October 24, 2005:
I have numerous dark secrets kept from the people in my life. Among them is the fact that my freezer is stocked with no less than a dozen "Kid Cuisine" microwave dinners spanning the past several years. Whenever I see one of the weird, "themey" ones, I pick it up. From Shrek to Robots and beyond, I'm now faced with the challenge of having to reconstruct the freezer's real estate whenever I buy frozen chicken, because it's impossible to fit anything in there with a hundred expired boxes of Kid Cuisine eating all the space. It's not like I can just throw 'em away now, either. If you've maintained space in your freezer for a thematic microwave dinner for three years, you're going to require a more climactic ending than a Hefty bag and an "oh well." It's just one of the many reasons that my smile is only skin deep.
In September of 2003, I reviewed what I believe to have been the very first Halloween edition Kid Cuisine, with chicken nuggets shaped like bats and ghosts. Though I've always wondered if vegans considered it a slap in the face to not only see their precious fowl murdered but actually "fun shaped," I guess it's more of a slap in the face to the chickens. The idea of a Halloween TV dinner thrilled me to no end, or possibly to some end that I've not yet reached. The X-E readers who've decided to check out the mildly plugged X-E Blog know that I've had a bit of trouble keeping my Halloween spirits up this year. I guess it's the combination of "been there, done that," being so busy at work and being so more in love with Christmas that's doing it. I'm sad that Halloween isn't making me as happy as it used to, but whenever I reflect upon chicken nuggets shaped like ghosts, I totally forget that I cared about Halloween less a minute earlier. It's that powerful.
Up above, you see a picture. I know you do. It's actually two pictures rolled into one. I'm skilled. The Kid Cuisine box seen on the left represents last year's edition, which was not covered on the site. Why? Because the company skimped and reused the same damn nugget molds. They swapped out the apple sauce compartment for a more attractive glob of mac & cheese, but that was nowhere near enough of a mod to make it feel "new." I was pissed, and a few weeks ago, I was even more pissed to find that the 2005 edition did it again. Same nugget molds. Again, the lesser compartments received a mild makeover, but again, this was not enough to make me excited, much less make me feel justified in doing an article on it. Would it have been so hard to come up with something different? Bat-shaped Salisbury steak or something? It seemed that way, but just last week, I finally found a "new" Halloween Kid Cuisine meal, however half-assed...
It's sort of new, it's sort of not. The "Cheese Pizza Painter" edition has likely been sold in this exact arrangement without the Halloween motif, but as I'm completely willing to stretch if it means more Kid Cuisine-related content, I'm calling it a spooky wonder worth writing about. K.C. Penguin, the brand's mascot, once again departs from his usual sloppy style of dress in favor of a Halloween costume. On the box of the 2005 chicken nuggets meal, he's all Frankensteined up. Just like he was in 2004. And 2003. Ugh. Loser.
So, while the meal itself isn't bursting with Halloweenness, I'm happy to report that K.C.'s found something besides Frankenstein to dress up as. Now a pirate complete with generic sack of booty and mustache-shaped hat, K.C. graces an appropriately orange box full of Halloween creatures, cobwebs and fonts. The box does a lot more to inspire visions of gutted pumpkins than the actual meal, but with a little imagination, you'll be singing "Werewolves of London" in no time.
A Cheese Pizza Painter Kid Cuisine microwave dinner consists of a miniature Frisbee-ish pizza (sort of like a less bready version of the kind you got from your junior high's hot lunch line), chocolate pudding and diced peaches. The peaches are in a removable cup within a separate compartment, which was a wise decision because there's nothing more awful than microwaved peaches with oozy chocolate and mozzarella cheese smudged on.
Generally speaking, I've never been a fan of the desserts in TV dinners. I have eaten them on occasion, but more often than not, they go into the trash untouched. With this meal, we're technically getting two desserts, and I'm technically faced with throwing away 50% of an already overpriced microwave dinner. The folks behind the grandstandin' Kid Cuisine freaktrain made up for it with only pizza this side of Papa John's that doubles as a toy. Without the pizza's action feature, this meal could in no way be considered a Halloween offering...
Though the pizza is complete with cheese and sauce, there's an extra packet of sauce, and whatever's inside it looks a lot more brown than the sauce on the pizza. After soaking the frozen packet in warm water, which is enough of an exciting special activity in of itself, you're afforded the opportunity to "paint" your pizza by squeezing the sauce through a tiny cutout hole in the packet. It'd be really stupid to buy a box of something that so obviously wants to be credited as a Halloween item and not paint something spooky on the pizza, so with that, I proudly present the official Kid Cuisine jack 'o pizza. For what it's worth, I wouldn't recommend trying anything more intricate than pumpkin facial features, as this sauce packet ain't exactly a precision pen. Even the "KC" painting displayed on the box seems a bit like the rare Pokemon who loves green onion, which is to say, farfetched.
We've seen a lot of microwave dinners on X-E, and of them, a great many have been disgusting in ways that have the people who coined the word "disgusting" cry about how they "didn't mean stuff that was that bad." The Halloween Cheese Pizza Painter Kid Cuisine Microwave Dinner is a long title for something that takes 45 seconds to eat, but at least it's not too disgusting. The peaches heat wonderfully, the pudding is only halfway to gross, and the pizza, though in no way comparable to the masterpieces of one Sir Domino, was good enough to eat and not hate anybody over it.
I'm wise and I'm seasoned when it comes to TV dinners. I'm not proud of that, mind you, but what it tells me is this: While I might be able to see through the smoke and realize that this technically isn't some wild and spectacular new Halloween TV dinner, I'm not so sure kids will come to the same conclusion. And I'm happy about that, because I'd rather children think they ate something that will go down in the annals of holiday history than just some normally screwy pizza thrown in an orange box. Your ignorance is bliss, little ones. Happy Halloween.
To make the deal even more attractive -- and surely, painting a small pizza is tough to top -- Kid Cuisine Halloween meal boxes come with a special code that, when entered onto their website, will unveil a bevy of exclusive "creepy sound downloads." They're not lying. I went to their site, I entered my special code, and now I'm richer one Frankenstein howl and one chainsaw sound effect. Sure beats Wacky Wall Walkers and sticker sheets! Get 'em while they last -- evidently, there's two other Halloween Kid Cuisine meals I've yet to encounter.
