Snack Food Smackdown! by Fred Hagemeister

 

                                VERSUS

       

-        Both are fruit chews. Both contain a version of orange, strawberry, & lemon. They differ only in that Mamba shills a raspberry flavor, while Starburst boasts of cherry.

Let’s meet our competitors:

IN THIS CORNER!!!!! MAMBA

Here’s what they have to say.

From the Mamba website:

-        Mamba is one of Storck’s oldest brands. Your Mom and Dad, and even your Grandma and Grandad, used to eat Mambas. The refreshing fruity chews were invented in Germany in the early 1950s. Throughout its 50-year history, Mamba has always kept up with the times. 

-         

-        Mamba is made in Germany, which strikes me as odd. When I think of the term mamba, I think of the African savanna, a land overflowing with slithering, toxic snakes; if I am to believe everything I see on Animal Planet’s Most Extreme Animals show, and I do.

      

-        

                                     

       

     The Black Mamba snake

         Photo via National Geographic

           

-         

       According to the New Encyclopedia of Reptiles, the Black Mamba is a highly venomous snake closely related to the cobra. The Mamba is endowed with a toxic venom fatal to most humans. Without an anti-venom, the bite can rapidly stop the heart and lungs of a man in minutes. The mamba’s top speed of 14 mph matches the average humans! The article goes on to state the snake’s nasty habit of chasing and attacking humans for nothing more than glancing at it the wrong way.

      

AND THIS CORNER!!!!! STARBURST

  

Here’s what they say:

·  1960 The brand is invented in the UK and launched under the name OPAL FRUITS®. The four original flavors are Strawberry, Lemon, Orange, and Lime.  1967 OPAL FRUITS come to America and the name is changed to STARBURST.

Fair enough, but what is a Starburst?

 The Chandra X-ray Observatory website defines a star burst as a generic term to describe a region of space with an abnormally high rate of star formation. It is reserved for truly unusual objects.

     

                A Starburst               Photo via NASA

-                   In a literal sense, if you were to pit a mamba snake against a starburst in space, it would be no contest. That poor snake, for all its ornery ways and lethal venom, would instantly implode after being flung far into the vast and frozen reaches of a vacuum. Still, you know he’d go out fighting. And while the 12-year-old in me hopes the snake’d be bombarded with gamma radiation, grow to one thousand times his size, and return back to earth with vengeance in his heart and lasers in his eyes, the adult in me knows better. But I digress, we’re here to talk about their candy namesakes.....

         

Round 1-MOST BADASS CANDY PRODUCT NAMESAKE:   

Winner: Mamba

Round 2-DIETARY CONCERNS

Starburst is Gluten-free.

Mamba, by contrast, contains wheat.

Mamba is also vegan friendly!

Winner: Mamba

Round 3-SERVING SIZE:

Mamba: a modest 6 pieces

Starburst: one pack. One pack??? One entire package of Starburst. All 12 pieces? Really? Every piece in this pack I can eat and won’t go over my daily healthy nutritional intake according to the US Food and Drug administration? Good news for your waistline. Probably bad news for a diabetic and your  yearly dental bill.

Winner: Starburst

Round 4-FLAVORINGS:

Starburst: natural and artificial flavors

Mamba: artificial flavors only. None of that neurotic American nonsense of the inability to enjoy junk food for its own merits. Refreshingly, Mamba makes no pretenses to health!

Winner: Mamba

Round 5-SURPRISING INGREDIENT

 Starburst: fruit juice 

Mamba: paprika. Yes, paprika. Capsicum annuum, aka dried and ground chili pepper. Huh. Ponder that fact for awhile. You can't taste it, but its there. Paprika. 

   

                      

                                                         

                               

                                      paprika

Winner: Mamba

Round 6-Quantity:

Check this nonsense out:

Where’s the lemon? Well, where is it? Since there’s only enough room for three of these packets, let’s read the instructions again…..

 f   

                  

“Selected from…”

 That means you never know which of the three flavors you’re getting. What kind of nonsense is this?

FOR GETTING WHAT YOU PAY FOR:

 Winner: Starburst

FOR THOSE WHO LIKE TO GAMBLE:

 Winner: Mamba.

Tie.

      Candy fruit flavors are weird. They really don’t correspond to the fruit they are supposed to represent. It’s like ordering a filet-mignon and instead getting grill-flavored tofu. They’re vaguely close, but nowhere near the same.  Does a piece of Alexander the Grape ever really taste like a Concord grape from a vineyard? Or a cherry Slush Puppy taste like an actual cherry? Regardless, let’s see which of the two candy competitors taste better overall....

Round 7-FLAVOR:

Starburst: Their claims are true, each piece is a burst of tart, fruity juiciness.
Candy fruit taste, but fruit nonetheless. 

Mamba: Kind of waxy and more of a sweet taste in equal part to the fruit flavoring. That old school candy flavor that your grandparents liked, in the vein of Beeman’s gum, fruit slices, and ribbon candy.

FOR THE YOUNG, FOOTLOOSE, AND FANCY FREE:

 Winner: Starburst

 FOR THE OVER 75, GERIATRIC CROWD:

 Winner: Mamba

Tie.          

Tallying up:

Starburst: 1

Mamba: 4

WINNER: MAMBA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Honestly, this is a far cooler looking picture than the regular Mamba packaging. You people at Storck should look into using something like this for the younger set. Now you just need to throw some fruit in there, or something. 

