, most of them revolving around how flat out awful every aspect of the movie truly is.
One of the hardest parts of making a sequel is trying to give background information from the first movie, in order to accommodate viewers who never saw the original. The director of SNDN2 was smart, and knew that there were likely to be many people who never saw the original, since it wasn’t very widely released. He therefore was kind enough to include solid background, in the form of flashbacks, but we’ll get to that soon.
The story starts off in… wait, hold on, it hasn’t started yet. The camera is still panning up someone’s body; the entire panning process takes approximately ten minutes. And who is revealed? Why it’s Ricky Caldwell, our story’s main character! Ok now the story seems to start, taking place in a mental institution, where Ricky sits smoking a cigarette, and mugging to the camera. In comes an orderly, in a nifty white jumpsuit, complete with male panty lines. The scene goes on without any dialogue which, as the movie will later show, is the best thing that can happen to the viewer.
The orderly isn’t given a name, but it seems like he should have one, so we’ll go with a completely random name. Samuel L. Jackson sounds good.
Ricky and Sam seem to have quite a chemistry together, as they continue to give each other knowing, almost flirtatious looks. Samuel is jumpy, and becomes startled when Ricky flicks his lighter. Although I suppose that’s quite an understandable feeling when you are alone in a room with a shaved ape that is locked in an asylum.
Samuel finishes setting up what appears to be a tape recorder, although its size is greater than most DJ’s turntable setups.
Soon a doctor comes in, who proceeds to treat Sam like dirt, and makes him leave. Dr. Bloom, he introduces himself as. He seems a lot calmer than Samuel was, and doesn’t take any crap from Ricky, even when he starts yelling and threatening the doctor. This yelling brings Sam back in, for fear that Doc Bloom is being hurt. Instead of being thankful for the concern, the doctor merely yells at Sam and tells him to get out. What a prick.
Before leaving, Sam warns Ricky with a finger wave, although instead of wagging his finger like a normal person, he just moves his arm side to side. Jeez, it really isn’t a good indication of a cast’s acting ability when they aren’t even able to do normal human functions correctly.
Doc goes back to questioning Ricky. From the first few questions, we learn that Ricky’s parents were murdered. The strange revelation is that they were murdered by Santa Claus.
This cues a “flashback” scene, which in this movie means recycled footage from the first movie. Ricky (who is quite the ugly baby) and his family are driving along a country road, on Christmas Eve. Ricky’s parents, who are apparently the stunt doubles of the parents from “Vacation,” pull over because a man dressed as Santa was flagging them down. The father asks Santa if he needs a ride, to which Santa replies by pulling out a gun and shooting the father dead. He then assaults and kills the mother, all of which Ricky’s older brother Billy sees.
The doctor calls Ricky’s bluff, asking how he could remember all this if he was just a baby. Ricky proceeds to get all pissed off, and continues to pronounce Doc as “dawk.” Doctor Bloom asks Ricky what life was like in the orphanage, which leads us into another flashback.
We discover that his parents’ murder was very damaging to Billy. He has grown into a very ugly young boy. He displays his lack of appreciation for Santa’s evil deeds by drawing, and hanging up, classroom pictures of Santa shot by arrows and a decapitated reindeer.
This leads to Billy being called to the principal’s office, or rather the office of Mother Superior. Mother Superior is basically the amalgamation of every bad stereotype of nuns, principals, and prison wardens. She is greatly angered by Billy’s drawing, but whether that is because of the content or how awful the quality of the drawing is, can’t be determined.
Mother Superior has an incredibly odd way of speaking, a very surprising manner for an elderly woman to use. She sounds like one of the Nazi scientists from “Schindler’s List,” pronouncing until as “unteel,” and speaking with an alarmingly strange combination of calmness and sternness.
Billy gets sent to his room, but is later released by a nicer, more sensible nun. On the way to going outside to play, Billy hears noises coming from one of the rooms on his floor. The noises turn out to be a couple having sex, apparently quite loudly.
There are so many things wrong with that, I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, who are these people? They look to be almost thirty, so why are they in an orphanage? I doubt they work there, since it seems to be run by a church. They’re too old to live there, and they’re not visiting. Hmmm. Also, what kind of sick, depraved person do you have to be to have sex in an orphanage, and at that volume? If you can’t control yourself until you leave, at least be a little quieter. Especially when the woman running the orphanage is an insane old hag who seems to display no emotions.
Billy, the perverted voyeur, decides to camp out in front of the room and stare through the keyhole. Apparently the couple was so loud that Mother Superior heard them going at it from across the building, so she comes to investigate. She throws Billy away from the door, busts in, and proceeds to beat them with a belt.
She later comes up to Billy to talk about what he saw. It is now that we learn Mother Superior’s two favorite terms, “naughty” and “punish,” which she uses over and over. After explaining to Billy why what the couple was doing was naughty, and why they needed to be punished, she then beats Billy with a belt for some reason.
