Not That Sane. V Lakshman. Every Wednesday.

Cheerio Barbies (Oct 22, '97)

You know how cereals are arranged on supermarket shelves -- the adults' cereal on the top shelf and the children's cereal on the lowest. Some marketing guy apparently found that children will scream and beg (usually in that order) for things at their eye level. The reason I bring this up is that Cheerios (tm?) is usually found on the lowly shelves, shelves which I would not, in my bachelor days, have deigned to look at.

Things change, however, with the arrival of the female of the species. My better half insists on Cheerios, which by itself would not be so bad.

Unfortunately, Cheerios has a promotion going on. Send in two UPS labels with "BWS" (or some such thing) marked in small print on Cheerios boxes. The company will send the label-clipping child a FREE Barbie Doll (tm?). The 20-something child in my house wanted the doll.

So there I was on Sunday evening, squatting in the cereal aisle of the supermarket looking at the UPS labels on sundry Cheerios boxes.

Norman being a small town, folks must have wondered.


From CNN , the scene in the state assembly of the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. (a QuickTime movie of 1.3MB).
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