Halloween is a bit of a dichotomy for me. On one hand, I absolutely hate some parts of it: mischief, pumpkin smashing, vandalism, the term fun-size candy and the like. Otherwise, I love it: costumes, candy, horror movies, the monster mash, the cheesy decorations, they all call out to me, tempting me once more into the fold.
There's just so much about Halloween to love! This year though, I won't be going to a party, and I'm much, much too old to legitimately go out trick-or-treating. I will be attending the annual Halloween all-nighter at Elan Games, but that's just not enough.
I thought back to my childhood. Life for a kid was better back then. Saturday mornings brought us a pile of cartoons. People were less paranoid and kids were able to go outside and play without fear. The best part: the cereal.
Younger readers might not know this, but there was once a time when people didn't know or care about trans-fats, artificial colors and flavors or any of that other stuff. Cereal was unapologetically sugary, and there was a prize in every box.
I wouldn't know about any of that though. When I was a kid, we had a rule: if sugar was one of the first two ingredients listed on the cereal box, we weren't allowed to get it. I was allowed to have Trix and Cinnamon Toast Crunch once, and it was fantastic.
The king of all cereals was Count Chocula and the rest of the Monster Cereals. Each of these corn-based treats contained dehydrated marshmallows (also called marbits), and was flavored differently from the rest. These were so verboten, that I actually spent time daydreaming about what it was like. There were three: Count Chocula was chocolate flavor, Boo Berry was blueberry and Frankenberry was strawberry.
There were also two others, Frute Brute, which was lime-flavored and the vanilla Yummy Mummy. They were discontinued in 1983 and 1993, and never heard from again.
So, when September drew to a close, I resolved to finally sate my childhood curiosity. I would get some Count Chocula, and damnit, I would eat some. But then I got to thinking...finding it shouldn't be that difficult. Just writing about going down and buying a box of Count Chocula and then eating said cereal wouldn't be entertaining, except to cereal-fetish sites, and I don't write about that kind of thing anymore.
Then, while reading through archives of a webcomic by the name of Something Positive, I rediscovered exactly what was needed.
It's not enough to find Count Chocula, I'm going to bake with it.
Yeah, you read that right. I'm going to take some Count Chocula and use it to make desserts. And so begins: the Saga of the Count.
Ok, so the first step to baking with Count Chocula is to find some of the stuff. After looking around online, I found out that the stuff is mostly sold seasonally, so I would have to wait for the Halloween season to roll around.
In late September, I began the search, hitting up every grocery store within a 40 mile radius. I went to them all, often dragging my girlfriend along for the ride. We even went to convenience stores and the local Walmart, but to no avail. All we were greeted with was slack-jawed expressions from the clerks we spoke to.
After a while, I started to think that maybe they didn't get Count Chocula in my area, so I widened my search, and recruited Evil Jordan from the forums, a couple of Farkers that I had been talking this over with, and my brother to search the Greater Toronto Area for even just one box.
Then came the good news: my brother had been speaking with a few work colleagues, who told him that there was a huge supply of Count Chocula not far from where he lived. He relayed the news to me and I sent him to pick up all he could.
Then came the bad news.
After hours of searching his area, my brother found out that the people he worked with were full of shit, and had no idea what they were talking about. Not only was there no Count Chocula in the whole of Toronto, it wasn't even being imported to Canada anymore.
That's right: within inches of my dream of trying Count Chocula for the first time, I found that I wouldn't be able to get the stuff at all.
Fuck!
It wasn't right! It wasn't fair goddamnit! I just wasn't fucking fair!
Wait...what about the internet?
The internet is just about the best place to find stuff that you can't get into your area, and apparently it works just as well to find cereal. I had a few options available, all in the US, who had plenty of Count Chocula available for sale.
Except, none of them would ship to Canada.
Double-fuck!
And then, just at the verge of giving up on the whole affair and writing a piece of shit article about carving pumpkins, came the answer.
Ebay.
Some absolute geniuses figured out that us Canucks might actually want some Count Chocula, but we'd be unable to get our hands on any unless we took a trip to the States. So, they put it up for sale.
I swooped in and picked up a 2-pack of the stuff, and then after paying realized to my horror that shipping would take up to 15 business days, and it was already the 15th of October.
Days of sweating paid off though as the box arrived very early, and according to the shipping records, passed through customs without even a glance. I guess Canadian customs are used to people shipping breakfast.
