GROSS TOESTIES

Do you remember the cereal Post Toasties? I believe they were something similar to Kellogg's Corn Flakes, only they were the Post brand of Corn Flakes. While driving home from Subway last night, my daughter and I began a tangent from a circular conversation that wound up spawning the idea for a new cereal. Our tangent also spawned about five solid minutes of laughter.

The conversation started while we were still inside of a Subway restaurant, awaiting our order. I placed an order for the new Blackened Steak Sub sandwich, while Ally ordered her turkey and whatever-else-she-wants-on-it-at the-moment sandwich. The server asked me if I would like my sub toasted, to which I answered, "yes".

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my daughter look towards my sandwich as it was being prepared, and make a face. It wasn't the kind of face you would even notice if you didn't know Ally well, but being her father, I have an insider's track into all of her faces and expressions, and this one shouted "eeeyeeww!" to me louder than if she had actually said it. To her credit, she held her tongue for the most part while we were inside of Subway. As we walked out the door, she mentioned that "Your sandwich is a gross toasty one".

I don't know why my mind works the way it does, but the words "gross toasty" reminded me of Post Toasties, which of course rhymes, which is possibly why the words "gross toasty" morphed into Gross Toasties during the time it took to walk out the Subway door to the point where I opened my truck door.

As soon as we were inside of my truck, I blurted out, "Eeyew! Gross Toasties!" Ally laughed, and from there, we were off to the tangent races. At some point, I told Ally about Post Toasties; what they were, and how her words "Gross toasty" reminded me of them. Then I mentioned that we could make a new cereal, called Gross Toasties, to which she gave her best "eeyew!" face yet. If you have never seen the face of a fourteen year old girl as she thinks "Eeyew!", rent one, and say something gross. I promise you, it will be the only moment you will ever see a fourteen year old girl not care what she looks like. The look is simply hilarious, almost as hilarious as the "My Daddy is an idiot" face, which is practiced by every fourteen year old girl because they want it to look just right.

You can imagine our conversation from that point on. Somehow, Gross Toasties became Gross Toes-ties, a cereal shaped like big toes, which incorporated a play on the word "gross", using the German definition for that word, meaning "big" or "large".

As we drove onward, the cereal began to take on even greater (or grosser) definition, changing from "gross" meaning big to "gross" meaning...well...gross, disgusting. Take your pick, the toes can be either gross or big; I'm not fussed over which language or meaning of the word "gross" we use. The implications are the same. Imagine a bowl filled with milk and crunchy corn flour and oat kibbles that look like big toes.

Imagine further if you will, and as we did while we were headed home, that these kibbles shaped like big toes also smell like feet, and are detailed to the point where toe nails are visible, and there is green and black in the place where the toe nail resides. The toe itself would be alternating tan or brown colored.

For a scrumptious addition using marshmallows colored like your favorite dirty socks, we introduced toe jam into the mix. Gross Toesties is not only healthy, but also tasty.

Of course any new cereal is going to require an aggressive advertising campaign, and for our initial commercials, we chose to use a British actor with a cockney accent, standing in front of a pyramid of Gross Toesties cereal boxes with children climbing all over him to get at the display. The actor stands silently for twenty seconds as the camera pans from the children to the pyramid, settling on a closeup of one cereal box, displaying a bowl of Gross Toesties flooded with milk, which has turned, amazingly enough, green. Superimposed over the bowl of cereal are the very words the British actor with a cockney accent is about to utter.

"Gross Toesties! Smells like feet...but they're good to eat!"