Unbalanced Breakfast

In addition to the hopeful start of a new career here in New York, I am also now beginning my career as an uncle. Several very good friends have had children recently, and now my sister is expecting.

I think I am going to like being an uncle. I think about running around and playing with my niece or nephew in the backyard. I can hear them giggling and saying “Tag! You’re it, Uncle Phil!” or “Mommy, Uncle Phil just smashed my snowman”. I think it’s going to be an experience watching them grow up; it might even help me to grow up a bit just by acting like a kid again.

Given this change in my life, I am starting to become more focused on the welfare of children. It’s not that I was a baby-juggler before; it’s just that now it is more front-and-center in my life. I am more aware of the dangers that children face: traffic, rusty nails, diphtheria, the odd ravenous dingo. It’s like a danger radar has been born in me. I am now seeing potential threats everywhere, both physical and psychological.

I was in the grocery store the other day and walked into the cereal aisle. This was a place, as a child, that I loved. I loved cereal and its part-of-a-nutritious-breakfast cartoon army. They all looked so happy, and as a kid I adored the colors and the careless lives my friends seemed to live on cereal boxes.

Now I just think it’s weird.

A cereal box is a part of a child’s life, and the things that are on these boxes look like escapees from the Cartoon Center for the Criminally Insane. It’s like The Teletubbies meet The Shining. Surely it can’t be good for an impressionable young mind to be subjected to these characters every morning:

Lucky the Lucky Charms Leprechaun -- First off, the derby hat reminds me of A Clockwork Orange. I haven’t seen that movie—but the reason I haven’t seen that is that the prospect of ultra-violence is not one I’m cozy with. Don’t even get me started on the movie Leprechaun. Finally, the whole “magically delicious” thing just reeks of a cult commune sipping peyote tea in the Arizona desert. Not with my niece/nephew, you won’t.



The Trix Rabbit –He’s obviously on some sort of extreme Wonderland bender. This lunatic actually steals the cereal from kids, and is too hopped up to not get caught doing it. This cereal is probably laced with angel dust, anyway. Silly rabbit, stay away from my family.





Sonny the Cocoa Puffs cuckoo bird– If someone introduced you to a guy with crazy hair named Sonny that freaked out every time he saw a frosted corn puff, would you ask him to be your nanny?





Captain Crunch – Nothing says wholesome goodness like a mustachioed old man in a French Admiral’s costume. The maniacal look in his eyes suggests that the only ship he’s the captain of is the U.S.S. Pedophilic Meth Addict. I can’t even look at that mug without getting the shivers. Save your “crunch” for your sailor parties, pal.


Count Chocula – This is a vampire. A vampire. A creature whose life depends on sucking the life out of others. Whose idea was it to put this thing on a children’s cereal? I don’t care if he’s smiling. He has fangs. Dingoes don’t even have fangs.


And there are many, many more. It’s not really even the sugar in these cereals that I have a problem with. I just refuse to let my niece or nephew be influenced by a morally bankrupt cabal of shady caricatures. We’re just going to have to find something more suitable for their breakfast mascot. I may see fit to recommend Quaker Oats, but first I want to meet this guy’s supposed Society of “Friends”.