We are now back with Ricky and Doc, who clearly is ashamed to be part of this movie. At first it seems his reactions to Ricky are due to the character’s role as a doctor, and that he knows to use a more logical line of thought. As the movie progresses, he seems to simply develop a great disgust for Eric Freeman the actor, and the fact that he has to appear in this movie, even as a distinguished doctor.
Ricky continues to spout of more nonsensical lines, while standing by a window with the fakest scenery outside I have ever seen.
About three minutes of new footage goes by, which means we are way overdue for some more flashbacks.
Ricky tells of one Christmas at the orphanage, when Santa came to visit. Mother Superior forces Billy to sit on Santa’s lap, but Billy struggles because he’s scared of him. When confronted by Santa, Billy cold cocks him and knocks him flat on his ass, which is really just one of the most amazing sites to behold. Billy then runs away, and is chased after by Mother Superior. The scene cuts off, showing a frightened (and ugly) Billy’s face, as Mother Superior enters the room. Given her tendency to overreact in the past, I can only imagine his punishment this time. Certainly something involving branding irons or cordless drills or something.
We are now at a transition between the tale of young and old Billy. Since there is a stoppage in recycled footage, we get to watch in awe of Eric Freeman’s (Ricky, in case you forgot) acting ability. He simply has no control over his emotional range. Any call for a slight raise in emotions means he simply blows his top and chews his lines and scenes up like a maniac. His eyebrows rise and fall like the chart of the heart beat of a man going into a cardiac arrest. His energetic approach to acting is made even more ridiculous by his size. In any given scene, he is simply a giant man yelling and bounding about, as his eyebrows display thousands of random emotions at once.
Now that that is taken care of, it’s back to the excitement. Billy has turned eighteen, and therefore is able to leave the orphanage. Billy now vaguely resembles a young Phil Anselmo from Pantera. He is set up with a job at the local toy store. Either the management of this store was given no background to Billy, or they are simply jackasses. They decide the best task to give him is to dress up like Santa Claus for their customers. Billy goes on to tell children that he doesn’t bring toys to naughty girls; rather he punishes them…severely. I’m a firm believer that negative reinforcement can be effective, but perhaps that’s not the best time to go for it.
After the customers leave, it’s time for the big Christmas party. God, this group of employees is a bunch of losers. Their party consists of standing around, while the managers get blitzed out of their minds. And for some reason, Billy is still wearing the Santa costume. Two of the employees break off from the group, and go into the back room. Billy decides to follow them, since apparently his perverted habits haven’t dissipated since the last time he was caught spying on people.
It seems the guy in the tight bootleg Lacoste shirt wasn’t quite the chick magnet he thought he was. In the back room, the girl resists his advances, but he proceeds anyway. This scene gives Billy a flashback (a flashback within a flashback… simply fantastic) to when his mother was being assaulted by Santa. This makes him snap, and Billy goes ahead and strangles the guy. The girl is less than thankful to Billy, so he decides to kill her as well.
Drunky the manager bumbles into the back to see what the commotion is all about, and winds up with a hammer to the skull for his troubles. The other stupid manager eventually winds up walking to the back herself, only to discover what happened. She tries to escape, and Billy chases her around the store. It’s strange to see a murderous chase amidst old boxes of Mousetrap and Kermit dolls. Her attempts to flee are all for naught, as Billy drops her with an arrow to the back. You know, the typical bow and arrows that carry the force to penetrate human flesh and bone, the ones you see in toy stores all the time.
Ricky insists it wasn’t Billy’s fault, rather it was Mother Superior’s fault for raising him so poorly. At this point, the doctor takes out a friggin’ pipe, to attempt to become the epitome of stereotypical father figures in film.
Ricky tells the tale of Billy’s murder spree, of course in flashback form. Billy only punished “naughty” people, for which he didn’t have to look very far. One of the first victims was the doppelganger of the bad guy from the first “Karate Kid” movie, which Billy proceeds to pummel all over his house and tosses out a window.
The next set of victims was rather interesting. The scene starts with two kids sledding at night. The kids are then bullied into giving up their sleds by two men who appear to be in their late thirties. Billy, come on. If two middle aged men’s lives consist of jumping kids so they can go sledding, leave them be. Their lives are as empty as can be already.
Of course, how Ricky knows that all of this happened is unknown. He knows every detail of Billy’s murders, despite being nowhere near any of them, and not being told about them.
We wind up back at the orphanage, where we see a Santa walking towards the children in the front yard. A police man speeds to the orphanage, fearing Billy has come back to harm someone. He then proceeds to shoot Santa dead, right in front of the kids. It turns out this Santa wasn’t Billy, rather the orphanage’s deaf janitor dressed up to surprise the kids. The cop searches the scene for Billy, and finds him. He also finds an axe buried in his chest.
