Wonderful! - Wonderful! 338: String Cheese is More Acceptable for Adults
Episode Date: August 21, 2024Griffin's favorite vehicle for croutons! Rachel's favorite museum-friendly munchies! Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya Wo...rld Central Kitchen: https://wck.org/
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Hi, this is Rachel
McElroy.
Hi, this is Griffin
McElroy.
And this is wonderful.
This is wonderful, a show
where we talk about things
that's good we like, we're
into. Which is a lot of things, it turns out. Sometimes I this is wonderful. This is wonderful, a show where we talk about things that's good, we like, we're into,
which is a lot of things, it turns out.
Sometimes I go to wonderful.fy,
a database of all the things we talk about,
and it's like over a thousand things.
There's a lot of things in there.
And it's like, I like over a thousand things,
I guess the two of us combined.
Yeah.
Like around, like probably like six to ten.
And some of those we only like enough
to talk about for a few seconds at the beginning of the show.
It still gets added to the registry though.
Yeah, I guess so.
So when someone's like,
hey Griffin, what do you like?
I can be like, I will take you to a website
that has all my interests.
Icebreaker games for me at corporate retreats
would be so easy,
because I'd be like,
what do you wanna like go down this list?
If the picture of the boy is on it, that's me.
I like that thing.
Oh yeah.
Do you have any small wonders you'd like to talk about before we get started with the main course,
the true dish?
Oh, okay, I'll say this.
I'm worried that I'm gonna take credit for your good work,
but you organized our children's cup shelf.
You started this.
I came downstairs this morning.
You woke up before I did, as you so often do.
And I came downstairs.
You act as if I have a choice.
No, that's correct.
You do have, you don't have a choice.
You have a gust.
Small Sun insists that I am with him
for at least a few minutes in the morning, every morning.
Well, he wants nothing to do with me.
I come downstairs this morning
and you have pulled out every cup and bottle
from our like drinkware shelving.
And it's sitting-
Specifically, this may not be uncommon
for families with children,
but there is a section of your kitchen
that is dedicated to children's cups.
Yes.
And ours had become just a real pit.
Just a disaster of mismatched lids and bottles.
It was full and yet somehow never had the thing
that you needed it to have in it.
So yes, you had pulled it all out.
And then you got up because Gus needed your presence.
I think he just came in the kitchen and he was just like,
Come in the living room.
Come in the living room, leave the kitchen.
And so I stepped in and it took like 20 minutes.
This is the thing, right?
Like we've been talking about that for a while.
And it felt like it probably wasn't gonna take very long,
but the first step was to get everything out of there.
And that itself seems daunting.
So I just did it and then it took you like 10 minutes.
And then we're done, and then it's done, yeah.
And now it looks great.
It looks so good in there.
That's my small wonder.
I'm gonna say, I feel very nervous
bringing this as a small wonder,
but I want to talk about it.
And I certainly don't want to do it.
Your incredible sexual prowess.
My sexual prowess is somehow only getting better.
We've been watching Too Hot to Handle again.
Okay.
You just made a face like,
I can't believe you wanna talk about this show in the air.
Well, one, it is always risky to talk about a reality show
before the season has ended.
Yes, that's true.
And then two, this is one of those shows
that if I was in a room full of fancy people
and they were like, what do you watch?
I would not admit to this.
Here's the thing though.
This show has changed dramatically.
We, Rachel and I have a lot of frankly,
pretty erudite things to say
about the reality TV landscape and that-
And how it has evolved and changed.
How it has evolved and changed
and how Netflix has sort of their own flavor
that they bring to it.
Their own way of making reality shows,
there is a vibe and a pace and a-
The way they cast feels very specific
to a Netflix reality show.
Exactly, and then the level of reality presented
in that reality show, like Netflix has a,
I would say a pretty low bar for that,
that defines sort of, it differs show to show, but in general,
there's a lot of clearly pretty scripted
confessional content of like, Lana,
are you out of your mind?
What?
Like the absolute pits.
But we fell off of it like two seasons ago.
I am enjoying it from that perspective,
from the perspective of like,
I made the comparison to wrestling,
because it's like, clearly this is all a work.
Like a lot of this on Too Hot to Handle is a work.
And they know exactly who they have been cast to be.
Yeah.
And there's also this year, there's a whole economy.
Yes.
