It is with great sadness that we here at ArchaeoBlog report on the untimely death of one of the great inventors of our time. A true giant among us who gave us perhaps the most significant food item of the last century:
No, not him:
Pamela Low; kin's treat inspired creation of Cap'n Crunch flavor
Long before Cap'n Crunch's sugary yellow barrels floated in cereal bowls across the land, Pamela Low got a hint of what was to come while visiting her grandparents.
"Grandma would make this concoction with rice and the sauce that she had; it was a combination of brown sugar and butter," Ms. Low's brother William of Westerville, Ohio, said with a chuckle. "It tasted good, obviously. They'd put it over the rice and eat it as a kind of a treat on Sundays."
Three decades later, Ms. Low drew on the memory of her grandmother's delicacy to create the taste that made Cap'n Crunch a popular breakfast cereal. She died of a lung ailment Friday in New London Hospital, not far from her home on the shore of Messer Pond in New Hampshire. Ms. Low was 79 and had worked in Boston for more than 30 years at the Arthur D. Little consulting firm.
Great stuff, that. Though to be honest and open, I preferred Qwisp. Kind of a friendly rivalry in the ArchaeoBlog household back then. I had Qwisp, my brother had Cap'n Crunch, and my sister had Crunchberries. We diverged similarly in other areas of breakfast comestibles: I favored Count Chocula, my brother Frankenberry, and my sister Booberry. Or maybe they were the other way around.
I was the only one who adopted Freakies as my own, though. I had a thing for their theme song:
We are the Freakies, We are the Freakies
And this is our Freakies Tree
We never miss a meal
'Cuz we love our cere-eeeel
At the time I didn't know it was a preexisting song (though at the moment the original escapes me).
I probably liked Qwisp because of the little alien mascot. Was he a martian? Did he have a name? A few years ago they kind of revived Qwisp and were selling it in a local chain of stores. Of course I got a couple boxes and chowed down. Didn't seem as sweet as Cap'n Crunch. I admit I was a bit disappointed in one of Qwisp's toy offerings. It was supposed to be a really neat FLYING SAUCER which I dutifully saved boxtops for. When it finally arrived it was just some dumb little rubber clamshell-type thing that looked like a flying saucer, and it contained a parachute. So alll you did was throw it in the air and it opened up and floated back to earth. I'd probably like one now, as I could drop it off of all the high places I wasn't allowed to go when I was a kid. Either that or launch it off a model rocket. (Yes, I was into those, too)
So anyway, here's to ya, Ms. Low. You brought many a happy morning to us.