Alpha-ripoff!

A post mentioning Post Alpha-Bits cereal on the blog of the Great Lileks reminded me of my investigative reporting on  Alpha-Bits some years ago, on the old defunct Blog.com site. I wanted to repost it now as a public service, but the text was lost along with contents of the blog itself. However, I did save the pictures, and can reconstruct the series of horrible events. 

So: I'd gotten a box of Alpha-Bits, and immediately set to finding out whether it contained all the letters. If it failed to contain all 26 letters of the English alphabet, I thought there might be cause for a class-action lawsuit. 

First, like all kids who eat Alpha-Bits, I had to confirm the most important thing:

Yes!

Then I meticulously sought through the box to reconstruct the alphabet, and that's where the shocking truth was revealed:

Gasp!

That's right: no G, no M, no V, no W. This is an outrage! Or, as we'd have to spell it, an outra e! 

I did find a large number of pieces that could not be identified as belonging to any particular letter. I suspect some may be broken "bits" of G's, M's, V's, and yes, even W's -- but there's no way to tell. At best this is evidence of shoddy workmanship by Post.

All I can say is, Shame on you, Post! Failing to give American children the whole alphabet wrecks any possible educational benefit from your cereal. Further, think how this discriminates against children with affected names! Poor George, Marvin, Margaret, Wilma, and Velma -- or should I say, eor e, ar in, ar aret, il a, and el a. How they must cry themselves to sleep!

As I said, this is the basis for a class-action lawsuit. I'm calling my lawyers, Greef, Sorrel & Payne. And we're not just suing Post. We're also going after the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food & Drug Administration, which supposedly "oversee" America's food. Oversee indeed, sirs!

Next: We beat the crap out of Campbell's for its Chicken Alphabet Soup for its failure to provide all the letters -- that is, once we get these squishy pasta letters to hold still long enough to see what they all are. We're coming for you, can boys!