cracker jacks

I just had my first cracker jack in years. The prize sucked.

Added to that is the fact that it came in a bag ?!?! and not a box.

Finally, there were...and I counted...4 and 1/2 peanuts in a 1.25 oz bag. This is an atrocity. Sailor Jack and Bingo must be turning over in their graves.

I'm frankly getting a little pissed at the watering down of my youth-years favorites.

I bought Othello for my kids and the board and pieces are half size. I got rock'em sock'em robots for the boy last weekend and althought the thing functions the same, the guys are downsized to about 65%. And now the cracker jack prizes suck. I mean it always sucked to a certain degree, but you could get a couple minutes pleasure out of a tattoo, blow spinner, or magnifying glass.

The only two games things that I've bought that have retained their integrity are chutes and ladders and connect four, but I'm not sure how you could screw either one of them up as they were pretty bottom basement, althought fun, to begin with.

Also, Ants-in-your-pants, has now been bastardized into a Spongebob Squarepants game. While Spongebob is mildly entertaining ( big fan of the Bikini Bottom X-box game), there's no reason to screw with Ant-in-your-pants. I mean conceptually it plays on ants in YOUR pants, not in Spongebob's pants...besides, there are no ants in the bottom of the ocean. Maybe Plankton-in-Spongebob's-Pants would be more accurrate, but really what's the point. I just find the whole thing a bit disturbing.

I was going to link to the cracker jack collectors association ( affectionatly the CJCA) website just now, but the 4 dorks who comprise the entirety of that organization apprarently don't have a programmer among them and their dancing java graphics have fucked up my computer.

Sorry for the rant and the lousy post. I got through yesterday mostly sober and had more than 4 hours of sleep last night. That rarely works well for my writing. I'll see what I can do about going on a nice bender this weekend and have something decent up for Monday morning.