September 2003

AN EVIL ROBOTS SPECIAL REPORT

My name is Ace Whiplash, and I don't make anything up. Except my name. But you would too if They were after you. Who's They? you ask. Well I'll tell you. They is every man and woman jack out there who doesn't want to hear the truth, who tries to hide it, and who spreads lies on thick as marmalade jam. How I loved marmalade jam, until They took it! I mean, who ever hears tell of marmalade these days? You can't buy it in a store, you can't buy it from a whore, it's just not around here any more. They take everything of value, until you're just left with an empty jar. And if you don't recycle it, They'll make you! Those sonsabitches.

But I'm on their case, and I'm about to blow the lid wide open. Watch out, Corporate America! Tremble in your Gucci shoes, your Pravda underwear, your Joe Boxer dungarees because Ace Whiplash is on the case. He's on the scent, and it's no imitation fragrance. It smells just like it is-Ugly.

NOW WHO WILL FEED THE CHILDREN CHEAP CRAP THAT MAKES THEM FAT?

Remember Enron? Tyco? WorldCom? Global Crossing? The Alamo? These and other corporate scandals rocked America, and proved that Americans were dumb sheep waiting to be fleeced of their 401Ks or whatever else they had of value by that omnipresent evil-Big Corporate.

Well, America, Big Corporate is at it again, and you know what makes it worse this time?

IT AFFECTS OUR CHILDREN!!

As well as fat people, but mostly children, who are also mostly fat, so same difference.

So how are our cute cuddly kids, our non-financial futures, at risk? Well, I'm going to tell you. But first go call your babies' mommas-whether they're in the next room or 3 states over. What you are about to find out is a must read for all you child bearers and/or rearers out there.

Today, America, I call your attention to the shenanigans going on in the snack food industry, where huge snack food conglomerate Hostess recently bought out the snack cake Zingers from Dolly Madison. This is on par with Wal Mart stacking its stores side by side on Main Street USA, crowding out locally run businesses, or Blockbuster pushing out local video stores, where you didn't feel bad at all renting "adult" videos, because you knew the guy who took your cash got off on goat-fucking movies. Plus, he was your uncle. But enough about me.

Now, you remember Hostess, right? Capitalizing on kids' endless fascination for cartoons and white creamy middles, such favorite Hostess characters as Twinkie the Kid, Suzy Q, Fruity the Pie, Hi Diddly Ho Ho, and Long Duk Ding Dong enabled the snack food company to capture the hearts, minds, and waistlines of generations of young Americans.

Well, now you can add Zinger the Ringer to the Hostess pantheon of greats. For those of you keeping score at home, Zingers are the Anti-Twinkie. They actually have a creamy filling that runs throughout the whole cake. With

Twinkies, you have all this promise, but what you get amounts to 4 inches of foam. Usually you have to bite through half the Twinkie cake before you get to the creamy filling, which is present in such little quantity that it seems like an afterthought, rather than the REASON DE FRICKIN'ENTREE OF THE WHOLE DAMN CAKE!!

Sorry, folks, but I just have strong feelings about this. And did I mention the frosting? Zingers have frosting on top. Do Twinkies? Hell, no. And Zingers come in packs of 4, and in many different flavors.

So why did Hostess buy Zingers from Dolly Madison? Hostess, smiling icy bitch that she is, knows a winner when she sees one, and Dolly Madison couldn't hack it anymore. So she beat it out quick, just like her namesake. Oh, hey, Dolly, come back! You left your dignity behind, you snack-producing whore. Dolly? Dolly?

What does this all mean, you ask? I'll tell you.

HOSTESS IS GOING TO JACK UP THE PRICE 70 PERCENT AT LEAST. Dolly's Zingers ran you 65 cents, while there's nothing Hostess sells for under a dollar.

So, all you poor fat kids out there who rely on snack cakes for your daily dose of complex, useless carbohydrates, and of course, sugar, looks like you'll be diggin' a little deeper in your pockets. Oh, you can't find those extra cents, why don't you ask your mamma? Oh, she's on oxycontin, is she? How about Dad? Oh. How about mommy's special friend? He's on crack? Well, kid, looks like you're fucked.

I'm sorry if that sounds mean. Like any sensible person, as well as Whitney Houston, I believe the children are our future. Teach them well, just like Whitney says, and let them lead the way.

But their future is pretty dim, if you ask me. Hostess is threatening a monopoly on snack foods, which means prices go up, which means that kids like yours will be begging on the streets for money right next to Whitney, just to get their daily dose of that sweet sugary white creamy filling…

But there's more to this story, a whole lot more. And you'll be sickened, as if you ate a whole box of Zingers all at once, and you get to the bottom, and you realize there is no prize, that you can't eat Zingers like you would cereal, and that your reward is a gross-out contest with your toilet. You always end up winning, but it's a hollow victory.

