Sugar blast from the past

So, I was at the store yesterday with my $1 off 3 Kellogg's cereals coupon, trying to pick out which cereals to buy with it. I had just got done with some Mini-Wheats and wasn't in the mood for more of those, so I went looking for the Cinnabon cereal Tommy likes.

Right next to the boxes of Cinnabon cereal was Honey Smacks. I literally had not eaten Honey Smacks since I was a kid, but I thought, "Hey, those sound pretty good."

Of course, back when I was eating Honey Smacks semi-regularly, they were still called Super Sugar Smacks, a refreshingly honest title. It said, This is a sweetened cereal your kids will like. Yes, it's part of a 'balanced breakfast,' but only if you serve it with milk, juice, and toast, which -- let's face it -- is a 'balanced breakfast' without the cereal.

Did the recipe even change when the marketing people got to them? I mean, where is honey on the ingredients list? Fourth, behind sugar (ingredient number one, thank you) and corn syrup, and ahead of only hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, caramel color and soy lecithin. You could just as fairly call these things Hydrogenated Soybean Oil Smacks, if we're honest; it's certainly less forthcoming than the former name which came right out and admitted, This is sugar in a box! Anyone else think they just added an extraneous dollop of honey so they could make them sound more nutritious?

It's touching to see that Dig 'Em the Frog is still on the front of the box, outdated '70's slang and all. That has to be one of the most random spokescartoons in the business. I mean, Kellogg's didn't even try, did they? There's not even any attempt to create a tangential link between the spokesanimal and the product. What does a frog have to with "smacks" or honey or, indeed, sugar? It's like their marketing division just spun a random Wheel o' Animals: Okay, Frosted Flakes gets .... the tiger, and Sugar Smacks gets .... the frog! Well, that's an honest day's work. Let's go play a round of golf!

Anyway, Eric likes them, but he's going to have to fight me for the rest of the box.