We’re Going Crackers

My friend Beth and I often share our triumphs and defeats, our peri- and post menopausal crabbiness, and we are beginning to understand our grandparents’ complaints about the younger generation. The fact that we were once those people is conveniently forgotten when we get a good righteous bitch session going. Like when Beth told me she went to a Red Sox game with her son this past summer. He had bought tickets to this hallowed ground of Bostonian sports fans, and she was looking forward to it and to a box of nostalgia, otherwise known as Cracker Jacks. When he returned with the once familiar box, she was aghast. It said Cracker Jill.

“Sandy, I was so upset, I couldn’t eat them. Why? Why do they have to ruin everything? What was wrong with the name before?” She added that she felt a little foolish about the whole thing, but I quickly jumped to her defense. “Of course you were upset! OK fine, they made the new Ghostbusters movie with women, and many other movie remakes replace male characters with female characters. We accepted that,” I announced, warming up to my subject. “We understand the world is changing and we do our best to accept it.”

Having established we are the height of tolerance, acceptance, and good manners, we really let loose and listed all the ways Cracker Jill was horribly, horribly wrong:

• Was is really necessary to mess with Cracker Jacks? It was perfectly fine, minding its own business.
• It’s a treasured thing from our childhood, and we know a lot of our nostalgia is outdated and can even be harmful. But do Cracker Jacks really fall into that category?
• And because I’m a word girl, I pontificated that it doesn’t even make sense. It’s Cracker Jacks, plural, like the game. It’s not named after a boy.
• And why are we even making a snack gendered? It’s popcorn fer crying out loud!

And so we carried on about what a travesty had befallen our beloved childhood snack until we were complained out. We agreed this would be the perfect subject for a blog.

I couldn’t wait to Google why this had happened. I just knew it would be some lame corporate rebranding nonsense that purported to be at the forefront of social change. I found the article and started read, practically salivating with the fuel I was going to get to really skewer these people for ruining our snack!

But then I read it’s a temporary promotion to support the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF). Frito-Lay initially pledged $200,000 to WSF and raised additional donations through Cracker Jill sales. 

I texted Beth, “Son of a bitch, they renamed Cracker Jacks temporarily to support women athletes!”

Yes, it’s still a bit of a corporate shenanigans, but one we really don’t have a leg to stand on to make fun of.

So with apologies to Cracker Jacks and Cracker Jill, in our best version of the original Saturday Night Live Gilda Radner‘s character, Emily Litella:

Nevermind.