X-Entertainment: Chef Boyardee's Cosmic Kids!

Chef Boyardee has a complex. No, really. He's supposed to be the king of saltwater sauces and microwave pastas, but how can this be true? Boyardee's done a lot for people who like eating eating without actually cooking cooking, but he's not at the very top of the mountain. Chef Boyardee ain't cookin' the end all, be all of fake foods. He's not making Spaghettios. No matter what the good chef stumbles out of the kitchen with, he won't truly be regarded as the master of his craft until he somehow tops Spaghettios. Folks, this poses a major problem. You can't top Spaghettios.

Many have tried. None have succeeded. It's hard to imagine soggy pieces of macaroni and sauce that could easily be considered livable by tropical fish to be so unbeatable, but for whatever reason, Spaghettios have outclassed their competitors for years. What's their secret? What secret formula is Franco-American keep from Chef Boyardee's head?

There's a sad truth Boyardee and the rest of the would-be conquerors must accept. Even if they could duplicate Spaghettios, or make slop that tastes even better - they're still gonna be playing second fiddle. Why? It's all in the name. People love the word 'Spaghettios.' It could be a bowl of monkey shit for all the world cares - so long as we can call that bowl of monkey shit 'Spaghettios,' it's forever our Number One. Still, Boyardee won't give up hope, bless his heart. Chef Boyardee ain't goin' down like that. He'll try, fail, and try again. He'll make more and more crappy cans of pasta until he's finally crowned king.

And while 'King Boyardee' has a nice ring to it, his attempts have been at least a little flawed. Our favorite chef makes a mean marinara, but he's a little out of touch with the times. He wants to be hip, but since he's like 500-years-old, it never seems to pan out. It's been this way for a long while. Take this example, from 1982. After realizing that he was too old and haggard to sell the stuff on his own, Boyardee hired out a trio that would surely connect with kids and rake in massive sales. At least, that's what they hoped for.

Breaking from tradition with his new line of 'Cosmic Kids' pastas, Chef Boyardee brought in some friends to handle the marketing. Friends...from OUTER SPACE.

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The commercial starred the two kids up above, Hank and Sally. They're dressed appropriately enough for the time period, though I'm a little concerned since they could easily switch outfits without it being considered gender-bending. I'm not sure which one of the children is at fault for that, but it's making me hate them in ways I don't care to describe or examine. Personally, I think a lot of my angst is stemming from the fact that the boy up there seems to have a mutated left hand. They should've known better than to cast someone with a mutant claw hand in a commercial that's supposed to heighten your appetite. And the girl? I don't know what my problem is there. I guess she's just not busty enough.

Our fearless duo are about to exit into the backyard for a friendly game of tag, but before they get out the door, something magical happens. I already mentioned that Chef Boyardee's got some new friends to do his shilling. You probably would've pictured younger, cooler chefs. That would make sense, right? Maybe, but Boyardee never took the obvious routes. In this commercial, the spokespeople are a little different. Actually, I have no idea what they're supposed to be. Here, you try to figure it out...

Three cartoony space creatures materialize in the kitchen. I suppose they're supposed to be alien robots. While most characters of this type usually go through several stages of production sketches and tryout animations, these guys seem to have been thought up in fifteen seconds with a ball-point pen and a used napkin. I mean, really - what are we looking at here?

The first alien is the most natural of the trio - he's obviously inspired by a spoon. I think. Maybe. Eh, I dunno. The middle guy is a little tougher to figure out. At first I pegged him as an alien fork, but he's got no pointy spears. Closer inspection reveals him to be a diamond-headed robot with a phone on his chest. Okay, I guess that makes sense. Saucy macaroni -> diamond-headed robot. It's a natural progression. I'm not too sure about that third guy, though. A three-legged testicle wearing a baseball cap? What's the connection there? Let's see if the kids can solve this puzzle...

Hank: Look, Sally! There's aliens in our kitchen!
Sally: Those aren't aliens. Those are robots.
Hank: They're alien robots! Which one is your favorite?
Sally: Whichever one can make me pretty, sniff cry sniff.
Hank: They're aliens, Sally, not gods. I like the one on the left.
Sally: Why?
Hank: His legs look like worms! Check 'em out!
Sally: No they don't. They look like those hanging sausages in the salumeria down the street. You know, the ones with strings tied around them?
Hank: Sally, what's 3 + 3?
Sally: Forty-seven.
Hank: That's what I thought you'd say. How do you know what a salumeria is?
Sally: Well, I was in this school play last year, and I played a little girl named Maria.
Hank: What does that have to do with anything?
Sally: When the teacher gave us our parts, she said to me - 'Sally, you're Maria!' Get it? Sallyouremaria. Salumeria!
Hank: I hope the alien robots break your spine.