 

 There. Perfect. And marketable! Mamba can send that endorsement check care of Fred Hagemeister/ The Signal Moon is Zero.

    

Cheap Trick: She's Tight

Reasons I like this video:  

1) There's something unmistakeably DEVO about the riff.
 

2) They set the template for every hair metal band to follow belatedly five years down the line.
 

3) Bun E. Carlos looks like a prime candidate for a heart attack throughout. 

"Fred, who taught you that rock was more than a haircut? The hardcore scene?"
No. It was Mr. Bun E. Carlos. 

‎4) The Japanese ending.

 

                              Coming Soon!!!!
                                                                                       (dig my limited graphic design skills)

The Baby Bullet!

Throw a smiley face on the product all you want, to me the Baby Bullet just sounds like a special caliber of ammo designed to kill babies.

Some people get wasted the first night of Spring Break. I make junk like this:

Aah! A Ghost!!!

I keep glancing from my book and seeing a face look in through my second floor window. The temp dropped so quickly that there's condensation on the glass, and a neighbor's light is casting a white, oval shape which moves with the wind. I'm thinking of shutting the blinds to stop my reaction, but now I'm kind of digging it. I like the fact that my mind immediately jumps into that animal self-preservation mode. Relax, mind. We're gonna neither fight nor flee. 

Why I Think Everyone but My Parents was Stoned in the 70's Pt 2

Call it artistic all you want, all I see is the product of stoned animators locked in an art studio. Patriotic, yes, but stoned nonetheless. I vaguely remember this from my childhood.

Its 11:39 on a Thursday night and I’m listening to Fu Manchu’s SIGNS OF INFINITE POWER. I wrote the title in caps to emphasize the power. Is that even funny? I can’t even tell anymore. Fu Manchu always opted for a fuzzy, distorted, big-dumb–rock sensibility. And while they name check Blue Oyster Cult, it seems like they base their style only on one of  BOC’s songs: “Godzilla,” probably one of the biggest in big-dumb-rock riffs.
Another group name checked constantly is the hardcore band Black Flag, but Fu Manchu play at a slower Nugent-esque tempo than Flag did in their later days. And Fu Manchu are ten times better at it than  Black Flag ever was. In fact, Fu Manchu started out as a hardcore band called Virulence, but they weren’t any good until they changed their name and slowed down. Black Flag, on the other hand, slowed down and were pretty cool, but then sped up to that 70’s rock thing (which the Fu do so well) and strangely began to suck. Maybe the Flag would have had better luck if they'd changed their name when they changed their sound. Still, what is Fu Manchu going on about this time?

On this album, FM (as I shall hereby abbreviate them to) tuned down to the key of their first album. This is good, although I miss the fuzzy guitars from their subsequent albums. The cover is a grid of a UFO crossing the sky while an eclipse occurs. Possibly the UFO is flying towards it. I’d prefer the latter. Perhaps the vehicle is the “Sign of infinite power” that  FM is trying to tell us about.
        The inside CD sleeve isn’t much help. The back of the booklet shows a faint orange oval on a peach-brown background. The eclipse has happened. Then on the back cover, under the cd holder, is our extraterrestrial friend the UFO, above what looks like volume bars in that same orange brown grid-work. Perhaps those are walls, and they are traveling home. On the inside are photos of the band member rocking out. No clues from the band photos.

  Let’s see if the song titles help any. Everything song title in the book is written in faded, cheaply scanned green lettering against a hideous blackish-green background. So far I’ve heard “Bionic Astronaut,” “Steel Beast Defeated,” Against the Ground,” the strangely titled (even for them) “Webfoot Witch Hat,” “El Busta,” (my Spanish dictionary only had El Busto, meaning a man’s chest. I’m assuming that by changing the end to the feminine “a” they are referring to a woman’s rack. Bravo, sirs. Especially if that word doesn’t actually exist in Spanish); “and now we arrive at “Signs of Infinite Power.” Throughout which singer Scott Hill keeps repeating “It’s a sign…it’s a sign...it’s a sign...of INFINITE POWER!” like some street corner prophet you always tell yourself you’ll stay and listen to on the way to the bar.When you pass by him, he tries to catch your eye; thinking he’s found another convert. You, instead, look at the time on your cell phone (or whatever visual excuse we make in this century to avoid communication, let alone eye contact with those around us) and quickly fade into the crowd of pedestrians striding toward whatever important destination they've made up in their minds.

Now Hill and band are talking about Gargantuans marching. Fair enough. As I turn the back cover on its side, I notice the UFO, in front t of a sun-like planet, looks strangely like the Eye of God pyramid on US currency. So there is a reason to what looks like a rush job CD cover! Scott Hill, you aren’t just preaching alone in the wilderness. Your echoing voice has carried this far over the rocks, weeds, and dried out plains. SIGNS OF INFINITE POWER, indeed, sir.I don’t exactly get it, but you seem to be a man with a plan. I will preach the word of Fu Manchu in every dale and grotto for here on out. Forever and ever, or until the band changes their sound. Amen.

That's Right, A Cassette

My car cd player gets wacky in the cold, so luckily I have a tape deck in there, too. Been rocking this chestnut for two weeks continuous now in all its mid-tempo (for Lemmy and co) majesty. Something about New England winters and Motorhead go well together. It's like tire chains for the spirit.
Best lyric:
I ain't no beauty
but I'm a secret fox