Now You're....Eating Breakfast With Power?

OK, I'll fully admit it, in my younger days, I was quite the geek. Nowhere near the smooth player I am today. When I was 14, my life consisted solely of Nintendo and Friday After Dark on Cinemax. I was about 50 pounds overweight, so that precluded me actually being with a woman. I didn't have much interest in sports, so going to High School Basketball Games an exercise in tedium, and all of my friends lived on the opposite side of town, out of range of what my parents considered "acceptable bike riding distance", so I had Nintendo and Cable-Pseudo-Porn to keep me happy.

Whereas Cinemax was strictly relegated to late Friday nights, Nintendo was available 24/7 to keep me interested. And during times when I couldn't actually play Nintendo, I could read Nintendo Power Magazine, or talk about Nintendo on the phone with my fellow NES Addicts. But despite all of this, I still felt like something was....missing. Sure, lunchtime gave me my NES Fix by leafing through Nintendo Power Magazine with Mike and Matt at the lunch table. Dinner time was family time in my house where we discussed how our days went (and I imagined playing Nintendo when I was done eating dinner)....but there was something missing at Breakfast.

Lo and Behold, the answer was delivered to me one afternoon while watching Captain N: The Game Master (more on this later). During a commercial break, I became aware of a new product on my grocery store shelves that I just had to have. Nintendo CEREAL System. See, it's not just a box of arbitrary shapes with otherworldly colors...this wasn't Fruit Loops, or Captain Crunch, those were just a plain "boxes of cereal", this my friends, was a CEREAL SYSTEM.

There were two different cereals IN ONE BOX. I could choose between Super Mario Brothers or Legend of Zelda cereal. Or, I could really go for broke and enjoy a 10 years early version of Super Smash Brothers by mixing BOTH sides of Nintendo Cereal System in one bowl. It's like "Fun" ceased to be a concept and instead became a woman who looked like a cross between Pamela Anderson and 2001 era Britney Spears. And she showed up at my door in the middle of the night naked....with a Bottle Of Rum, a Papa John's Pizza, and the Die Hard boxed set.

Of course, now that I'm a jaded adult, it's obvious this is nothing more than one more attempt at a corporate cash-in. For those of you who weren't living the NES Lifestyle, but 1989, Nintendo pretty much owned a large percentage of the world (kind of like AOL-TimeWarner does today). I still remember ads in Nintendo Power Magazine for everything from Mario Soap (and really, looking back on it, does slathering your naked body with the liquid from a fat Italian Plumber bother anybody else, or is it just me) to Legend Of Zelda wall-clings. While I was in the full grips of Nintendo Mania, I never had the Mario Sheets....opting instead for Ghostbusters Sheets (complete with glow-in-the-dark Ghostbuster Logos on the pillow cases).

So, on the next trip to the grocery store, I went with my parents. While they seemed at first confused by my desire to go grocery shopping, they soon realized this had nothing to do with "family togetherness" and instead was a means to furthering my agenda. I had to have The Nintendo Cereal System. I waited patiently while we walked down produce aisles (broccoli didn't interest me that much then, and to be honest, it holds even less interest for me today).

After what seemed like forever, finally, the glorious cereal aisle became our target. In the land of cereals, my parents always had a strict "No Sugared Cereal" rule. My bowl was never adorned with the likes of Captain Crunch, or Coco Pebbles in the morning. Corn Flakes took the place of Frosted Flakes, and my mom was convinced that Cookie Crisp (or any "Marshmallowed" cereals) were the work of Satan Himself.

Unable to contain myself, I dashed ahead of my parents as they tried to decide if we needed Cheerios or Rice Krispies (plain....no Coco Krispies dared enter our home) and began my search. Apple Jacks, Alpha-Bits (do they even still make these?). Finally, my young eyes spied a black box that I didn't immediately recognize as one of the cereal aisle regulars. There it was in all of it's sugary glorious splendor. Nintendo Cereal System. Angles shone their light upon me.



I grabbed the box off the shelf and high-tailed it back to my parents’ cart. "Mom, dad, check this out....NINTENDO CEREAL!". They looked at me like I had just drug the body of a dead alien out of the closet. Noticing the pleading look in my eyes, I guess they decided that it was only a matter of time before I could no longer be enslaved by Kix and Corn Flakes, and decided that ONE BOX of a sugary commercial-tie-in cereal couldn't POSSIBLY hurt. "Fine, put it in the cart".

The next morning, I woke up and ran downstairs, eager to enjoy my breakfast treasure. I was sure that just eating this would make me a better video game player. It had to. After all, it was Video Games....FOR BREAKFAST! I would be consuming the very essence of Nintendo. Now I'm eating breakfast with POWER! But first, a decision had to be made, do I enjoy the Mario Side first, or the Zelda Side first? I had no precedent on which to base my decision. Finally, I decided the only way to be fair was to have a small bowl of each.

So I opened Mario Side first. It was advertised as being "fruit" flavored. The shapes were vaguely Mario-esque. I dunked my spoon and took a bite. The chorus of angels began and sing and.....and.....ummmmmm, eh, it was decent enough.

Undaunted, I finished the bowl, and poured myself a bit of the Zelda side. The shapes were vaguely Zelda-esque. Maybe eating the Zelda prepared your body to receive the Holy Blessing Of Video Game Mastery that had to come from consuming Nintendo Cereal. My arms had goose bumps anticipating what was awaiting me. I crunched down. Strange. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that wasn't much difference between the Mario "Fruit" side and the Zelda "Berry" side as far as taste goes.

But nevertheless, I now had a belly fully of sugary Nintendo Goodness. I quickly retreated up to my bedroom and turned on my NES, hoping against hope that my game had improved. I threw a copy of Bionic Commando into my NES, clicked the power button on, and waited for the familiar Capcom logo. I then shut the NES off, removed the game, blew into it's open end, re-inserted it, and was greeted with Capcom's logo.

Alas, no video game magic awaited me. I still sucked at Bionic Commando just as much as I had the night before. Oh well, live and learn I suppose. Over the next year, I was treated to two or three more boxes of Nintendo Cereal System, my game never advanced (though my belt-size did). The taste wasn't horrible, but I'm sure if the box had advertised Popples, or Wuzzles, or any other girlee characters, I would have derided it as tasting crap soaked in crap, but because it was Nintendo, that made it taste better. Damn those marketing people are geniuses.