The aliens introduce Chef Boyardee's new 'Cosmic Kids' pasta, claiming that the lunch is from another planet. It is, in fact, not from another planet. It's from this planet, just like all the other horsemeatballs and zero-shaped pastas that flood the canned goods aisle. The only thing 'otherworldly' about the stuff was the fact that one out of every 50,000 cans contained a special prize baby duck, kept alive through microscopic airholes. They never really publicized the whole duck thing, but trust me - I've met some of the winners. Most of the ducks eventually died off, either from age or the fact that Boyardee forgot to supply them with food before shoving them in sealed cans for months on end. Whether you're a fan of the Chinese restaurant's most expensive dinner or not, few could argue that eating an uncooked baby duck was sometimes a more pleasant experience than eating Cosmic Kids Pasta. Chef Boyardee made a big, big mistake.

We've seen it before. We've tried to forget it, but really, you don't forget something like this. The awful, putrid, disgustingly eggy 'Golden Chicken Sauce' variety of canned pasta. The most unnerving and unforgiving of all things Chef Boyardee. A flavor capable of breaking your more integral organs down into yellow foamy material just so you have more crap to throw up and prove how bad the stuff was. 'Golden Chicken Sauce' was a death knell for all who tried incorporating it into their edibles. There really isn't any way to describe the taste to the fortunate many who've never experienced it. It defies explanation almost as much as your intestines defied letting it pass through. While it's true that 'Cosmic Kids' also came in the more acceptable tomato sauce variety, the mere idea that it was even related to something in the Golden Chicken Sauce realm was enough to drive customers away in droves. Worst of all, it's the dreaded G.C.S. that got the nod to be filmed for the commercial...

Ugh. Come on, I'm trying to be a good sport about this, but there's just no excuse for that stuff. 'Golden Chicken Sauce.' The very name goes against any semblance of logic or reason. There's a reason gravy is called 'gravy.' People don't want to think about how a lot of it is made up of juiced cow parts. Sure, we know the truth deep down - but why bring more attention to it? Likewise, the name 'Golden Chicken Sauce' explains, quite clearly, that we're drinking chicken. For some reason it's acceptable with soup, but definitely not with canned pasta.

Still, the title is complimentary in a way, suggesting that 'Golden Chicken Sauce' tastes like, you know, chicken. No no no no NO, friends, this stuff tasted a lot different from chicken. I really can't tell you what it tastes like, or more specifically - there's nothing I can really compare it to without first spending an afternoon stewing salted eyeballs and dog tumors. It's bad. Real bad. And for those aliens to come to our planet to start shilling something like this doesn't bode well for our impending interstellar relations. They haven't even shown us what kind of weapons they've got and they're already trying to kill us. Hey aliens, if you want to kill us, that's fine. Just be civil about it. I'd much rather take an extraterrestrial lazer beam to the skull than be poisoned to death by 'harmless' Golden Chicken Sauce. Come on, you're aliens. You've probably got six or seven hearts a piece. Use one of 'em.

The pasta came shaped like aliens and robots, or so says the Cosmic Trio. In reality, they didn't look much like anything at all. What's supposed to be a robot's head looks more like the female gender symbol, while the aliens looked not unlike the letter 'F.' It's as if Chef Boyardee took all his retard employees and threw them by a specific spot on the assembly line where they'd randomly hammer the pasta sheets with various holiday-themed cookie cutters. The end results were Cosmic Kids Pasta. In Golden Chicken Sauce. I Hate It.

But the kids sure seem to like it. Sally picked the right straw - she got the tomato sauce version. Poor Hank's gonna need his stomach pumped and a brain transplant in about ten minutes. Somehow I doubt Chef Boyardee was paying enough for Hank to cover things like that.

'Cosmic Kids' returned to Saturn soon after debuting, proving that even three vaguely defined emotionless cartoon characters aren't enough to get people eating Golden Chicken Sauce. Follow the link below to download and watch the original (and probably only) commercial, which'll make you think this situation is ten times stranger than I could ever describe. Just try not to get too freaked out by Hank's mutant claw hand. It's pretty weird.