I Suck At Wipeout

Tuesday was a good day. The fussy behavior of my baby daughter (Briana) from the prior day had all but disappeared. So taking care of her during the day on Tuesday was really a piece of cake. I am lucky that Briana is generally a good baby. Her cycle of eat, sleep, and poop is pretty clockwork.

In fact, while she was napping, I got to kill some time. And what better way to kill a couple of hours than to watch a movie? In this case, I ended up watching the movie, Reign of Fire.

(The video below is a trailer for Reign of Fire.)


The 2002 movie stars Christian Bale (I'm Batman!) and Matthew McConaughey. Interestingly enough, Gerard Butler (This is Sparta!) also had a supporting role in the movie. Basically, the movie is a futuristic tale (and by future, I mean in 2008) whereby dragons are accidentally unearthed by some construction workers and are unleashed upon the world. (I bet that was not in their union contract...)

Needless to say, in 12 years (so 2020), the world has become a wasteland of destruction and fire thanks to the dragons. Christian Bale leads a group of British survivors hoping to outlast the dragons, while Matthew McConaughey plays the U.S. soldier leading a team to hunt down and kill the sole male dragon, thereby ending the species and its reign of fire.

Truth be told, I was not expecting much from the film because the majority of Matthew McConaughey movies that I have seen have been pretty lackluster. That said, this movie was entertaining. It did its job and killed some time for me while I waited for Briana to wake up again to eat.

Eventually, Karen came home from work and we had a bunch of our friends (Marc, Kelley, and Andrea) over. After all, on the agenda for the night was the latest episode of Wipeout. Now, I suck at Wipeout. There is just something about the show that just makes me chuckle.

Anyway, it was good to see everyone, even if they were all pretty exhausted from the daily grind known as work. While we were hanging out, a discussion about Starburst fruit chews came up.

It seems that people generally gravitate toward eating a particular color of Starburst fruit chews. I tend to be in the minority in that action because I'm not picky. I eat everything. So out of sheer curiosity, Karen wondered if the Wrigley Company (a subsidiary of Mars) sold Starburst bags of a single color. In fact, she was so intrigued that she sent the company an email. (For anyone curious, it turns out that the answer is no, but Wrigley said that they will forward the email to their marketing department... most likely known as their trash folder.)

Naturally, I gave the topic some thought. Why wouldn't they sell bags of a single Starburst fruit chew flavor? It would make logical sense from a marketing standpoint to know which flavors the public enjoys and which flavors they don't. That's just my opinion of course.

And for anyone curious, according to my friend Wikipedia:

The Starburst brand was introduced by Mars in 1960 as Opal Fruits. The four original flavours were strawberry, lemon, orange, and lime. In the 1970s Opal Fruits were well known for their advertising tag line "Opal Fruits! Made to make your mouth water. Fresh with the tang of citrus. Orange! Lemon! Lime! Strawberry!" Opal Fruits were introduced in the United States in 1967 as Starburst. Originally, Starburst came in the same flavours as Opal Fruits and the first variant, "Sunshine Flavors," later renamed "Tropical Opal Fruits", was released thereafter. In Europe, lemon and lime were combined to become "lemon and lime" and to make room for a blackcurrant flavour. The brand name "Opal Fruits" was phased out in the UK, followed by Ireland in 1998 in order to standardize the product in a globalized marketplace, though some lament the loss of brand identity, leaving many people in the UK still referring to Starburst as Opal Fruits despite the name change. In 2008 the supermarket chain Asda revived the original Opal Fruits in the UK for a period of 12 weeks from 10 May 2008. On 6 October 2008, Mars acquired Wrigley, and transferred Mars non-chocolate candy brands, including Starburst, to the Wrigley subsidiary. In the US Starburst are manufactured in Waco, Texas.

Anyway, it was good fun night on Tuesday.