Billy is let into the orphanage by an absolutely idiotic kid, despite being told specifically not to. If you just saw Santa shot by a policeman, it might be a wise idea to steer clear of the next one you see, especially if he appears ten minutes later. Despite this, the kid lets Billy in, and Billy attempts to murder Mother Superior. He fails in his attempt, since he gets shot by a detective who just showed up. This makes the second Santa that was shot in full view of the children. They are going to grow up so messed up in the head.
Unfortunately for the director, Billy’s death means he has run out of footage from the first movie to use, and must now actually start using his own ideas. This movie runs about 88 minutes, 40 of them being clips from the first movie. The fact that they got away with this is truly impressive.
Understandably, the orphanage was closed after all the murders. They were able to find a family for Ricky… the Rosenbergs. Ah ha, quite the witty idea. A child is scarred by Santa, so have him live with a Jewish family, no problems there.
His years growing up are shown to be pretty normal. However, one day on the street with his mother, he starts spazzing out when he sees two nuns walking in slow motion, “Reservoir Dogs” style towards him. He loses it, showing that he’s still messed up from his childhood.
After his father dies, Ricky seems to go into a downward spiral at age seventeen. While walking through a field, inexplicably carrying a stick like he was Tom Sawyer or something, he stumbles upon a couple having a picnic. Apparently inheriting his brother’s voyeuristic tendencies, he watches them. The male gets aggressive with the woman, then backs off to get a beer from his Jeep.
Ricky takes this opportunity to get in the man’s Jeep, and run him over. About a dozen times. When leaving the scene, Ricky is thanked by the woman, who apparently sees nothing wrong with what just happened.
My my, what an interesting growth spurt we had between ages seventeen and eighteen. Ricky seems to have grown about a foot, added fifty pounds of muscle, and had his facial structure completely changed.
He tells about when he was working at a restaurant, and ran into a loan shark outside, beating up a client. Ricky, of course, only sees one logical solution to this situation. He lifts the man up against a wall, and impales him with an umbrella.
These two murders come as a shock to the doctor, since neither of them were on Ricky’s record. They do indicate how at first, Ricky was like his brother and only punished people who he felt were naughty.
We soon discover that there used to be a love in Ricky’s life, a girlfriend named Jennifer. The doctor gives Ricky what appears to be an autographed publicity shot of her. It is signed “Ricky, all the best, Jennifer,” which seems like quite an odd way to sign a picture of yourself to your boyfriend. He’s not asking you for an autograph, sister, you put some damned heart into that message.
We enter another flashback, however this time, it’s not to the first movie, but actual new footage. He is sitting on a motorcycle, seemingly trying to live the life of Jesse Katsopolis. While loitering on his bike, he becomes involved in the world’s most avoidable accident. Instead of apologizing for her vehicular faux pas, Jennifer gets out of her car and basically laughs at him for getting knocked to the ground.
Now normally with Ricky, this would result in you having a foreign object impaled into you or something similar to that effect. However, since he can’t stop leering at her legs, he gets distracted and forgets to murder her. We are then treated to a montage of their relationship, which basically consists of riding on the motorcycle and having sex.
Next we see them on a date at the movies. This movie, sadly enough, is made up of clips from the first movie. In a way, that’s kind of funny and self aware, but at the same time, it’s just more recycled footage. Bleh. While Ricky stares slack jawed at the screen, two lowlifes in the back row won’t shut up. Eventually, they start teasing Ricky and Jennifer, which really is not a smart idea. Even if the man you’re teasing isn’t an insane murderer, you usually want to avoid picking fights with people literally three times your size.
Inspired by the onscreen violence, Ricky decides to go to the back of the theatre to beat up the guys that were bothering them. While he is off doing this, Jennifer’s old boyfriend Chip shows up. Chip represents everything that was truly excellent about the 80’s. Ridiculous hair, clothes, and a smirk that just says, “Punch me.” The two of them discuss their old relationship, and Chip unsuccessfully tries to get back together with her.
While this is going on, Ricky finds his way to the back of the theatre, where the two guys who were bothering them are sitting. Here’s another pair of winners, one of them with the best mustache I have ever seen. Ricky proceeds to either beat up or kill the two off screen, with comical sound effects and popcorn flying thrown in for good measure.
The next day, Ricky and Jennifer are walking down the street. Watching Ricky spout out romantic lines is uncomfortable, like staring at a car accident. I honestly feel ashamed for him at certain points.
The two of them run into Chip, who is working on his car. Chip, who seems to have gotten his hair re-bleached since yesterday, starts bothering them, and gloats to Ricky about their past relationship. Obviously, what needs to be done in this situation is to put jumper cables in Chip’s mouth, and proceed to pump electricity into him until his eye sockets explode. Fortunately, Ricky is wise enough to know this, and goes ahead and does just that.
