Good morning! Time to get ready for work! Quick, get dressed! Take a shower! Oops, wrong order. Never mind; at least you and your clothes are clean. Now pack that lunch and let's bug out!
Of course you're in a hurry; that's why we're sending you out with a frozen sandwich to enjoy.
The LaunchBox frozen sandwich is one of the odder food offerings to be reviewed on this blog. The idea is that the kid packs one of these packages containing a little sandwich, and by the time lunch rolls along, it's edible.
It's a cute little thing, self contained in a bread shell. It comes in four flavors, Chicken Cheddar, Turkey Jack, Pepperoni Jack, and this Colby Ham. If you insist on condiments, you can always grab a packet of mustard at the cafeteria and dip it, I guess. But it's not dry. It is small, though. Here's one posed next to a standard piece of white bread for size comparison.
An adult might want to pack two. There are only four in the box, so you'd need to fill up the freezer. But at $4.49 a box, as it was at my local supermarket, or $1.13 a sandwich, it's not super economical. I had a coupon.
As for the taste, I did like the sandwich. It's uncured ham and some Colby, just as advertised; nothing wrong with that. The thing is, though, you really have to defrost it under lunchbox conditions. What I mean by that is, when I put one in the fridge at breakfast time, it was still partly frozen by lunchtime. And that's nasty. It's really a sadwich instead of a sandwich.
Unfortunately the manufacturer does not actually give you any instructions about this. For all I knew, it would completely defrost after three or four hours in the refrigerator. I probably should have left it on the counter, but that has its problems too; LaunchBox does warn that you should eat it within three hours after defrosting. But you can't even see it in the packaging, nor really tell by feel whether it has defrosted in the middle. You may know, when you send little Ralphie off in the morning, how long it will be until his lunchtime, but it's tricky if you want to bring some to Little League practice, when you don't know for sure when snacktime will break out. Some more instructions would not be amiss here, LunchBox. (The company Web site is attractive and almost useless.)
I must say, though, that kids would probably love these sammiches, although I did not have any children field-test them for me. They're kid-size, they're neatly self-contained, and unlike the similar Smuckers Uncrustables, they all feature cheese, which seems to be a point of necessity for all children except those who cannot digest or are allergic to dairy.
The title of today's post, as you undoubtedly know, comes from the 1947 Bugs Bunny classic "Slick Hare," the one where Humphrey Bogart threatens Elmer Fudd if he can't produce some fried rabbit. But this product also put me in mind of a semi-classic from 1975 (seen in syndication through 1985), Sid & Marty Krofft's Far Out Space Nuts. Why? You'd know if you remembered the opener:
I have a soft spot for this show, and for stars Bob Denver and Chuck McCann, but I still have to wonder if children's TV has improved more than children's lunches over the years.
5 comments:
"Why did you hit me in the face with a coconut custard pie with whipped cream?" ;>
One of the all-time best!
When I was working and going to law school at night, if my lunch needed heating instead of fighting for the microwave, I would just place my lunch on the car dashboard* about an hour before lunch time and it was ready when I was. I usually ate in my car, liked being outside.
*solar microwave, you are welcome Greta
That's clever, bear! As a yout at home, where my parents refused to get one of those nuclear reactor microwaves, I often relied on Benihana frozen dinners, boiled in hot water. They were good. I've heard they're coming back, but they don't look the same. Sad!
Far Out Space Nuts was fun! I remember the one where the Queen of some planet wanted to marry Gilligan, which he was totally down with, until he saw footage of her removing her makeup and was so revolted by the sight of her true visage that he ran back to the rocket and high-tailed it outta there.
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