What’s In the Box?

As a kid, I remember what a special treat it was when Mom or Dad came home with a box of Cracker Jack. In fact, I can still quote the very last line of the Cracker Jack jingle:

                                                           "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts, and a prize…
                                                         That’s what you get in Cracker Jack!"

But can you quote the full chorus leading up to those lines?

                                                       "Lip-smackin’, whip-crackin’, paddy-whackin’,
                                                      knickin’-knackin’, silver-rackin’, scoundrel-whackin’,
                                                     cracker-jackin’ Cracker Jack."

Of course, it wasn’t really the candy-coated popcorn and peanuts that excited me about Cracker Jack. Oh, no. It was the prize inside! A couple of my favorites were a plastic magnifying glass that had a magnifying level of MAYBE x.01, and an odd-shaped “blow top” that was a round disc with raised fins. You set it down on a flat surface and blew right on top of it and it would spin like crazy.

Fast forward more than a few years, and the iconic snack is still found on store shelves. Sure, it’s been bought out by a couple of different companies over the years since it was first sold in 1893, including Borden Foods and Frito-Lay; and its mascots, Sailor Jack and Bingo, have had 21^st century makeovers. The recipe, however, has been virtually unchanged. So why don’t they taste as magical to me anymore?

Personally, I think it was the corporate decision to replace the cool (albeit cheap) prizes with a sticker and an invitation to visit their website to play arcade games. Half the fun was guessing what the prize was going to be, but now, there’s no mystery as to what the prize is. It’s a sticker. A really poorly drawn, worthless sticker. Then, you navigate to CJ’s website and tell it which sticker you got and choose an online sticker that corresponds to your sticker. For example, I got a sticker of a baseball. When I tell the website that news, it gives me the instructions of picking the image that best completes the needed sticker to form the word “Baseball Hat.” Well, let's see...my sticker is a baseball, so I would choose the…. umm…….. hat……… (he said, shaking his head while simultaneously rolling his eyes.) The whole point is to drive numbers to their website and bring value to their brand. Nothing else.

I mean, come on…..what kind of prize is that? Listen, anyone can make a caramel-coated snack of popcorn and peanuts, but the TOY made it transcend far beyond a snack. In other words, it’s not the product itself but what’s INSIDE that makes it so appealing.

Isn’t that the same with life and the people who we connect with on a daily basis? The thing that makes one person more appealing than the next isn’t how rich they are, what kind of car they drive or how much power they wield over others. No, it’s what’s inside. It’s the pure and genuine simplicity of love, care, concern, empathy and unselfishness as opposed to the shallow, self-centered, narcissistic and apathetic façade so many people exude.

This may be a very simple, and even silly comparison, but I think SIMPLE often drives home the point with more force than COMPLEX.

Take a close look at your own life and what it is you offer to others. Are you a plastic compass…a cool decoder ring…or a spinning blow top? In other words, do you bring a simple and inner joy to those you pour yourself out to? Or is the only thing you offer a cold, emotionless website with a boring arcade game? Translated: Are you only out there for what value you can create for yourself?

Every last one of us is sitting on the grocery shelf of life. Don’t be a boring snack. Be a Cracker Jack...the one with the cool toy, not the {{{yawn}}} sticker.