Like they have a whole ecosystem they've created
with very specific rules.
And it's interesting.
It reminds me a lot of, gosh, what was the show we watched
that had that whole fantasy reality
and they had to like collect things?
Oh, New World.
New World.
It reminds me a little bit of New World
in the sense that-
I don't know about that.
New World is one of the finest reality shows ever made.
And this is garbage.
There's a whole like currency and it gets changed
and people have different amounts of power.
It's-
What are you, I don't know what you're talking about.
I'm talking about like, for example, the happy hour menu.
Yeah, so-
Which I won't go into detail about.
There's a bad Lana now.
The little AI robot Lana that is usually like-
And you find this out episode one,
so it's not a big spoiler.
Lana will be like, no kissing.
But then bad Lana will come out and be like,
you guys should kiss.
You guys should totally kiss.
Also from what I can tell, nobody gets eliminated,
and so now there's a new limbo they go to.
Yes, well, you don't get eliminated.
You leave if you're unsuccessful at finding love,
or if you break the rules too many times,
but that shit never happens.
That hasn't happened yet.
Anyway, I genuinely don't wanna get too,
I wanted to talk about Too Hot to Handle
from the lens of like, I am enjoying it from a,
this is a polish,
like not great reality TV show,
and like a lot of decisions are made in Too Hot to Handle,
in the things that people say,
in the storylines that they pursue,
and you know, so on and so on.
And it is kind of fun to like try and figure out
those decisions that they're making
before they make them.
It is, yeah, it's been enjoyable.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
And Netflix is pretty good about this, typically.
They will kind of keep a lot of the key elements,
but every season they'll add like a little new twist.
Little twist, little something something.
And I'm enjoying it.
The circle is in my opinion,
still the gold standard
of Netflix reality.
And then I would probably say Love is Blind.
And then I would say like below that is Too Hot to Handle.
But there's really not much on right now guys.
Survivor's not on, hockey's not on.
Like it's fucking, it's rough out here.
But Too Hot to Handle is here for me in the dark times.
And I do think we're probably gonna drop it
as soon as we find something better.
But for now, thanks Too Hot to Handle.
I go first this week.
You do.
I wanna talk to you about a crunchy friend that I adore.
And before I do that,
I've never done this with a segment before.
I'd like to start off with a trip back in time
with a little history journey that we came up together.
So it's 1924 and Italian immigrant and restaurateur
Caesar Cardini is working at his restaurant,
Caesar's in Tijuana, Mexico.
Things are booming, place is popping.
He opened the place to attract American tourists
who were like wanting to party during Prohibition.
And so they would just scoot on down to TJ
and they would get silly with it.
And that is the scene here on the 4th of July, 1924.
Big, huge crowd has come down
and he is running out of supplies. Supplies are running
low. He doesn't have enough food to keep up with everyone, but customers keep coming in.
So what does Caesar Cardini do? He improvises. He goes in the kitchen shelves, he grabs whatever
ingredients he's got. He grabs some romaine lettuce, some croutons, some lemon juice,
some olive oil, some eggs, some Worcestershire sauce, some anchovies, some garlic, some Daine lettuce, some croutons, some lemon juice, some olive oil, some eggs, some Worcestershire sauce,
some anchovies, some garlic, some Dijon,
some Parmesan, some black pepper,
and then he heads out on the show floor,
and by show floor I mean restaurant floor.
But it really was like his theater,
because he added some theatrics, he's like,
I'm about to cook something
that's gonna blow your guys fucking minds.
Probably the whole time being like,
God, I hope this is good.
I'm putting a lot of gross shit in here.
I really, I'm putting anchovies and Worcestershire
in here together.
This seems like it's gonna be gross,
but it's all I got.
And my man makes a salad, it's a fucking hit,
and the Caesar salad is born.
So when you say your crunchy friend,
you just mean the salad?
The Caesar salad.
Okay, I thought you were gonna talk about the crouton
at first. I thought you were gonna do a whole segment on the crouton. I thought you were gonna talk about the crouton at first, I thought you were gonna do a whole segment
on the crouton.
I could do a whole segment on the crouton,
if you would like.
When I was growing up and our mom was trying to get us
to eat more vegetables, I would eat a salad occasionally
at home, that would basically be lettuce, crouton,
bacon bits, and ranch dressing, which is only,
at that point, the meat outnumbers the veg
by a pretty significant kind of like ratio.
