Junk Nowadays
Is Just Plain Junk
Have the costs of doing business finally trickled down from the energy sector and the dot-coms to the junk market?
(And here I must explain that I don't mean "junk" in a bad way, just as a catch-all phrase for really cheap trinkets that usually are found Free! Inside! cereal boxes or other products shelved at toddler's-eye level in the supermarkets).
The thought came to me last week when I brought home a box of cereal with a Pez dispenser packed inside. A Pez dispenser, as well as a sleeve of the little lozenge-shaped candies that go in it.
Pez. I hadn't thought about Pez in years, and I enjoyed a genuine Warm And Fuzzy Moment over it.
Ages ago, when my younger brother was going through an intense Batman phase, he had a Pez dispenser modeled after the Caped Crusader.
We loved it. There was just something about the way the fixed, superhero scowl on Batman's plastic face stoically accepted being bent ingloriously backward as the little candy popped out of his throat that always broke us up into gales of laughter.
But when I got the little honeybee-headed toy out of the cereal box last week, something was very wrong. It was NOT a Pez "dispenser," just a Pez "container."
The head was just a lid, the body just a box. You filled the thing with candy, pushed it up from the bottom with your finger, and took the top piece off the stack. It didn't automatically chamber another round whenever you popped a Pez, nor did the candy burst out, "Alien"-like, from the critter's throat.
Maybe you can buy the spring-loaded original somewhere, but on this night in Mudville, Mighty Casey had struck out.
There was no gadgetry here, no theater, just an inert lump of cheap molded plastic. The magic was gone.
So what happened? Has even the trivial bit of engineering that went into the original Pez dispenser priced it out of the cereal-box freebie market?
But it's not just Pez dispensers, friends. Take that old Free Prize In Every Box standby -- Cracker Jack.
How many of you out there, who have recently bought a box of Cracker Jack, gotten anything better than a sticker book or a vegetable-dye tattoo as your Free Prize?
Think about it. When's the last time you ripped into a Cracker Jack box and pulled out one of those little get-the-BB-in-the-clown's-nose games? A little Scottie-dog charm for your girlfriend's charm bracelet?
Or a fake diamond ring? The quintessential Cracker Jack prize? Inspiration for generations of "how many boxes did he have to open" jokes suffered by young ladies showing off their shiny new engagement rings?
Gone, gone, all gone.
It's just paper, these days. Mini-joke books. Little match-up-the-squares puzzles. Maybe, if you're really lucky, one of those little cartoon pictures that move when you tilt them up and down and back and forth.
And those blasted tattoos, which are of no use whatever unless they happen to be the same color as the hand stamp for that sold-out rock concert and the ticket taker's too busy to get a really good look.
I can remember being disappointed when the little plastic dinosaur or airplane or race car inside the cereal box bore only the faintest resemblance to the dynamic artwork on the outside of the box.
Now, I'm just insulted.
I mean, there's good, honest junk that at least makes an effort to be something it isn't and could never be -- and then there's junk that doesn't even try, it just flips you the finger and says "Gotcha!"
Leaving you stuck with a Pez dispenser that doesn't dispense, and a box of cereal big enough to feed a small country.
Where is Batman when you really need him?
