Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper Page A

leprechaun, the Trix rabbit, and Sonny the Cocoa Puffs cuckoo bird could all starve to death for all the kids in the ads cared. No one was parting with even one teeny marshmallow. It was a world that bordered on breakfast apocalypse.
    Perhaps most terrifying were the commercials for Honeycomb. A group of kids met in the Honeycomb Hideout, a simple wooden shack that was sometimes on the ground, sometimes in a tree. Also, they somehow had a robot. But their supposedly pleasant suburb must have bordered Charles Manson’s Spahn Ranch. Circus strongmen, Viking berserkers on motorcycles, and, once, Andre the Giant just burst into the Hideout demanding cereal. But they never slaughtered and skinned the kids; instead, they all shared breakfast and everyone was happy. Hopefully one of the kids’ dads later came by and fixed the smashed-down door. And moved their family to some safer place, like Beirut.
    X-TINCTION RATING: Gone for good.
    REPLACED BY: Honeycomb really needs to bring back the Hideout. They crossed into even weirder territory in 1995 with a mascot, Crazy Craving, who appeared to be a big-eyed ball of hair.

Hoopskirts and Camisoles
    L OOKING at photos from a 1980s high-school prom, you can’t help but wonder: Is this the 1980s or the 1880s? All we know is: Girls’ gowns stuck out so far that schools needed bigger gyms. It’s like there was a meeting in which Gen X females all came together, burned their older sisters’ polyester doubleknit leisure suits, and then settled in for an inspirational double-feature of Cinderella and Princess Diana’s wedding.
    Jessica McClintock and Laura Ashley were among the popular dress brands, but whatever the designer, it was cool to poof the skirt out so far that it had to pay taxes in a neighboring state. Hoopskirts were the choice in the early 1980s, but once a girl experienced the airy thrill of sitting down and having her hoop hula its way up around her eyebrows, she learned of the magic of crinolines. Like hoops, crinolines gave the desired fluff; unlike hoops, when the wearers sat down, they didn’t offer up so much of I See London, France, and the North Paris Suburbs.
    X-TINCTION RATING: Gone for good.
    REPLACED BY: Sexy, sleeveless dresses that reveal more skin than South Beach on a summer Saturday. But the only sure thing in fashion is that each generation will reach back to whatever its parents dismissed as hideously uncool. Like the South, the giant skirt will rise again.
    FUN FACT: The best TV scene ever to involve a giant gown was Carol Burnett’s “Went with the Wind” sketch. Dressed in Tara’s green velvet curtains, with the curtain rod still inside, she drawls to Harvey Korman’s Rhett Butler, “I saw it in the window and I just couldn’t resist it.”

Hostess Choco-Diles and Choco-Bliss
    H OSTESS still rules the junk-food galaxy, but some of its lesser-known lights have twinkled out.
    What’s a Hostess Choco-Dile? They solved the one problem that was preventing Twinkies from reaching perfection—the lack of chocolate. Think Twinkies that were driven through a chocolate-spewing car wash, emerging securely enrobed in a waxy choco coating. Grown-up kids with sugariffic Choco-Dile memories still email and call Hostess, sobbing Choco-Dile tears and begging for their fix. And some are lucky—Choco-Diles still exist, but they’re made in only a few West Coast factories.
    Sadly, Hostess Choco-Bliss met a sadder fate. It’s a shame it’s gone because it was a chocoholic’s dream. We can only imagine it was introduced at a time when Hostess mistakenly ordered a kajillion tons of extra chocolate and had no idea what to do with it. The resulting treat was a tiny chocolate cake with chocolate frosting on top and layered with fluffy chocolate cream. Even the guy in the commercial went stark raving nutters, shrieking that the treat was “chocolatey, on top of chocolatey, with chocolatey in