Frito-Lay announced they’ll be releasing a caffeinated version of Cracker Jack, which surprised the millions of people who thought Cracker Jack disappeared about the same time Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Cracker Jack is a molasses-flavored, candy-coated popcorn and peanuts snack grandparents used to push on kids because they thought Cracker Jack and Werther’s butterscotch hard candies were “swell.” For the most part, kids promptly dumped out the burnt-tasting popcorn, avoiding the repulsive peanuts as if they were covered with spiders, in order to get to the famous Cracker Jack prize hidden inside every box. The prizes used to be little plastic toys, but have devolved into comics printed on paper because somewhere between 1912 and 2012 kids lost the basic common sense to not swallow little plastic trinkets.
Now, with everyone from soft drink manufacturers to jelly bean makers adding caffeine to their products, Cracker Jack is hopping on board with Cracker Jack’d caffeinated popcorn clusters, a move that has some consumer watchdog groups in an uproar. Never mind that some energy drinks have been linked to deaths and heart attacks; the real horror is a bunch of hopped up senior citizens reminiscing about the gams on Ginger Rogers.
Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I want to feel like I just snorted crack.
Maybe the new toys could be tiny defibrillators with adorable little chest paddles.