No, I'm gonna talk specifically about the Caesar salad.
Okay.
Because I-
I like a Caesar salad.
That's what everyone would say about this.
I'd eat a Caesar salad.
If you're going through a menu-
Except for your brother, Justin.
Justin doesn't party with a Caesar salad. If you're going through a menu. Except for your brother, Justin. Justin doesn't party with a Caesar salad.
Too wet.
Too wet.
But if I'm going down a menu
and I don't see anything that excites me,
but they have a Caesar salad on the menu,
I'll think about it.
If I'm in a salad-y mood, I'll go for a Caesar salad.
This is a fun story actually for me.
I have a particular relationship with the Caesar salad.
I'd love to hear it.
My parents took me to Toronto
to go to the Hockey Hall of Fame
when I was in middle school.
And-
Didn't go to the beach very much.
No.
Went to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Went to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
And to be fair, I was excited about going.
Fuck yeah.
But we went out to a lot of restaurants
that were not kid focused.
Because it was more about like proximity and timing.
And it was also the 90s.
So internet did not feature prominently
in our travel plans.
No.
So I went to a lot of restaurants
and exclusively would order Caesar salads
because there was nothing on the restaurant
that I was comfortable with except that.
So that was my go-to every restaurant.
I've never, I've eaten a lot of Caesar salads.
I've never eaten a single Caesar salad
where I finished it and been like,
what was going on there?
Boo.
What the fuck?
That was so wild.
It's like a Caesar salad.
And I think that it accomplishes that
because it has a lot of bold flavors that it kind of that because it has a lot of bold
flavors that it kind of carries with it.
It assaults your mouth with Dijon and Worcestershire
and like pretty potent, it's a pretty potent brew, right?
And so another salad that's more based on like
the seasonal vegetables, you eat that,
that could go either way, but a Caesar salad
is pretty much gonna be the same no matter what.
You know what else?
They're, to my knowledge, as I recall,
there's no tomatoes in a Caesar salad.
No tomatoes in a Caesar salad.
And tomatoes, particularly when they give you
like a whole huge cherry tomato,
and they're like, figure it out.
Yeah.
I don't love that.
Sometimes they put raw onion in it,
but it's not like shaved particularly thin,
so you just, all of a sudden,
you're just fucking Shrek.
Caesar salad does not fuck around.
You do not get the sense of satisfaction
with a Caesar salad of like,
I have made a good choice today
because it's romaine lettuce and a bunch of garbage.
Yeah, I was gonna say,
is the only vegetable in it romaine lettuce?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
But it's the original sort of recipe called for it to be,
it was just like a big leaf of romaine lettuce
that they dressed with all of this stuff.
And then you're supposed to sort of like pick it up
by the stem and come on, come on.
Oh, okay.
Which is fun.
I like a hand salad.
That's crazy.
What are you doing, man?
I just, it's a funky flavor that goes good with any protein,
is another thing that I really like about it.
I typically rock with a chicken Caesar salad,
but it's always good.
It always hits the spot.
It always tastes like a Caesar salad.
And unless there's something terribly wrong
with the romaine lettuce,
it's gonna be a Caesar salad,
and it's gonna be good for you and you're gonna like it.
That's basically how, unless you don't like Caesar salad,
which is understandable because that list of ingredients
has a few gnarly customers on it.
That like, I remember that, do you remember the first time,
I wonder if it was after your Canadian love affair
with Caesar salads that you found out
what was in a Caesar salad, that it was like,
yeah, it's got eggs and Worcestershire
and anchovies and stuff.
Yeah, no, I'm not convinced that is always the case.
I feel like a lot of restaurants don't actually follow
that recipe to the letter.
Interesting.
I don't know.
I mean, I will say it's pretty easy to put a certain kind
of dressing on romaine lettuce and convince you
that you have had a Caesar salad.
I'm not 100% sure everybody's doing the eggs
and the anchovies. Yeah, I feel like there had a Caesar salad, I'm not 100% sure everybody's doing the eggs and the anchovies.
Yeah, I feel like there is a difference between,
I don't think I've ever made a home Caesar salad
that has been particularly good,
where I just put the Caesar salad dressing on it.
Yeah, usually we get it in a bag
if we're gonna do a Caesar salad.
