the things you kids are into these days...

I am learning how to use my phone camera. Snapped this in the grocery store. Interesting packaging and advertising campaign here. I guess this is being marketed to suburban tweens who get bored easily with the same old microwave pizza day in and day out. If you look at the picture, it looks like pizza with pop rocks on it. For those of you under 35, pop rocks were these things we bought as kids back in the seventies. They looked like ordinary rocks that any kid would want to eat, but when you put them in your mouth they fizzed up like crazy. If you put a whole bunch of them in your mouth, like an entire package, and every kid tried this at one time, it was like, hang on for the ride of your life. This package has the word "fizz" on it, so there must be some sort of carbonation sprinkling in there somewhere. I was intrigued right away by the product name: Mess with your mouth. Now, that just sounds gross to me. Call me an old fuddy, but I don't want my mouth messed with really, and I am not sure we should encourage that sort of compulsion in our young people. I wonder what kind of debates circulated around the table when the advertising committee came up with this one. Did it just fly through? Or were there reservations? It reminds me of the whole Mr. Whipple and "Don't squeeze the Charmin," campaign, again, from back in the seventies. That was a strange one, and very popular. Mr. Whipple seemed to occupy a position of some authority in the store. Why couldn't he just take a couple of rolls into the back and squeeze them in peace? And the housewives walking by imploring him to resist this ungodly desire, did they know something we don't about the darker paths awaiting those who fall into such temptations? As I look back on it, I hope that today Mr. Whipple has found peace and that those who feed children pizza with pop rocks on it have what it takes to bring the youngsters back from the brink when the buzz wears off and they want to crank it up a notch.