When I was a kid I loved cereal. Not so much cereal as a food, mind you, though I did go through a phase in which I consumed "Cocoa Puffs," then "Cocoa Pebbles" and then no doubt "Malt Balls and Chocolate Espresso Beans in Hot Cocoa" had the immense sugar intake not caused be to start vibrating so violently I momentarily shifted into another dimension, which ultimately served as the basis for at least three Sid & Mart Krofft TV series.
No, mostly I loved cereal for the package design, a clear by product of having a graphic designer for a dad (though, oddly enough, my dad's other professional pursuit as pornography illustrator did not lead to a lifelong lover affair with hardcore nudity shot in poor light and set to a thumping bass line). I first fell in love with the
classic UPA-style artwork prominently featured on cereal boxes from the 1960s, and then became fascinated with the very notion of cereal spokescharacters from the
sublime to something that can only best be described as
"Care Bears meet the baby from Eraserhead." I often wondered what kind of person would pursue such a line of work. What would make someone want to dedicate their life to extolling the virtues of riboflavin and distilled monoglycerides? And. most importantly, how does one even score such a gig?
Alas, as the melding of mind with that of
Sally Forth character Ted Forth continues unabated, my obsession with cereal spokescharacters has become Ted's fixation, resulting in today's strip (property of King Features Syndicate)...
Which, naturally, leads us to a further revelation about the "blue ghost one"...
And then, ultimately, into utterly regrettable marketing choices...
Please join me next time when I share the real-life background story to Ted Forth's all-too-consuming passion with
Micronauts.