I feel like at restaurants,
they probably do more shit to it in the back.
I hope so, I hope they're doing more shit
than I do at home with my bottle of craft Caesar salad.
It's prepared literally 10 seconds
before it comes out to your table.
Exactly.
I mean, my man Caesar did it table side,
which I really like, which I really appreciate.
So Caesar salad, that was the story of its introduction.
It proliferates throughout the US kind of slowly.
It starts with some mentions in West Coast newspapers.
There's an excerpt I found on Wikipedia in 1946.
There's a columnist named Dorothy Kilgallen
wrote about the Caesar salad and wrote,
"'The big food rage in Hollywood, the Caesar salad,
"'will be introduced to New Yorkers by Gilmore's Steakhouse.
"'It's an intricate concoction that takes ages to prepare
"'and contains,' in parentheses, zowie.
Lots of garlic, raw or slightly coddled eggs,
croutons, romaine anchovies, parmesan, they misspelled it,
cheese, olive oil, vinegar, and plenty of black pepper.
You know what I kind of love about the way you presented
this is it sounds like everybody was there
for the party of the year.
Yes.
And then what became like your signifier, like were you for the party of the year. Yes. And then what became like your signifier,
like were you at the party of the year,
was like a, hey, you had a Caesar salad?
And then they would like wink and touch their nose
and be like, yeah, I've had a Caesar salad.
So another thing in like looking at the history
of the Caesar salad is like a big reason
that it proliferated was because like Hollywood types
would go to Tijuana and then come back and be like,
Hey guys, I'm the hottest guy in the country and I gotta tell you about these new salads.
Excuse me. Can I speak to the chef? Yeah, I have a particular way that I would like my salad prepared
and I'd like him to come to the table.
Can I tell you something babe? That was prescient, what you just said. In 1937, there was a Paramount Pictures exec
named Manny Wolfe who started to spread the recipe
around restaurants in Hollywood, like the Brown Derby
and other sort of like big name restaurants,
which I aspire to that level of success,
where one day I can go around to local DC restaurants
and be like, hey, start cooking this.
There's no way not to be shitty though,
if you're doing that.
Oh no, but it's-
Let me tell you how you're gonna do it, okay?
What I say is gonna sound crazy,
but you're gonna do it this way
and it's gonna change your life.
Yes, no, I mean, it would be part of the being so successful
that I could be the-
That you could be terrible.
That I could be terrible.
That is really a reason why it started to spread.
In the 1950s, it gets added to the menu
of the Waldorf Astoria, where at that point,
it's kind of like widely adopted as like busy.
Did America try and like co-opt it though?
I have to imagine people started saying like,
I invented this.
So, like any sort of food I've ever talked about
on this show before, there are multiple reports
of like where it comes from.
The Caesar Cardini story is sort of
the most widely accepted one.
There's a little bit of juicy family drama
because Caesar's brother, Alex Cardini,
said that he is the one who kind of tweaked
and perfected the recipe of the Caesar salad
as we know it today,
and that he would serve it up to his pilot buddies
and called it the Aviator's Salad,
which is also, I think, a pretty strong name.
If I was at a restaurant and I was like,
let me get an Aviator.
Yeah.
That sounds cool.
I'm also into that.
Yeah.
So the exact origins of it, it is not possible.
I think the fact that a lot of people think
that it was a salad that Julius Caesar made
speaks to the fact that maybe this is not a topic
that people spend a lot of time thinking about.
But I did today to do this thing I'm doing right now
in front of you.
It does remind me of like when restaurants name sandwiches
after like supposed celebrity guests.
It's like calling it the aviator salad
is your way of saying like, you know who likes the salad.
Yeah, pilots.
Fancy pilots.
Like, you know who likes the sandwich?
Billy Crystal.
I mean, I think in the 1920s, if you meet a pilot,
that's probably it.
That's probably a thrill.
That's like me as the president.
I feel like I'd still be a little thrilled to meet a pilot.
I don't know. I don't know.
Just a job.
Just a job.
There's a lot of people-
Just a job like yours.
No, it's different from mine, but that doesn't,
but we both do equal service, I would say,
to our country.
To our country.
Yeah.
Hey, can I steal your way?
Yes.
Thanks. MUSIC
My name is Jordan Crushiola, and I love movies.
But you know what I might love even more?
Talking about movies.