For some reason, this surprises Jennifer. She starts yelling at him, and telling him how much she hates him for doing that. “That”, you’ll recall, being violently murdering her ex-boyfriend in cold blood right in front of her. Of course, this causes Ricky to snap, and strangle Jennifer with a car antenna. All of this taking place in broad daylight, in the middle of the suburbs.
A police officer comes after Ricky, with gun drawn (and hat off center.) He threatens to shoot Ricky if Ricky doesn’t come along quietly. Instead of complying, Ricky takes the cop’s gun and shoots him in the head.
What follows this scene will go down in motion picture history. The upcoming events are, without a doubt, the greatest sequences ever captured on film. These next scenes are so important, that the proud crew who were filming this made sure to capture themselves, in order to be part of it:
Ricky takes the gun he stole from the police officer, and goes off on an absolutely unnecessary killing spree. He walks around the suburbs, shooting people at random. The first kill is a man running out of the house with beer in hand, to see what all the noise is outside.
What happens next is simply the best thing ever recorded, and it pains me that the full extent of its amazingness can’t be understood until it is actually seen.
We see a man taking out his garbage, the garbage can blocking the viewer from seeing Ricky. Apparently the man can’t see him either, due to the director’s complete lack of understanding of angles and perspective. Ricky simply shouts out, with no shortness of glee, “Garbage day!!!” The surprised man looks up, and is shot. This leads to Ricky giggling and laughing like a madman. Well I guess he actually is a madman, so it makes sense that he is laughing like one. This murder is the epitome of randomness, and the idea of it seems to have been made up on the spot.
What makes this situation odd is that the garbage gets picked up early; so if you were taking your garbage out that would mean it was very early in the morning. If so, why were Ricky and Jennifer on a date at approximately 7 AM? And why was the first victim drinking beer this early? Wow, white trash deluxe.
Ricky continues to walk around the neighborhood, laughing all the way. He spies a car driving down the road towards him, and starts firing at the car. The car spins out, and hits a ramp that is inexplicably placed at the side of the road. Ricky goes back to wandering around the neighborhood, alternating between striking a tough face, and grinning like a child. He also keeps looking at his gun and laughing, which I suppose is supposed to show he’s crazy with its power or something, but really just looks retarded.
Eventually he is stopped by a roadblock of cops (why the cops are set up in road block formation, when they’re chasing a man on foot is beyond me.) Ricky tries to kill himself, in order to avoid jail, but he has no more bullets in his gun.
The murder flashback ends, and we are now back in the institution, where Ricky is finishing telling the story of the Garbage Day. What we now see is that he strangled the doctor (who now looks exactly like Woody Allen) with recording tape. The doctor is quite pale by this point, which would indicate that he’s been dead for at least a little bit. Yet for some reason, Ricky is still in the room, rambling on. I guess once you start talking about Garbage Day, it really is quite hard to stop yourself.
Ricky then walks out the room, and apparently murders every single guard in the place, since he is able to escape. He later kills a Salvation Army Santa, and steals the costume. Where is he going, dressed up like this? Why, Mother Superior’s house! Mother Superior now has some sort of unexplained facial scarring, and is also played by a different actress than the Mother Superior of the first movie. Strangely enough, the actress who played the second Mother Superior was murdered in real life. No word on whether Eric Freeman was ever brought in as a suspect.
Ricky breaks into the house, and chases Mother Superior around. He takes quite a long time catching her, considering she is wheelchair bound, and he is a giant monster. He eventually corners her, and proceeds to chop her head off with an axe. Another example of the director’s scientific genius is that Ricky takes a fully downward swing with the axe, yet the head is severed sideways.
Since the detectives knew he was going after Mother Superior, they finally wind up at her house, along with one of the nuns from the old orphanage. They discover Mother Superior sitting in her chair, perfectly still. The nun goes over her to see if she’s alright, only to knock the previously removed head off her shoulders. Apparently Mother Superior had zero blood flowing through her, since absolutely no blood is ever spilled from her, despite the great damage done.
Ricky then attempts to kill the nun, but is shot by the detective. In the last shot of the movie, we see a grinning Ricky Caldwell breathe his last breath.
I’m somewhat ashamed of my inability to explain in words just how amazing this movie really is. The only way to truly know is to find out for yourself. Luckily, it can be yours for only a few dollars on eBay. That truly is the best value for your dollar you will ever get in your life.
Unfortunately, Eric Freeman’s acting career never took off. He appeared on an episode of “Just the Ten of Us” as well as “The Hogan Family.” For some reason, his role in SNDN2 was not enough to guarantee him superstardom in Hollywood.
There is no justice in this world, when a crime like that goes unpunished.
Diet Coke-Babies 