Merry Christmas from Food with Eyes!

Image from a Hallmark card

Extreme Makeover: Mr. Peanut Edition

As any collector knows, half the fun of collecting is sharing your collection. So you can imagine my delight when earlier this week I was contacted by a representative of WomansDay.com, the online version of that classic magazine, and asked if they could use a a picture from my Mr. Peanut presidents coloring book in a story about food mascot transformations! Of course, I immediately agreed and was excited to see the article debut online here.

I'm sure readers of this blog will be interested in the article, although there was a dearth of mascots of the food with eyes variety. In fact, only Mr. Peanut and Miss Chiquita (Banana) made the grade. Although Mr. Peanut has changed over the years, his transformation was not as radical as that of Miss Chiquita. In a metamorphosis worthy of Ovid, she went from a banana-shaped beauty to a rather bland "woman with eyes." Where's the fun in that?

If you have missed out on Mr. Peanut's transformation, then check out these two new commercials from Planters featuring the new, Robert Downey Jr.-voiced Mr. Peanut:






Both videos courtesy of Planter's YouTube channel

I'm still not sure how I feel about this. I like the animation a lot, but I just never imagined that he would sound like Robert Downey Jr. I guess I would have thought he would sound more sophisticated, which for me means a British accent. I think Cary Grant would have been a perfect Mr. Peanut. Or possibly James Mason.

Still, I'm happy to see Mr. Peanut gaining renewed popularity. In fact, over 226,000 people, myself included, "like" him on Facebook!

Herr Peanut

I couldn't resist buying these German-made Brentwood Peanut Flips when I spotted that sporty Herr Peanut on the front.

They're made with 32% peanuts. And 68% other stuff. Here's what they actually look like:

Basically cheese doodles with peanuts, not cheese. They feature non-genetically engineered corn. I guess just Herr Peanut was genetically engineered!

Not Cool

Girls T-shirt spotted at K-mart.

Too Darn Hot

Tin sign found at the mall. That's about how I feel after this string of 95° days!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

I spotted these ballpark snacks at Kmart recently and came back with my camera. I'm not a Yankees fan, so I wasn't tempted to take any of these home with me, but a pretzel with a Phillies cap would have been hard to resist.

Gumballapalooza

It's been a long time since a new post here at Food with Eyes. I've got a lot of great posts saved up, including some contributed by readers. In the interest of getting things posted, I'm going to dispense with a lot of commentary. This should be no great loss, since the quality has been going downhill steadily. So without further ado, here is a series of gumball machines featuring anthropomorphic food: