A couple of things…
- Several folks have written to inform me that Honey Smacks have already been renamed just Smacks. I didn't see that on the shelf or on the Kellogg's website but I'll take your word for it. On that site, by the way, you can see a page devoted to Pops (formerly Sugar Pops, Sugar Corn Pops and Corn Pops). They're trying quite hard to make a connection between hip-hop music and sugar-frosted puffed corn…and of course, I can see how those two things go together like cheap car insurance and talking reptiles, but I wonder how many people can.
- It has also been suggested by some correspondents that the word "sugar" disappeared from a lot of boxes because of the shift from that sweetener to high fructose corn syrup. I suppose that could be part of it but sugar is still the second ingredient listed in Frosted Flakes, right after milled corn, so I'll bet they could still use it in the name if they wanted to. They don't. The only place you'll find the "s" word prominently displayed on the box or in advertising is when they tout the new versions of Frosted Flakes and Froot Loops that have "1/3 less sugar." Absence of sugar is a selling point these days.
- Since we're talking about cereal, I'll mention that the only one I eat these days is Barbara's Shredded Oats. It used to only be available in Southern California at Whole Foods Markets, Trader Joe's and health food emporiums but lately, they have it at Ralph's and Gelson's and maybe other grocers. As you can see here, it contains zero sugar, using molasses for its slight sweetness. It tastes pretty darn good, I think.
- On another topic: People send me a lot of links they think I might want to put up on this site. An awful lot of them lately have been for sites where you get to punch George W. Bush in the face or hit him with pies or watch him morph into a gibbon. I love political humor and not just when it reinforces my views…but there's a certain humorless level of nastiness that just leaves me cold or worse. I think Bush is a pretty bad president but I don't derive any jollies from seeing him Photoshopped into a clown suit or a sex scene with Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton. My belief in Free Speech accepts that such things have a right to exist but nothing says I have to link to them.
- Lastly, my pal Gordon Kent makes another good point about this argument of, "If you're not doing anything you shouldn't be doing, you should have no problem with having your calls monitored." If Dick Cheney wasn't doing anything he shouldn't have been doing with that Energy Task Force of his, he should have had no problem dilvulging the names of its members, right? This is the most secretive administration ever and I don't buy that it's all about National Security. As Jack Anderson once said (approximately), "In Washington, you don't bury your failures. You stamp Top Secret on them."