And the directors, actors, and writers that join me every week on Feeling Scene
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We're doing it every week at MaximumFun.org.
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Okay. My wonderful thing is also a food item. Oh, cool. in your podcast app.
Okay, my wonderful thing is also a food item. Oh, cool.
But perhaps not something you would see in a restaurant.
Okay.
In a similar vein to the week that I brought string cheese.
Yes.
Or did you bring string cheese? I'm pretty sure you brought string cheese. Okay. Or did you bring string cheese?
I'm pretty sure you brought string cheese.
Okay.
This week I am bringing the fruit snack.
Yeah, man.
It is simple.
Tough to beat.
My approach to the fruit snack is very similar to string cheese, although I think string
cheese is more acceptable for adults to eat.
Yeah.
I will say the reason I love the fruit snack is that my children like it.
Yes. It is not a messy food. It is not a messy food.
It is not a messy food.
Like if I am in an environment where I kind of know
my children aren't supposed to be eating
like an art museum, I can give them a fruit snack
and I don't think I'm gonna get any dirty looks
from the security guard.
No.
Because they know that fruit snack is not gonna create.
It's not gonna melt.
A whole crumble mess on the floor.
It's not gonna leave a residue on their little hands.
Yeah. It's a fruit snack. Yeah. And mess on the floor. It's not gonna leave a residue on their little hands. Yeah.
It's a fruit snack.
Yeah.
And so I did a little research on the fruit snack
and came upon what is called the fruit snack wars.
Similar to the chicken sandwich wars.
Yeah, dude.
This is, my mind is reeling right now
because like there's a brand of fruit snack
that we buy now that I can't, I don't, I can-
Welches. Welches.
Yeah.
Just straight up classic fruit snacks, fruit shapes,
fruit flavors.
Relatively new to the scene though, my research.
But that's what I'm saying is like, back in the day,
you would go to the grocery store and there would be
80 million boxes of fruit snacks that were based on
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or-
Exactly.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the first
like character ones that I found.
So I remember that it wasn't quite as homogenous
as it maybe is.
Not that you can't get TMNT fruit snacks out there,
but I feel like the Welch's thing
has really cornered the market.
Yeah, yeah.
According to their website at least,
they have been the number one fruit snack since,
well, maybe not since 2001.
Welch's fruit snacks launched in 2001
and now claim to be the number one fruit snack
brand worldwide.
A rough estimate.
How many bags of these bad boys have you torn down
since we had kids?
Me, personally?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I actually ate some today because I got really excited
as I was preparing this.
Yeah, I'll tell you what the problem was.
You were cleaning out our pantry area
and left all the fruit snacks on the counter.
Every time I walk into the kitchen,
I'm like, oh, a fruit snack wouldn't be bad right now.
They were only on the counter for like 12 hours.
Yeah, it was a chewy 12 hours for yours truly, a juicy 12.
So the fruit snack, the history of it is like, inextricably tied to the fruit roll-up.
Okay.
Which I didn't really realize fruit roll-ups came first.
Yeah, I mean that makes sense, right?
Because that's sort of the most primordial state that chewy gummy fruit can take.
Yeah, because like the first first was like the fruit leather.
Was this like dehydrated fruit that was like a trail snack that people would take
when they were like camping, walking around.
I like fruit leather.
I know you do.
I didn't, I forgot.
We haven't gotten fruit leather in so long.
No, we haven't, because I think you're the only one
in this house that likes it.
I personally do not very much.
Okay.
But I remember that.
I remember before we had children,
we used to buy fruit leather.
I did like that.
I remember it because my friend Leah made that joke.
What?
My friend Leah really fixated on the fact
that you were five years younger than me.
Oh yeah.
And I was talking about fruit leather
and she's like, oh yeah, kids love that.
And kind of a suggestion that you were a very young man.
Okay, well that's hurtful, but it's,
I guess if the shoe fits.
What were you gonna say about fruit leather?
Can we get some?
Oh, I mean, if you are going to be the only one eating it.
I'll put them here in my desk.
I'll have a little desk drawer with fruit leather in it.
Documents on one side, fruit leather on the other.
Okay.
Yeah, so fruit roll-ups, fruit leather,
all kind of started in the late 70s.
The concept of fruit snacks started in 1975.
General Mills was developing a new fruit filling
for a cake mix and then kind of just got-
Just started eating it.
