Circus Animal Cookies? I Think Not…

When my sister was alive, she used to go through these phases where she'd eat or drink certain things.

These bents for consumables like diet root beer, canned tomato soup, and instant apple cinnamon-flavored oatmeal would generally last for a few months, although some would occasionally prove to be slightly shorter or longer, depending on whatever variables ruled that part of her ingestion zodiac.

One of the protracted hankerings my sis was known for adopting at least a couple of times every year was for circus animal cookies. You know, the ones that are frosted either pink or white and covered with little multi-colored nonpareils which often come in a bag that's printed to look like a circus tent.

I like them too, but only occasionally and by the small handful - not by the doomsday prepper quantities my sister would munch them in.

My sister's been dead for over ten years now, but I got to thinking about her frequent binges for these little bickies just the other day during one of my regular remembrances of her, and it also made me recall something else I used to ponder profoundly about them.

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So exactly which animals are supposed to be represented in the four-barreled canon of the frosted circus animal cookie anyway?

The answer seems simple enough, in a modern pre-packaged bag at least, it's camel; elephant; giraffe; and lion. However, in doing a bit of historical research on the subject, it seems there have also been cows; hippos; pigs; and rhinos, as well as a few other critters at one point in time or another. Although I admittedly don't see the association of cows and pigs with the circus, unless it's happening on that doomsday prepper's plot of heavily-fortressed land, and that prepper happens to be Old MacDonald.

Unlike animal crackers, which have actually been offered in the sweetened likenesses of over 50 different fauna since 1902 and use a detailed mold for baking which clearly identifies each one, frosted circus animal cookies are vastly more polysemantic in definition and form.

I mean, have you ever truly stopped and taken a look at any of them before popping them into your mouth? None of the four organisms currently purported by the folks at Kellanova's Mother's Cookies brand seem to be readily perceptible upon a first or second glance, and often remain in ambiguity even after a more than cursory inspection. And despite the fact that I loved their playful look and sweet, waxy texture with a finishing crunch, this always really got my goat about circus animal cookies (and there isn't even a goat in the bag!...or is there?)

Is that a giraffe? Hmmm...I don't think so. Since it looks way too much like the frame of a slingshot to my eyes. And what about this one I pulled out...could that be a lion? Naaaah! I think not. Since it's quite obviously Wisconsin with several fingerling tumors growing out of its Sheboygan.

I guess the accidentally-recondite composition found within every bag of circus animal cookies is one of the things that can make them fun to eat. But I've always been a firm believer in the old adage that a baker should never fail to deliver on their promise (wait...is that really an adage at all?), especially a corporately-employed one. So if the folks at a commercial baking operation whose parent company turns a profit of over $13 billion annually can't make me a three-inch cookie that even remotely resembles an elephant, then I'm not sure they're trying hard enough. Even though the elephant is in all frankness, the only one among the iced quartet that can most easily be paired to its intended outline. But it still seems to end up looking more like the Elephant Man if you ask me.

And so, here we all are and life goes on. And the frosted animal cookie, which was invented by N.M. Wheatley at a newspaper stand in Oakland, California in 1914, has yet to waver from its enigmatic delineation for almost 111 years. Oh, whatever are we to do about this supercentenarian-sized dilemma?

Well, I guess there's not much we can do, now is there? So I suppose we'll all just keep chomping these little wildlife-inspired morsels for their sugary savor and try to ignore the fact that they're all forged in a pattern that resembles our last set of Rorschach tests at the shrink's office.

But my biggest fear remains what I might see the next time I head to the zoo. Because it's seeming more and more plausible all the time that what I gander in the camel corral, the giraffe barn or the lion enclosure might actually start looking more like an ill-fashioned cookie instead of the basis for a mass-produced one.