But first, some background:

What Price Fat, or, How I Told Hostess to Shove it

Everyone has such fond memories of Hostess products when they were little. When I was young, all the kids I knew ate Hostess on a regular basis. Except me, of course. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't. My mother gave me wheat bread and that granola shit to eat-back when "tasty granola bar" was the oxymoron it should be today, when granola looked more like birdseed than actual human food. I had to watch my friends at school ingest Hostess cakes like they were some sort of essential mineral or food group. Every lunch time my friends would gorge themselves, lips crusted with frosting, gobbing up the creamy filling and letting it ooze out of their mouths before sucking it back in again. When they laughed or coughed, the air would be filled with spongy morsels of sweet, sweet cake.

I'd laugh today about how fat they all are if I weren't such a fat ass myself. Because at some point my mom gave up on the whole healthy food kick with four kids running around, but she did not give up on her penny-pinching ways. So eventually in high school I got Little Debbie.

And you know what?

Little Debbie NOT ONLY tasted better, but each box was BUTT-ASSED CHEAP. Compare Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls to Hostess Ho Hos. FRICKIN 12 SWISS CAKES cost you a buck oh nine, while three Ho Hos run you a buck ten, and 12 of them cost almost 4 bucks! And Ho Hos taste like they were packaged in the 70s and have been stored away in your attic alongside the Christmas ornaments. While Swiss Cake Rolls are moist and creamy and delicious. Almost magically so!

So while I envied after Hostess, I can count the total number of Hostess snacks that I've eaten on three fingers, if you assume one finger equals a hundred. On the other hand, with Little Debbie, you'd have to assume my one finger equals several thousand.

The Real Scandal-What THEY Don't Want You to Know

I, Ace Whiplash, was never under the sway of Hostess's charms, no-sir-ree. I was not bought and paid for.

Therefore, I was able to cast a skeptical eye toward Hostess and her scheming ambitions, but even I was blind to the REAL truth-UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE!!

Because I was, I admit, a Zingers addict. That whole thing about barfing up Zingers, I said that from personal experience. I knew there was no prize at the bottom. I mean, I can read. But that was a lie that I told myself, because deep down, I WANTED to eat the whole thing. But I was sick, I recognize now. But there was a time when, if Dolly Madison appeared to me as a crack-whore with a hundred kinds of VD, I'd spend my last dollar to sleep with her just to get my hands on her Zingers.

I was in thrall. But I was happy. Because my habit was degrading-but cheap.

But then, Hostess came around and took over. She spiffed up the packaging, slapped a bright star that said NEW right on the plastic, and began selling it for more, a lot more. Even though they were the same Zingers, and calling them new was like calling your wife of 45 years' vagina "new" just because she put clean underwear on.

Now, I got debts that no dishonest man could even begin lying about how he was going to pay them, so I faced a stark choice. Go broke with Hostess or get clean.

So I straightened up. Actually, I just started eating Little Debbie snacks again. But my close brush with Hostess snack-cake subservience put me on her trail, and I followed it to the end, the bitter, bitter end. It almost broke me. But I have the truth, and it shall set ye free.

You want to hear the truth?

You can't handle the truth!

Oh, you can handle it, can you. We'll see what you're made of.

You ready?

Okay?

This will BLOW YOUR MIND.

Got it?

Here we go:

What made Hostess so greedy, I asked myself? Couldn't she just be happy taking up like 60 percent of the market share? Didn't she realize that her products were barely edible, and that she got by on savvy advertising and the endless stupidity of kids?

In this day and age, I should have known better. Hostess is not owned by Hostess. It is owned by a huge conglomerate called Interstate Brands Corporation. Interstate Brands Corporation owns a wide range of food products that have the collective nutritional impact of clouds.

Sometimes Interstate Brands Corporation is also known as Interstate Bakeries Corporation. Or was known. Makes more sense, at least. But maybe they got a deal like KFC, which can't say Chicken anymore because the shit they sell ain't chicken. Maybe IBC doesn't use bakeries anymore to make their products. They probably have a sweatshop in Malaysia where little kids stitch together their crappy bread and snack cakes for pennies a day. Or maybe they have a factory that rolls out prefabricated sheets of their crap where they buy it in bulk.

Well, IBC produces not just Hostess, but also brands such as Wonder Bread, Drake and Dolly Madison Snack Foods, Butternut breads, J.J. Nissen, Merita, Roman Meal, and Holsum (ha ha I get it) Breads…

Wait. Did I just hear right? Interstate Brands Corporation owns Hostess AND Dolly Madison?!?
Hostess IS Dolly Madison, and Dolly Madison IS Hostess….

OH. MY. GOD.

It was all a sham. The corporate takeover, the aggressive buy out. Hostess and Dolly Madison were two whores in the same harem. I thought I could stop the formation of a monopoly, but it was right here all along. The Monopoly is here, Mr. Burton. It is right frickin' here.

So the whole thing boiled down to taking the label on one product and slapping it on another, to justify nothing more than a price increase. IBC robbing Peter to pay Paul. Except Peter didn't really get robbed, and Paul didn't really get paid. Because they both work for IBC, and IBC gets it all. And it's our kids, and our kids' mommas, poppas, and/or legal guardians, that have to pay. Damn, that's cynical.

Well, that's America, folks. All I can say is, help me Little Debbie, you're my only hope.