Gotten jazzy on it, and revised and then went to test markets in 1979
as fruit roll-ups.
What a victory they snatched from the jaws of defeat,
because if you put a fruit roll-up in
as the filling of a cake,
that textural experience makes me wanna yards.
Yeah, I'm sure, I mean, I don't have that detail,
but it does kind of seem like that's what happened,
in the sense of like, we're trying to make one thing
and we ended up with another and then we just improvised.
Yeah, sure.
So, what ended up happening is that the fruit snack
that I'm speaking of today didn't really pop off
until the 1990s.
Yes.
In between, in 1986, there was a group called Fruit Corners
that came to the market with all of their fruit roll-ups
and introduced something called Fruit Wrinkles.
Fruit Wrinkles?
Ah, fruit wrinkles.
That sounds like something you would say
when you're like, you are a very, very puritanical person
who just like did bad on their golf drive.
I do like that a lot actually.
You shanked your drive and you're like,
ah, fruit wrinkles.
Can we remember that from our Max Fun pin?
Yeah, ah, fruit wrinkles.
Oh, fruit wrinkles.
So from 1986 to 1995, fruit wrinkles were on the market.
They were basically soft jelly beans
with the texture of raisins
in a variety of fruit flavors.
Oh, disgusting.
Okay.
I'm down to clown with any fruity food.
That does not sound great.
A raisins, I would say, not known for their strength
on a textural level.
Also, 1986, Fruit Corners 1987,
Sunkist came out with their own fruit snack
that coincidentally was soft and pellet shaped
rather like a jelly bean.
Amazing, okay, they're figuring it out.
That's when we got to Sunkist Fruit Gems,
Sunkist Fruit Gems, Sunkist First Fruit Snacks,
and then early 90s is when General Mills hit the scene.
In 1992, your friend and mine, The Gusher,
came to the market.
Ooh, in 92.
Yeah, and this was a bold time for television marketing.
The Gusher commercials, I feel like when I think
about the 1990s and I think about what the media landscape
looked like, I think a lot about the Gussher's commercials
where kids could take a bite of a food so juicy
that their head turned into a giant banana.
Their head turned into a giant watermelon.
Like, it happened.
Yeah, no, it's like, it's weird how strong those commercials are in my head.
Uh-huh.
But I'm gonna bring up something
that I don't know if you will remember.
Okay.
In 1990, Betty Crocker had a fruit snack called Shark Bites.
Yeah, that sounds familiar.
You remember this? Yeah.
The commercial was just when you thought
it was safe to eat fruit snacks.
Here comes Shark Bites, a feeding frenzy of fruity fun. All right. The commercial was just when you thought it was safe to eat fruit snacks.
Here comes Shark Bites, a feeding frenzy of fruity fun.
All right.
And they were shark shaped, including hammerheads, tiger sharks, and a fan favorite, the great
white shark pieces.
Yeah.
Everyone can't stop talking about the great white fruity sharks.
Those lasted until 2016 when General Mills
eliminated artificial flavors and colors from their products.
Yeah, what's left?
It's just a bag of dust.
So shark bites had to go.
Although I have heard that shark bites are back.
Interesting.
This kind of nostalgia craze that
is happening with a lot of our childhood snacks now.
Shark bites apparently you can still find out in the world.
I remember for all of the, for as much conflict
as there were in the fruit snack wars,
as many brands and franchises got a hand
on the fruit snack product ball,
I was not especially picky.
I just wanted fruity snacks that looked like my dudes I liked.
And whether, I didn't swear by the TMNT fruit snacks,
I would eat a fruit shark, I would eat a just straight up gym
if that is the direction it went,
because it was all pretty good.
Yeah, I mean fruit snacks are all pretty similar.
Yeah.
What varies tends to be like the shape. And the gumminess, like some of them have no. Well yeah, and how like sticky it similar. Yeah. What varies tends to be like the shape and then.
And the gumminess, like some of them have no.
Well, yeah, and how like sticky it is.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, and then we mentioned 1998
is when Welch's came to the scene.
This is when we're talking about
making them with real fruit.
Yeah.
Although it should be noted,
and probably not surprising,
fruit snacks are not in fact healthy
because there is a tremendous amount of sugar
What?
