A Peek at Christmas 2021:Part I

This year Christmas is returning to a little bit of normalcy after last year's restrictions. Either way, nothing has stood in the way of my family taking part in some of our favorite Christmas traditions like watching Christmas Specials, decorating the tree and just enjoying the season together. Below may seem like a random dump of photos, but it is a peek into what the season is like in my household. I hope you and yours have an amazing holiday season. No matter how you celebrate or what you celebrate, appreciate those around you and just remember the good times. Feel free to let me know about your family's favorite traditions in the comment section below and have a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

You can always find cool wrapping paper at the Dollar Tree! This year they had these Super Mario Bros. Snowman papers. Love it!

My son added his own personal touch to the Nativity scene this year. I know how the shepherds passed the time while waiting for our savior to be born!

The annual busting out of the VCR to watch Home Alone on VHS is always a welcomed treat in our house. This is the same VHS tape that my Dad bought for us kids back in the early 90's!

Whoever was in charge of the Christmas Crunch box art this year really knocked it out of the park and should be allowed to design the next 100 boxes. Who knew the Cap'N and Ugly Sweaters were such a natural pairing?

Mountain Dew Gingerbread Snap'd was a fantastic discovery this year. It really tasted like someone drained the essence of a ginger snap cookie and bottled it up for us to enjoy. I hope this comes back next year...and the year after that...and so on.

Disney's "Prep & Landing" Christmas Specials are some of those rare recent specials that really are great! It has become tradition for us to watch these at the beginning of the holiday season each year. With Kids In The Hall alum Dave Foley as the main elf, Wayne, you know this is a winner! 

Bought this ornament for our Christmas tree this year. We have a few other of these penguin ornaments in our collection since each one of these cheerful critters represents one of our 3 kids.

I love reading my kids Christmas books and one of their favorites is Olive The Other Reindeer. Of course we had to follow up that read with a watch of the Matt Groening produced "Olive The Other Reindeer" Christmas cartoon special!

Watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles any day is a must in my household. The fact that this DVD has an episode titled "The Christmas Aliens" which is an animated version of the Mirage Michelangelo special comic makes it a staple in our rotation. The episode even features a cameo appearance by Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo! You can watch the episode at the Youtube link below, but be quick, who knows how long it will be available!

Kool-Aid & Mutants!

 
A few weeks ago I was placing an online order at the Midtown Comics website and decided to search for some Kool-Aid Man comics. The search came up empty for Kool-Aid Man, but something did pop up. It was an X-Men comic that had the subtitle "w/ Kool-Aid". At first I wasn't sure what that meant, but then I remembered that back in the 90's Marvel comics did a promotion with Kool-Aid where packets of the flavorful sugary drink were included in select Marvel titles. This must have been one of them! I put it in my shopping cart and about a week later the comics arrived!

Inside the X-Men book was this Kool-Aid ad for their new Island Twists drinks. Flavors in this new line-up included Kickin' Kiwi Lime, Man-O-Mango Berry, Oh Yeah! Orange Pineapple and Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade.

The flavor I received was Slammin' Strawberry Kiwi! I can honestly say that I don't ever remember tasting this twisted flavor back in the 90's, but the packaging alone takes me back to those hot summer days riding bikes with a water bottle full of Kool-Aid! Great stuff that I stumbled upon by chance. There were some other great ads included in this X-Men issue that I would like to share with you below. Scroll down and take a quick trip back to 1995!

Cereal ads, candy craziness, a Marvel house ad featuring Domino and of course The Simpsons. This truly is a time capsule of the era. Even the cover of the X-Men book includes an M.C. Hammer "Can't Touch This" pun! I hope you enjoyed checking out some old ads, below you can view the vintage commercial promoting Kool-Aid's new Island Twist flavors. ENJOY!

Baseball Season Snacks

Last week baseball and softball started for my kids and I am happy to say that 2 of them are on the Little Caesars team! They were so excited and asked if we could have Little Caesars for dinner after every game! I was okay with that, but unfortunately we were all vetoed by my sensible wife! This could have been my family...

Of course like every year we are required to bring the traditional after game snacks for at least one game per kid. My oldest wanted the healthy choice of Twinkies, but when we went to Wal-Mart to pick them up we found these instead...

Hostess Baseball Cupcakes! I hadn't had these since the early 90s and didn't even think they were still around. Not only did they have the usual "Yellow Cake" variety, but they now have "Chocolate Cake"! I think it's kind of cool how Hostess labels the yellow cake as "Day Game" and the chocolate as "Night Game." Simple but fun! My only complaint is that they don't come with cards anymore!

Back in 1993 me and my brother used to eat these things by the dozen just to get the free baseball cards in each package. Once we had enough for 2 complete sets, we stopped eating them and I hadn't had one since!

The baseball fever doesn't stop on the snack front, it also invaded our breakfast table in the form of Home Run Crunch!

This is pretty much just Cap N' Crunch with Crunch berries in the shapes of bats and balls. Nevertheless it was still delicious and the box was empty in 2 days.

After eating all these delicious treats I need to work off the pounds! I guess it's time to make like Ham Porter and...