Monday, July 14, 2003

More Quik Thoughts

I didn't mean to imply that the Quik Bunny was only invented when Quik turned into Nesquik. He's been around for a while. He even teamed up with Superman in a 1987 promotional comic, the cover of which is at left. This leads to intriguing speculations. There are few famous names, real or fictional, who who have not met Superman or at least met some other character who has met Superman. It's kind of like the Kevin Bacon game. Since Muhammad Ali, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler and John F. Kennedy all met Superman in one comic or another, they all must live in the same universe as the Quik Bunny. For that matter, I was once a character in an issue of Flash, and since Flash has met Superman, I live in the same universe as the Quik Bunny and if you've met me, so do you. It's one big happy reality.

And I probably shouldn't pick on the Quik Bunny, if only because his voice was — and still is, for all I know — supplied by a terrific actor named Barry Gordon, who was a rock of integrity when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. Come to think of it, this means that everyone who was ever a member of S.A.G. has a connection to the Quik Bunny and through him to Superman. Small world, ain't it?

• Posted at 8:41 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Tom Shales says a lot of the things I feel about what talk shows have become.

• Posted at 7:44 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Michael Kinsley and William Saletan each weigh in on the matter of the Great Uranium Fib — an important matter but not nearly as important as the renaming of Quik.

• Posted at 5:56 PM · LINK

Quik Thinking

Did you know the Nestlés's people no longer make Quik? Jesus H. Christ. I stop buying a product and ten years later, they change it. They stick a cartoon rabbit on the can and rename it, "Nesquik." Who the hell wants to put something in their milk called "Nesquik?" With a rabbit on the can, no less. Quik was introduced in 1948, four years before I was. As soon as I was old enough to lift a utensil, my mother taught me how to shovel two heaping teaspoonfuls of the stuff into my milk and stir it until either it dissolved or my damn arm fell off, whichever occurred first. Usually, it was the arm because the mystic potion seemed to be made of plastic shavings and even when it did dissolve, it only made the milk taste a teensy bit like chocolate.

That is, unless you did what my friend Mike Hockee did, which was to dump in as much of the can as would fit in the glass, then chug-a-lug the rest of the Quik powder directly. Oh sure, I could have done chocolated my milk the easy way, the sissy way, with Bosco chocolate flavored syrup. But real men drank Quik — or at least, real men who weren't lactose intolerant. I'm not but somewhere around half-past puberty, I began to realize that the less dairy I had in my diet, the better I felt. So I gave up on milk (and therefore, Quik) and look what they've done as a result! In '98, they changed it to Nesquik, which isn't the same. It horrifies me that kids are now drinking the stuff and, worse, that somewhere there's probably some kid pouring it on a bowl of Trix cereal. That's a frightening combination of sugar, artificial coloring and cartoon rabbits on the package.

• Posted at 5:19 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Bill Moyers interviews Jon Stewart.

• Posted at 11:18 AM · LINK