Tim McGraw Fritos

As you should know by now, if they put a picture of a cartoon character on a grocery item I'm going to buy it. The same isn't necessarily true for pictures of country music stars, but when I came across McGraw's Spicy Jalapeno Fritos at my local Wal-Mart I had to throw a bag into my cart just for "blog's sake!" It's not everyday that a celebrity gets a food product named after them. The package says nothing about Tim McGraw other than the name of the snack and his picture and signature. I was expecting the back of the bag to have a little homespun story of how Tim McGraw's grandmother used to spend hours in the kitchen shaving jalapeno slices on to their home made corn chips while Tim sat on the front porch and learned to play guitar from his grandfather. But no - just a picture of Tim.

But then we ripped into the bag of treats and we knew that Mr. McGraw was onto something with these Spicy Jalapeno Fritos. They are outrageously good! We ended up scarfing down a whole bag of them in a matter of minutes. They're not spicy-hot that you need to drink a gallon of cold milk after a handful, they've got a nice natural taste of jalapeno dusted on them. They taste just like when your grandmother shaved jalapenos onto your fritos when you were little.

Anywho, I guess these bad boys are in limited supply because our Wal-Mart ran out of them already. We stocked up on a few bags when we saw the supply getting low, but then we ate all those bags too! Well played Tim McGraw....well played!

The Original Ace of Cakes

At some point on this blog I've mentioned my mom's cake decorating business that she had when I was growing up. She quite literally probably made the cake for every birthday party I went to between the ages of 5 and 13. She used to have a photo album of all the cakes she had done, which kind of served as a catalogue for customers. Recently we found a handful of those pictures and they fit right at home here on WWoB, because each one is a little tasty treat of pop culture goodness!

That's tight! I'm sure this was for one of my birthdays. I wonder if she still has the pan?

This Princess Lea cake was for the girl across the street. Judging from the number of candles, the year was 1978 making this one of the first wave of Star Wars cakes.

Ahhh...I had many Smurf cakes throughout the years. This one is especially colorful and was made by tracing a picture out a coloring book onto rice paper. Then coloring it with icing on top.

My mom also made several Pac-Man cakes over the years, although probably only one for me. This cake also has little ghost-monster cupcakes with it. Ain't that cute?

Now this Pac-Man cake is based on the Atari 2600 home version of the game. I can remember my mom watching me play while she sketched down the pattern of the screen. Ya gotta love the attention to detail. Happy 12th Birthday Who Ever This Cake Was For!!

Star Wars Cavalcade of Stars

As I've mentioned before, the power of Star Wars has taken hold of my children. Here's a great video of little 2 year old Tanner naming all his Star Wars figures. Listen for his attention to detail...

Here They Come... Here Comes Speed Racer Toys

The summer movie season is just around the corner and that means the summer movie merchandising is here. Product tie-ins and other movie goodies can get me excited about a movie that I have no intention of seeing! However, I am looking forward to the new Speed Racer movie and we all know how much of a fan I am of free prizes in cereal boxes. So, free Speed Racer prizes inside specially marked boxes of General Mills cereal? Sign me up! I haven't watched an episode of Speed Racer since I was probably 8 years old, but I do have fuzzy warm memories of the cartoon. When I was in the first and second grade Speed Racer was on WDCA Channel 20 every afternoon at 3 & 3:30. We got off the bus somewhere between 3 and 3:30. So everyday I would race home from the bus stop, grab the afterschool snack and then head on down to my friend Ryan Tripp's house to watch the second Speed Racer before a solid hour of Scooby-Doo at 4 & 4:30. That was television my friends! (And...Yes, my friend Ryan's mom was later involved in a certain White House scandal that made her famous!)

So, anywho...this new Speed Racer movie looks pretty cool. It's bright and colorful and looks like it will be alot of fun plus it stays true to the original series which is always a plus in my book. I had already seen Speed Racer fruit snacks at the grocery store and today I saw the toys starting to pop up on the shelves at Wal-Mart. The free cars inside the cereal happened to be inside two brands of cereal that we eat in our house, so we picked up a couple of boxes. Unfortunately we didn't score the Mach 5 (Speed Racer's white car) but we did get these two other cars: #33 and #12 Hydra Cell. That means absolutely nothing to me either, but after the movie I'm sure we'll know who they are. The cars have the ol' pull back and go action which allows them to speed off on their own after driving them backwards on the floor a few inches. For cheap little cereal premiums they work pretty good. They are fast and provided an evenings worth of entertainment for my kids (and I).

Speed Racer hits theatres May 9. You can look for additional tie-promotions with Target, Lego, Puma and yes...the coveted McDonald's Happy Meal.

back of the cereal boxes

Keeping Up With The Flintstones

In a post on another blog that I check in with often they've got up a collection of photos of props from Star Wars that they've seen in various places throughout the years. It got me to thinking about about the number of props I've seen from one of my favorite movies, The Flintstones. Unlike most movies, EVERY SINGLE thing that appears on screen in both THE FLINTSTONES (1994) and THE FLINTSTONES IN VIVA ROCK VEGAS (2000) had to be created from scratch. So there are quite a bit of prop items floating around. The only picture I ever thought to take was this one here of Fred's bowling balls and team uniform at the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. The Planet Hollywood in Baltimore had a few pieces of Flintstones memorabilia, and I even saw Fred's car and several full size playground props at Universal Studios Florida a few years back. The greatest treasure trove I ever hit was at a store that sold movie memorabilia at Pleasure Island in Walt Disney World. Among other items, they had lots of the women's jewelry from the film as well as the time card that Fred has stamped/chomped by a dinosaur on his way out of work. Most of these pieces were several hundred dollars which is too rich for my blood no matter how much I love The Flintstones. But the one piece I could have had was a single piece of Bedrock currency (little shells with dollar signs on them.) They were selling for $35.00 a piece, I thought long and hard about it but eventually passed on it. I could have at least taken a picture! I'm sure shortly after I left the store I spent $35.00 on something to eat.