Introduced by Kellogg’s in 1968, Danish Go-Rounds were like the golden fleece of breakfast pastries. Imagine Pop-Tarts, but with the sophistication of a five-star dessert. The brown sugar-cinnamon Danish Go-Rounds were so addictive, they made crack look like a mere curiosity. At the ungodly hour of 2 a.m., millions of Americans would wake up in cold sweats, their cravings driving them to frenzied searches for the Nectar of the Gods—only to find their precious pastries had vanished into thin air. Then, in a move so baffling it felt like a conspiracy against breakfast enthusiasts everywhere, Kellogg’s pulled the plug on Danish Go-Rounds in the mid-seventies. They kept the Pop-Tarts, those cardboard-like impostors that tasted like they were designed by a committee of flavorless robots. The heartbreak was palpable. It was as if a divine bakery had been shut down and replaced with a factory that churned out glorified toaster insulation. The eradication of Danish Go-Rounds is now remembered as one of the most colossal institutional blunders in history—up there with the fall of Rome and the invention of the Rubik’s Cube. The void they left was so immense, it bored a gaping chasm in my soul. My heart, once full of pastry-filled joy, now echoed with the hollow sound of Pop-Tarts’ lifeless crunch. While Danish Go-Rounds faded into the annals of breakfast history, Pop-Tarts flourished like a tasteless, mass-produced phoenix. This shift symbolized the erosion of artisanal craftsmanship and the triumph of consumer complacency. It heralded the rise of such culinary horrors as Imperial Margarine, Tang, Space Food Sticks, Boone’s Farm Apple Wine, and SlimFast—products so tragic they make a TV dinner look like a gourmet feast. The Gastronomic Time Traveler had to bear witness to this disheartening transition, seeing the demise of pastries that were practically food royalty. In their place, we got a parade of processed atrocities that made the culinary landscape look like a dystopian nightmare. So there I was, left to mourn the loss of Danish Go-Rounds, savoring the bitter taste of what once was, while choking down the unworthy replacements that flooded the market. It was a breakfast apocalypse, and I was living in its soggy aftermath.
Tag: travel
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The Demise of Danish Go-Rounds Will Never Be Forgiven
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NOTHING TRIGGERED CHILDHOOD FOMO MORE THAN THE BRADY BUNCH
In the scorching summer of 1971, when I was nine and convinced that destiny owed me something spectacular, my family and four others carved out a rugged paradise on Mount Shasta. For two weeks, we fished, water-skied, dodged hornets, and lounged beneath the hypnotic drone of a massive battery-powered radio blasting The Doors, Paul McCartney, Carole King, and Three Dog Night. It should have been idyllic. It should have been.
One morning, while the other families fried pancakes, prepped their fishing gear, and reveled in their pioneer fantasies, I was still wrapped in my sleeping bag, immersed in the most transcendent dream of my life. This wasn’t just a dream—it was a divine calling. I had met The Brady Bunch in downtown San Francisco, right beside a gleaming red cable car. Their smiles were radiant, practically angelic, and their body language said it all: I had been chosen. The adoption papers had already been signed in some conveniently located government office, and it was official—I was now a Brady.
Questions swirled in my nine-year-old mind: Would I get my own room in their split-level suburban utopia, or would I have to bunk with Greg? More importantly, how soon would I appear on the show? Just as I was about to find out, reality crashed in like a wrecking ball. Mark and Tosh, my so-called friends, yanked me out of my blissful state, insisting it was time to go fishing. Fishing? Fishing?! I had just been welcomed into America’s most wholesome sitcom family, and now I was expected to slum it with worms and hooks?
I sulked like a deposed prince. All day, I stomped around Mount Shasta, scowling like a kid exiled from paradise, my Brady Bunch dream stuck inside me like a splinter. I couldn’t tell anyone. What was I supposed to say? “Sorry, I can’t go fishing; I was about to move into a Technicolor utopia where the biggest problem is whether Marcia gets a date to the dance.” Yeah, that would go over well.
“Get with the program!” my dad barked in his military tone. “We’re living in the wild!” The wild? I didn’t want the wild. I wanted avocado-green appliances, shag carpeting, and Alice the maid serving pork chops and applesauce. Instead, I got yellowjackets hovering over our food, a fishing pole, and a cold dose of reality. I was not a Brady, and the sting of it lingered longer than the mosquito bites.
But here’s the punchline—my Brady Bunch fantasy wasn’t some rare stroke of delusion. Millions of kids across America were staring at that pastel-hued utopia, convinced that salvation came in the form of avocado-colored kitchens and polyester bell-bottoms. Creator Sherwood Schwartz was practically running a cult without knowing it—he received hundreds of letters from kids in broken homes, willing to renounce their possessions, hitchhike cross-country, and pledge fealty just for a shot at joining the sacred Brady fold. The show had become a sitcom Mecca, and nothing triggered childhood FOMO quite like realizing you weren’t born into that family.
And here’s the cosmic joke—while we were glued to those 30-minute morality plays, dreaming of a world where even a busted nose got a feel-good resolution, the actors’ real lives were flaming train wrecks. Addiction, affairs, infighting—the Bradys weren’t living in a sitcom, they were trapped in a full-blown soap opera. Turns out, while America was fantasizing about swapping families, the actual Bradys probably wished they could swap out of their own.
Should we have expected the actors to live the squeaky-clean fantasy they sold us? Of course not. Expecting that is like assuming Superman pays his taxes. Hollywood doesn’t run on truth—it runs on glossy façades, and The Brady Bunch was one of the greatest of them all. They spoon-fed us choreographed family bliss while drowning in off-screen dysfunction. And yet, we still crave that fantasy. Once you’ve had a taste of Brady-level wholesomeness, it’s like emotional junk food—artificial, saccharine, and utterly addictive.
To this day, I still have dreams that I’m in that opening theme song, my face glowing in one of the squares, beaming at my Brady siblings. In that dream, I am forever young, forever safe, basking in the manufactured warmth of a world that never really existed.
Cinemorphosis 