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laughingsquid:

12 Year Old Trumpet Player Gabriel Angelo Performs on San Francisco Streets To Pay For His Music Education

Working in a retail store on Black Friday::: From inside the store it looked like that scene in Dawn of the Dead with all those people pressed up against the glass wanting to get in. Just like in the movie you knew they were going to get inside the store. You watched the final minutes tick by, you prayed you could find a heavy, blunt object before you were bitten. You watched as co-workers were mauled to death. In the frenzy the cops were called but they were no match. Nothing could stop the…Black…Friday…Zombies!!! 

So I was in the store today and as I walked around I was thinking about my childhood days, eating cereal in front of the TV on the couch, watching cartoons. Hey, I still watch cartoons of Saturdays sometimes eating cereal. I may be 37, but I still LOVE getting the toy in the box of cereal.

Why have cereal companies stopped putting cool toys inside of their cereal boxes? When I was a kid, the toy was the reason WHY I wanted a certain kind of cereal. Nowadays, all they give you is a stupid maze on the back of the box or a toy that you can send away for after you eat 10 boxes of cereal, cut out the proofs of purchase, and enclose a check for $4.99 for shipping and handling. For as much as one pays for a box of cereal, you’d think that shipping and handling was ALREADY included!

Maybe Kellogg s got tired of all the ‘Hey, my kid had a plastic firetruck in his diaper lawsuit. In today’s society, everyone is just looking for that golden super-ball to choke on. One could only imagine.

The little license plates that used to come in Honey Combs cereal boxes. We probably purchased more boxes of Honey Combs than anyone in the neighborhood…frantically trying to collect all fifty mini plates. Of course, the ultimate goal was to dig to the bottom of the box and pull out the coveted “Lucky” plate featured in the commercial. The kid who wielded this plate instantly became the grand prize winner of a new BMX bike. How cool would it have been to be THAT kid?

Oh and who could forget the Wheaties cereal boxes. I can remember when the Michael Jordan first graced the front of a Wheaties box in 1988. For us, it had to be as awesome as it was for those in 1934 who saw Lou Gehrig as the first athlete to gain the spot on the box. .

As I was walking by all the cereal I saw a lady put a box of bran cereal in her shopping cart I wanted to say HEY A FREE ENEMA IN EVERY Box. No kid eat All Bran. That’s for adults that can’t go poo. Sugar Crisps make you big and strong like Sugar Bear, free decoder watch inside specially marked packages.

After this lady put the cereal in her cart she walked back to the poo poo laxative cereals and her son loaded up with boxes of sugar cereal I said to him as he walked by me “There’s no toy in that box of cereal.”

Anyway One if the coolest prizes of all time were actual records that could be played on your record player! They were on the back of the box, and you could cut them out. The one thing I learned was to make sure the middle hole was cut out right in the center. If it wasn’t the sound was all screwed up. The record material was some kind of plastic coated cereal box cardboard.

Kellogg’s cereals always had the best prizes. The skin divers that had a compartment on one foot that you filled with baking soda. After putting them in water, they would sink again. There were also baking soda powered submarines that did the same type of thing.

Remember the days when they gave you real prizes in cereal and cracker jacks. Toys that were toxic, sharp and just the right size to choke if you swallow them. Ahh those were the days.

It seemed like a good idea at the time …

Just when I thought I’ve seen the strangest of things in theater today I was proven wrong. I told the cast they had to drink with a straw so their makeup didn’t smudge. This is the outcome