Category: Adventures in Wheaties

Posted on

Will Rogaine put Cal Ripken on its packaging?

When a theme crops up for the third time on this blog, it’s time for me to create a new category for it. In that spirit, I now offer up “Adventures in Wheaties,” which is a perfect compliment to my “Adventures in Gin” category. I’ll use this category to chronicle my love/hate relationship with America’s favorite breakfast cereal.

So what could possibly have driven me to write about Wheaties yet again? After all, I’ve already discussed my A-Rod boycott and my aversion to buying a WNBA-branded box of the stuff. Now I’m convinced that the boys at General Mills are just messing with me.

After all, how do you follow up this box:

Skinny runner Hunter Kemper

with this one?

Fat baseball player Tony Gwynn

With all due respect to Tony Gwynn, a class act and a legendary ballplayer, I don’t think Wheaties is doing itself any favors when it displays one of the guys whom people cite when they make their “baseball players aren’t athletes like football and basketball players” argument. I understand the Hall of Fame reasoning in putting him on the box, and it’s not like they’re putting Sidney Ponson on, too, but it’s still not exactly hyping a fit lifestyle.

In the writeup about him on the back of the box, we find that Gwynn

was truly a thinking man’s ballplayer, a perfect blend of art and science. Known best for his artistry with a bat, he also pioneered the extensive use of videotape analysis studying his own game relentlessly, never resting on his success. His work ethic was legendary as he spent countless hours refining his stroke in the batting cage and at the hitting tee.

The writeup goes on to mention that a Wheaties breakfast “can help jumpstart metabolism.” Note that this doesn’t say, “will help jumpstart metabolism,” considering it’s juxtaposed with another picture that doesn’t even employ the slimming effects of a pinstripe uniform.

If I was Hunter Kemper, I’d give up and start eating Krispy Kremes.

Posted on

Cereal Killer

Back in November, I wrote about how I’ve boycotted the large-sized box of Wheaties at our local supermarkets because Alex Rodriguez is the featured athlete. At least I could get by with the 12-oz. box, since I had got no beef with Steve Nash.

It just got worse. I hit the supermarket this week and discovered that A-Rod is still the large-box athlete (I need to check the expiration dates on those boxes; is it possible that no one is buying them?), but the Nash-boxes are gone. The 12-oz. box of Wheaties now features . . . your WNBA champions, the Detroit Shock!

Seriously. It’s a team photo of a WNBA team, which would be bad enough. But the picture also includes the smiling faces of the team’s head coach and top assistant: Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn.

I’m goin’ back to Atkins.

Posted on

Breakfast of Regular Season Champions

I’m a man of routines. Once I hit upon a good way to do things, I stick with it. When I was on Atkins, it was no problem for me to consume 3 scrambled eggs, a spicy Thai chicken sausage, a banana, water and black coffee, every single morning. Every single goddamn morning. This practice worked out just fine, until my cholesterol started to blow up.

So I changed things up. Now it’s a bowl of Wheaties with some chopped dates, 1% organic milk, and the aforementioned banana, water and black coffee. It works, and I stick with it almost without fail.

But now there’s a problem. See, when you buy a box of Wheaties, you’re not just buying cereal; you’re buying The Breakfast of Champions. And sometimes General Mills’ idea of champion isn’t the same as mine.

After the Yankees got wrecked in the first round of the playoffs, Amy & I decided that we just couldn’t buy Wheaties with Alex “reigning AL MVP” Rodriguez on the box. It was too insulting, to see that grim demeanor and that looping swing, knowing that he’d been shown up on baseball’s biggest stage as a punk-ass bitch.

For a while, we were able to make do with leftover Shaq & Wade NBA championship boxes. When they ran out, we even started getting the smaller-sized box (Steve Nash), but my persistent case of cheap Jew stereotypism keeps me from buying the less economical size.

The situation is growing dire. The cereal aisle is filled with box upon box of home-run-swinging A-Rod, mocking us with his failure to deliver a timely hit in a big game. Will a new MVP never be crowned?

I fear that if I have to resort to that cereal, I will become like him. Perhaps I’ll write many pages of great editorial in the lesser issues of my magazine, but come October’s AAPS special, or come the July/August Top Companies issue, I’ll wilt.

The risk is too great. Maybe I can get by with BooBerry or the Cap’n.

Will there never be another Olympics?