Animal crackers really are the best deal out of my local snack machine. You get a good size 2.5 - 3 oz. of food and you get entertainment value. However, not all animal crackers are made the same and as there seems to be quite a competetion for shelf space in the animal cracker kingdom I thought I would compare a few. This first bag here was, for awhile, the only animal cracker you could get out the machine. So, being blissfully ingnorant of the competition I loved them. However, there is one thing that irked me to no end about these particular animal crackers, and that is the false advertising on the bag. Notice how the lion and the lioness are shown standing face-to-face on the bag. However, then notice the actual crackers. Every single animal in the bag is facing to the right. I can understand why the picture on the bag is the way it is...because having them face the same way looks ridiculous! I mean really, other than eating them, what else can you do with these animal crackers? I figure they are good for marching, mating, and racing. But that is about all the action you will get out of them.
Then one day, a new bag of animal crackers appeared in the machine. I had to try them. When I opened this bag, what a joyful suprise I received. This bag had half the animals facing to the left and half the animals facing to the right. Awesome! Now I had unlimited animal kingdom action! Not only that, but there was a much wider assortment of animals available as well. In addition to the normal jungle/african animal assortment, this bag also included penguins, an owl, a turtle and a hare. Alas, the one flaw of this bag was that the two animals that really ought to be facing the same way for racing purposes were not. Thus the turtle and the hare just stare each other down trying to psych the other one out. When I turned over the bag to see who made them, I discovered that of course they were made by the keebler elves. I should have known. You can't beat the elves for cookie making. They do it out of love, not greed.
Speaking of greed, guess what shows up about one week later in the very same machine? The sub-standard, greedy cookie brand with the unidirectional animals re-emerges in an exciting new red color. However, the greedy bastards reduced the size of the bag from 3oz. to 2.5oz. This, of course, elimanates size as the only superiority they had over the elves. What were these people thinking? This was obviously not the work of a cookie loving elf. Accountants, keep your money grubbing hands off my cookies!
One last note. I even noticed that the cafeteria was getting in on the act. They now offer these organic "Snackimals". What the heck is a snackimal? I ate them, but man they were not good. Dry, ground wheat, in the general shape of an animal. However, almost every cracker was broken. One of the lone survivors was the fox. Which, I begrudgingly admit, is a cool shape. I'll have to send a note to the elves.
