Man, what a day.

I mean, man what a week. Hmm… let’s extend that to, man what a month. Man, what a year.

Man, what a life.

Et cetera, exaggerated and so on.

In case you haven’t noticed, I am very, very old. I once had a reader tell me that judging by the way I spake (speaked, spoke?) I was probably a 55 year old crotchety wizard living in his parent’s van down by the river, typing grumbly food review posts by day and selling Depeche Mode T-shirts to ex-New Wave disc jockeys by night.

I THINK he was being insulting, but to this day, I’m not sure.

He will never know how close he was to the truth. Actually, he’ll never know because I deleted his email, blocked his IP, ISP, erased his face. Excuse me, I mean erased his Facebook. Whatever that is.

But enough about trolls. Let’s get back to the heart of the matter, the kernel of the nugget of truth, lies and videotape.

And that is that yeah, I’ve been around for awhile. I remember Back In The Day™, we had these things called Fruit Roll-Ups. All these Johnny-come lately frou-frou fruity bogus bars make me laugh. Back In The Day, we actually had to harvest our fruit rollups from our brown paper lunch bags.

That’s right. Oh, it was hard times back yonder, moseying down through dusty playgrounds and school hallways. I remember a fellah, what was his name… I think it was Samson. Nice guy, but near dang didn’t make it through past recess. Had a jonesing for some Fruit Rollups, so he tried to harvest ‘em early from his sack. Teacher caught ‘im and strung ‘im up on the fence as an example. But we was always doin’ stuff like dat back in dem der days. And our rollups was all flat an’ simple-like. Plain fruit for plain folks. None of this Scoobie whatchee-callit printed on it.

Tough times, and so on.

But seriously, it’s been awhile since I’ve had Fruit Roll-Ups. I just remember that they seemed to show up in my brown bag lunches quite a bit. Before I go on, I just wanted to show everyone a pic again of my good friend “Better If Used By“, which appears on the new box:

This still makes me laugh out loud. It makes me LOL, man. Or is that “Lots of Laughs”? Sorry, I failed BBS Abbreviation class Back In The Day. I also failed Leetspeak 101, though I did manage to figure out that 55378008 typed into a calculator actually meant something.

These new fruit rollups are packed individually in a new-fangled metallic cellophane or mylar wrapper. I don’t know if it stays fresher that way, but it sure allows me to see a reflection of my aged and ancient face squished in disturbing, carnival-esque ways.

A note to self and/or others: when they say “Peel from cellophane backing before eating,” what they reallly mean is “No one, not even Bryan, would make the mistake of forgetting to peel off the cellophane before eating, but just in case he is having an off day, let’s remind him.”

I think the size of these fruit rollups may have gotten just a little smaller. I don’t have one from the 1980s to compare it to, so I’m not sure. One thing that I definitely did not remember was just how many Pears exist in a Fruit Roll-up. This is somewhat disturbing, considering that these are “Strawberry” Fruit Roll-Ups. Also, there is no mention anywhere else on the packaging of pears, pear-like substances or pear shaped things. (By the way, try and google “pear shaped girl”. It is amazing how many non- Sissy Bar references are returned, since that is that only reason I know that phrase.)

So I guess the biggest surprise is how these rollups are imprinted with edible ink featuring the likeness of fricking Scooby Dooooo. Don’t get me wrong. I dig him and his pot-smoking buddy Shaggy (I call him Scooby Doobie, hahahaha). But, Like Wow, I’m just surprised to see Scooby show up on my fruit roll-up, especially since there was no mention of him on the packaging. Not that I’m complaining. It’s all “Ro Kay!” to me.

I’d forgotten how sweet this stuff is. Kinda like dropping a few chunks of sugarcane into a glass of sugar water and then pouring in some sucralose. Or Stevia. Or whatever it is they’re using nowadays. No wonder I loved this stuff as a kid. We used to barter with Fruit Roll-Ups. “I’ll trade you my mint condition plastic R2D2 windup toy for your fruit rollup.” Guess who got the shite end of that deal…

I got a small pack of them with four roll-ups inside. I think this isn’t the typical number you get, but that’s what they had at the dollar store. Not too bad for a quarter each, I guess.

I have to admit, I didn’t find them as fun as I probably could have. Oh, I did try and stretch the fruit rollup and see if it would mold around my hand. Actually, I would like to make myself some hockey gloves out of fruit rollups. You see, they’re so sticky that they’d help me keep a hold of my hockey stick while being checked into the boards by all the goons that come after me since I’m a small 5′5″ defenseman with no slapshot.

Go Kings. And so on.

Price: $1.00 for 4 0.5 oz Rollups
Found At: Dollar Store
Cheap Eats Score: 5/10