Someone doesn’t think Tony’s so Grrrrrrrrrrreat!

Only my second posting, and someone else’s work inspires a topic. From last Sunday’s Mallard Fillmore strip:

Sadly, this is true.  But not just this UK group. I’ve heard about an American group that wants to get our beloved cereal icons take off the air under the belief that they’re making our kids fat.

What strikes me as odd is the fact that these characters have been around for almost as long as there has been TV, and some date back to before radio shows, which were always being sponsored by some product and had the hero come out and talk about how great cereal X is.

But beyond that is the fact that Tony, the Trix and Quix rabbits, Kool-Aid-Man, Sonny, Lucky, and all the others aren’t just sugar pushers. They’ve in fact become part of television history, not to mention our childhoods. In fact when Tony’s voice actor, Thurl Ravenscroft, passed away recently, it was big news. There are websites devoted to these characters. Heck. Look at my links on the right side of the page. Unless something’s changed in the archives, I’m linking to a site involving these icons engaged in a not-so-civil war. (Usually I’d be complaining about another raping of my childhood, but language and violent themes aside, Breakfast of the Gods  is a darn good comic!) Parodies always spring up around them. It seem to be tradition for nostalgia and pop culture sites to devote their first article to breakfast cereal.

For Americans, or at least in my generation, these characters are about as famous as their non-food pushing brethren like Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny. They’ve pushed their own food in the past but nobody’s trying to pull them off the sc…ok, there’s the whole Speedy Gonzales incident and the slapstick in Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies, but that’s another post. What really irks me, however, is that somehow these ads are supposed to be responsible for making kids fat. As if Sonny was personally coming to your house and forcing his cereal down little Jimmy and Suzy’s throats. (Ok, there was that time in the 90’s, but since our generation is responsible for making him an addict, that could well be revenge.)

(After clicking through some of the links, we find that even his grandpa tortured the kid. No wonder Sonny’s so screwed up!)

The kids are getting fat because they eat too much of the stuff, and the parents are buying it for them. It’s funny how my generation supposedly never had this big an obesity problem. No, back then it was an anti-sugar rampage because they thought our teeth would rot out or something. Now, granted the only “mascot” cereal I eat are Rice Krispies, but Snap, Crackle, and Pop aren’t responsible for any weight issue I had. (Quick sidebar: am I the only one who ordered the record with different song genres pushing Krispies cereal?) That’s all me. However, we used to go outdoors and play. Heck, our parents pushed us out, since drive-by shootings and child kidnappers were somewhat rarer, or so it seemed.

I think there are a lot of parents who just don’t want to deal with their hyperactive offspring begging for cereal so they can play with their favorite cartoon characters and the free toy they’re giving out, crappy as the toy is going to be. We’ll miss out on the adventures of our favorite characters doing silly things to eat their favorite breakfast because some do-gooder group thinks that they’ll solve all our problems by pulling some show off the air. It’s been going on for years, even before TV. Remember the war on comic books, or the current one on video games? I’d love to find out if some group or idiot had a hissy-fit about the Shadow or some other radio drama back in the day. You know they did.

Seriously, stop worrying about the wrong problem. You want to help the kids choose the right foods? Good, I’m all for it. How about starting with getting the school cafeteria to make their food at least half as good as what you can get at those “evil” fast food places? (Seriously, there are soldiers who would have mess hall flashbacks eating that stuff, and realizing they were better off with the foxhole rations.) How about creating some interesting characters to promote good foods? I have yet to hear a complaint about Popeye. (Partly because I haven’t gone on my Olive Oil rant yet.) How about getting the kids to exercise by not wiping out gym class or recess? How about finding out how we had these characters since your grandparents and only in the past decade is obesity a bigger “threat” than terrorism?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have some Cherrios.