Old Man Rant...It ain't Cracker Jack no more....

Haha! First of all, I'm NOT getting BARE with you. Even with social isolation! But I did BEAR with you!

and I agree, Cracker Jack did have a lot more peanuts way back then. I haven't had any in many years, because even then it was mostly popcorn and very few peanuts. and it wasn't really all that good caramel popcorn either. So I gave up on it.

I also recently quit eating Reese's peanut butter cups. They used to be really good. Now it's just a greasy slab of mush. The chocolate doesn't taste like chocolate and the peanut butter is generic.

Quality control has been sacrificed for speed of production and the quickest way to make a buck they can.

 

Notwithstanding the degradation of the quality and quantity of product for the sake of corporate profits, taste buds and sense of smell degrades with age. My dad remembers how good the fish sandwich, then inappropriately by today's standards, called a Whaler, costing only 99 cents in 1969, tasted so much better then than the current one at Burger King.

 

Lol, it's "bear with me", and "barely a mistake", or did you write that intentionally?

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I remember getting Cracker Jacks prizes that were rather amazing. Assembled car toys, small games, etc. Then they became moisture-activated fake tattoos, and little books with a short story... still not too bad. Eventually I grew up into puberty and left them behind for good.

It sounds like the actual snack has now even become disappointing, and the prizes are completely non-existent. I guess my first question is whether they're even made in the U.S. at this point?

 

Yeah, everything was better when we were young. This has been the case for how many thousands of years now?

 

"Leave It to Beaver" Beaver Won't Eat (TV Episode 1960) - IMDb

 

Yup, when I was a kid, I'd dump so much sugar into my iced tea that about a third of the glass, before mixing, was sugar.

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Alton Brown has a good recipe for quick made at home Cracker Jacks he calls "Slacker Jacks" I think.

In the US corn is super cheap. And when you pop it, you get something that takes up a good amount of volume. That's a bonanza! So it does not surprise me. A few years ago I did an informal study of American products being destroyed like this. You'll find that a lot of American companies sell the same base product outside of the US with a more original recipe because the original was usually the higher quality and the new is usually cheaper.

In the US, people want cheap cheap cheap. I can't even imagine there exists a person who eats one of those $0.88 frozen pizzas and says "this is a good pizza". That's the cheapest crap you can buy, and it flies off the shelves. Even take the basic frozen pizza, DiGiorno. It's OK. I buy it every now and then, maybe once a year. Like most Nestle products, they have 1 recipe for the US, and 1 for the rest of the world. The version in the US is always greasier because the cheese is more oil than cheese. The crust is different, the meats are lower quality and less quantity. The Delissio version (what's marketed as outside the US, they even use the same commercials and tag line) is much better. And it costs more $0.66/100g vs $0.62/100g at least where I looked up the prices.

And since it is Easter time, the Cadbury eggs are super annoying this time of the year. Another Nestle product and the Hershey chocolate used in it is terrible compared to the real chocolate used everywhere else.

 

I did the same thing...bought one of those 3 packs.
I did not count the peanuts, though.

I'm just amazed that the peanut allergy lobby hasn't gotten them all out.
Back when you could fly somewhere the biggest fear was they might not give out peanuts because someone on the plane was allergic...but then it seems a year or two ago they got rid of them altogether.

Mike

 

As long as we're discussing modern type disappointments compared to childhood years..
I haven't been a big breakfast cereal eater for many years, but lately I've been on a Frosted Flakes kick. I'm getting so aggravated about the plastic bag in the box always sliding out and trying to land in my bowl. Was it really that big of a savings for the manufacturer to stop putting a dab of glue on the bottom to hold the bag in place? Hell, I'd gladly pay an extra dime or quarter if I didn't have to fight with the bag EVERY SINGLE TIME, trying to get it to stay in the box.

 

I like to remove such bags from the boxes and use a twist tie or a clip to seal them -- much easier than trying to fold them down in the box. And, more flexible storage options once they are out of a box which is usually 1/3rd bigger than it needs to be, even when the bag is full.

 

This is why I switched to "Fiddle Faddle" snacks. Definitely more nuts.

 

One flip side to that: I've found smells can be very powerful memory triggers. When I was three, I traveled across Canada by train with my Mum, then by ship across the Atlantic, to Holland.

Then, when I was thirteen we flew to Holland. When we crossed the threshold of my Aunt's place, I noticed the smell of the natural gas. It's different than in Canada, and it was the oddest sensation, like being suddenly transported back to when I was three.

Similarly, when I was seventeen I took the train across Canada, headed for basic training. In the aisles on the train were these recessed water fountains, with a supply of conical paper cups. I filled one, and as I was drinking, noticed the smell of the paper cup, very distinctive, must have been the same supply as when I was three. And again, it was like a memory puzzle instantly coming together.

 

Some of those prizes were decent. In 1993 my son and I were able to assemble an entire set of mini baseball cards released in boxes of Cracker Jack. We had a lot of fun doing it.

Another thing that can affect taste buds. I was recently reading some literature and found out about something I never came across in all of my years in pharmacy. It turns out that as you gain too much weight you actually lose taste buds. You can't taste the food as well so you can easily eat more to get satisfied. When you do start to lose weight, the number of taste buds increases, making it easy to eat too much because it now tastes so much better.

I'll dig a little to find one of the studies that confirms things about the taste buds.

Edit: Obesity, Could It Be Taste Buds? | Cornell Research