So if you are eating a fruit snack, please do not consider that as a serving of fruit for your day
Um because go ahead
We don't care do what you do what you want
Uh, so in 1988 they were imagined 2001. 2001, they were out in the world.
That is currently what is residing in our cabinets today.
Today?
Ultra portable, keeps forever, not messy.
You can fit like 10 in your bag because inevitably, at least with our children, they never eat
one small bag of fruit snacks.
My only complaint about Welch's fruit snacks
is that they only have like seven fruit snacks in each bag
and that is an insult to me and my children.
The only other bag you can get is like at the airport,
the one that has 400 fruit snacks in it,
which is too many.
Split the diff, guys.
And one thing I have noticed is that fruit snacks,
when left in the open air, tend to get very hard.
But that's another benefit because then,
when you're picking them out of your car seats,
because your kids, they're so easy to just grab.
They crumble up some Doritos,
that's your whole fucking day trying to pick that
out of the fine leather of your automobile seats.
But a fruit snack, you just, easy.
Can I ask how you feel about a fruit snack
as a Halloween candy?
Here's the thing.
I don't think fruit snack is candy.
I don't think fruit snack is candy.
But a gummy bear is candy, right?
Gummy bear is candy.
Fruit snack is not candy.
I don't know why.
Couldn't tell you.
It's the fruit, right?
Like there's something about your brain that's like,
well, candy is candy, but this is a fruit snack.
If I go to the, okay, at the movie theater,
they always have fruit snacks.
Like I feel like that is always available
at the concessions. Do they?
Always, always. I don't even see them.
I don't even see them.
My brain is not registered.
What I also have available to me is real candy.
Yeah.
And fruit snacks isn't real candy.
It's a bit more responsible, a bit more buttoned up,
and a bit more straight-laced.
I wanna go eat some fucking fruit snacks.
I will tell you though.
So I was preparing this segment,
got really excited about fruit snacks,
went and grabbed a little bag for myself.
Yeah.
Did not really enjoy it.
Was it, are they stale?
Are they old?
What's the, what's the problem?
It's just not what I, it's not as good as what I remember them being.
How long has it been since you've eaten fruit snacks, baby?
I'm saying when I was a child and had limited access to fruit snacks, I
remember them being exceptional.
Our oldest child is seven years old.
Are you telling me that you have not eaten
a single fruit snack in the entire time?
I can probably count on one hand
the number of fruit snacks I've eaten
in the past few years.
That's so wild.
Yeah.
Our brains work in some different ways.
I will eat a lot of their snacks.
Yeah.
But I'm not as enticed. You're working your way down the list of snacks that are kind of like- I will say a lot of their snacks. Yeah. But I'm not as enticed.
You're working your way down the list of snacks
that are king's like.
I will say we got some gushers recently
and those are as good as I remember.
Those shits rock, man.
Those taste so good.
They taste so crazy.
Gushers taste so crazy.
They have a sour apple kind now
that our son got excited about.
And that is a delight.
Knocks it out of the park.
I think I've done Gushers, maybe.
Maybe I haven't done Gushers.
Gushers you said- You definitely talked about them.
I don't know if you've done a whole segment of Gushers.
I have to talk about Gushers.
They're really important to me.
One of my inside out brain islands is Gushers Island.
And when I have a fight with my dad,
Gushers Island starts to turn gray and fall down.
Hey, thanks for listening to the show.
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We are sort of getting caught up on recording.
So it's only been a couple of days
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Thanks to Bowen and Augustus for these for our theme song, Money Won't Pay.
You can find a link to that in the episode description.
Go check out our merch over at mackaroymerch.com.
We've got some shows coming up for Mabim, Bam, and Taz.
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and Atlanta and Portland and a bunch of places.
So go check out that link if you wanna get tickets.
I think that's it.
I think that's it.
I'm still gonna go eat fruit snacks.
Like you didn't dissuade me from eating fruit snacks.
I've eaten so many of them since we had kids.
So many of the fruit snacks.
Yeah, I mean, gummy is an important texture for you.
Gummy is a part, is a food,
it's part of the triangle now.
I'm chocolate all day, but I'm a real Cathy.
Ah!
Yeah, that's what I say.
I just called the food pyramid the triangle.
Health is important I say. I just called the food pyramid the triangle. Health is important to me. Money won't work it out. Money won't work it out.
Money won't work it out.
Money won't work it out.
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