Let My People Go (have a bowl of cereal)

Price Chopper rolled out the Passover items this week. At my store they loaded up a big table right next to the produce section. In Bethlehem there’s always a lot of Passover stuff; pickings are probably slim in a place like Granville.

Magic Max's Fruity Magic LoopsWhat caught my eye immediately was the breakfast cereal, Magic Max’s Fruity Magic Loops. Basically, it’s Manischewitz’s kosher for Passover take on Fruit Loops. Instead of Toucan Sam on the box it’s Magic Max, who is a magician of sorts with a Star of David shaped head. Naturally, it’s made with tapioca and potato starch, rather than wheat products.

I had to have a box, but almost changed my mind when I saw the price: $5.99. We all know breakfast cereal is expensive, but this was for a 5.5 ounce box, making these $17.44 per pound. A few aisles over, Fruit Loops cost just $5.23 per pound — and Price Chopper’s Fruit Whirls, only $2.67 per pound.

I eagerly opened the box in the car because I couldn’t wait to try them. The verdict? Terrible. Fruity Magic Loops have an odd, chalky consistency unlike any breakfast cereal I’ve ever tasted. You would never grab a handful of these and stuff them in your mouth as a quick snack — not that I would eat cereal out of the box with my hands, or anything.

Magic Max’s Fruity Magic Loops are like something you’d make kids eat to punish them — but maybe that’s part of the point. If they tasted exactly like Fruit Loops, you would lose the significance of doing something special, wouldn’t you?

We learn small lessons in strange places, sometimes even in a box of cereal. For that I am grateful — but I do believe if I want to experience a bit of Passover, I’ll just stick to the matzah.

6 thoughts on “Let My People Go (have a bowl of cereal)

    1. You’re making me hungry! One of the great things about growing up downstate was the availability of great food like that. It didn’t hurt that my parents were from the Bronx in its heyday as a melting pot in the 30s and 40s, so they exposed me to a lot of things I wouldn’t have gotten in flyover country.

      1. Just for the record, I’m eating a more diverse, fresher, and more eclectic diet in flyover country than I ever did in Albany . . . . living in a heavily agricultural region, folks take fresh food VERY seriously, and stores and restaurants can’t get away with some of the bland/frozen/processed crap that the Price Choppers and Hannafords of Albany peddle . . .

        1. Judging from what I see in people’s shopping carts, “bland/frozen/processed crap” seems to be all the rage these days.

  1. I remember my first knish, first pastrami sandwich, 1977, Hauppauge High School. I told my Lutheran parents I was converting, for the food.

    1. Funny . . . I had my first knish summer of ’76, at Turtle Hook Junior High School in Uniondale. My verdict was the opposite of yours . . . it looked SO GOOD, but when I discovered that it had potatoes in it instead of, say, ground pork and cheese, I was terribly, terribly disappointed . . . it took me a long time to accept that Northern food could compete with Southern food after that . . .

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *