A Couple of Things

• How have I missed this!? Via Mark Evanier, I just discovered that General Mills is doing a retro packaging deal with Target. It's packaging a number of cereals such as Lucky Charms, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, and others in vintage boxes, but apparently they're only available at Target. In an Advertising Age article that's no longer available without a login (I saw it earlier tonight--it was dated March 3, I think, so I suspect it went behind the subscription curtain 15 days after it was first published), a General Mills spokesperson said that they weren't really promoting the situation, instead just hopping that it would get some exposure through blogs. I'm happy to do my part, but I always find it funny when people make something available and simply expect it to go viral. Because some videos or trends go viral with no obvious particular reason, some people just seem to believe that everything will go viral. I don't know that this is always the case across the board, but many "viral" campaigns are carefully seeded in particular outlets that will get exposure and start other people linking. Unfortunately, this offer doesn't seem to have gone as viral as General Mills might have preferred, and I almost missed it. Apparently, the offer ends on Saturday, March 21. In fact, I might've missed it anyway, if there were only limited amounts of boxes put on sale, they may all be gone with only four days of the offer left. On the upside, there are also some T-shirts involved, and those remain available (as supplies last, of course) for a few months. I suspect I know what I'll be doing with my next lunch hour.

• This story puts the lie to Dawn Steel's maxim that "they can kill you, but they can't eat you." I've always maintained that if they kill you, who's to stop them from eating you, if that's what they want to do? Nobody, that's who. And now we've got some empirical evidence to back that up.