Friday, January 11, 2013

Inside a Cracker Jack box

Cracker Jacks aren't Australian.  They are not something I have grown up with and they are not part of my childhood.

Yet I still remember the first box I ever ate.

The intense sweetness combined with the malty flavour was something I had never experienced before.  It was a complex flavour that I did not expect to come from something so mass produced.
Inside the box I found my "surprise" as well.  This I found a touch disappointing.  I had read that in the past you would get toys, but now it seemed that a sticker or a piece of fold out cardboard was all that you could get.
It made me think about that scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's when George Peppard paid for a ring he found in a Cracker Jack box to be engraved for Audrey Hepburn.

Paul Varjak: [reaches into his pocket at the Tiffany's counter] We could have something engraved, couldn't we? 
Tiffany's salesman: Yes, I suppose so, yes indeed... the only problem is you would more or less have to buy something first if only in order to have some object upon which to place the engraving... You see the difficulty... 
Paul Varjak: Well, uh 
[holds up ring from Cracker Jack box
Paul Varjak: , we could have this engraved, couldn't we? I think it would be very smart. 
Tiffany's salesman: [taking ring and examining it] This, I take it, was not purchased at Tiffany's? 
Paul Varjak: No, actually it was purchased concurrent with, uh, well, actually, came inside of... well, a box of Cracker Jack. 
Tiffany's salesman: I see... 
[continuing to look at ring
Tiffany's salesman: Do they still really have prizes in Cracker Jack boxes? 
Paul Varjak: Oh yes. 
Tiffany's salesman: That's nice to know... It gives one a feeling of solidarity, almost of continuity with the past, that sort of thing. 

The words just didn't seem to ring true anymore.

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