Cereal-scented candles are on fire

Target is now selling candles that smell like breakfast cereals. As the website Mental Floss put it: "If a whiff of Lucky Charms is enough to transport you to a simpler (read: happier) time, you can now access the aroma on demand."

Well. I cannot tell you what Lucky Charms smells like, except maybe oats and Styrofoam. Don't get me wrong — it's my favorite cereal. It is delicious. It is not magically delicious, inasmuch as no necromancy is involved. There are not Druids standing over the assembly line, chanting ancient rites to bring forth the Sweetening. I would prefer that children learn about modern food technology, and be told that it is technologically delicious, thanks to a mature scientific discipline that infuses the pastel-hued nodules with an acceptable simulacrum of marshmallow flavor, whatever that is.

But that would go against the mythology of the cereal, which requires the intervention of a Leprechaun, his face contorted with such rapturous mania that Bacchus himself would tell him to dial it back. Ever since the cereal was invented, we have heard Lucky say the same thing in commercials: "The kids are after me Lucky Charms." Whether this was true, or the result of a paranoid delusion, we can't say. I mean, most kids have relatively easy access to the stuff, and the idea that you would chase a supernatural being to steal his possessions seems ill-advised.

Lucky would always come up with a means of escape, waving his shillelagh: "Oi'll make a zeppelin for to flee upon!" Or something. Then the zeppelin would burst into flames, he'd plummet to earth, the kids would get his cereal, and he'd be cheerfully resigned to it all.

A real Leprechaun would point his magic stick at the insolent youths and turn them into croaking frogs, or set them on fire, or shout, "You want my cereal? Fine by me, lads," cast them into a pit, bury them in an avalanche of yellow moons and pink hearts, and make the skies rain milk.

Why were they his Lucky Charms, though? Did he invent them? No evidence suggests that he did, any more than Cap'n Crunch was responsible for his eponymous yellow mouth-shredders. Perhaps you can contemplate these things as you inhale the fumes from the candle.

But what does it smell like? Chasing an imp through the Irish countryside should require hints of brimstone, peat and sweat.

There's no candle — yet — with the Froot Loops aroma. This seems an obvious choice, because Toucan Sam, who would jump around the cartoon proclaiming that he "followed his nose, it always knows," implies that the cereal had an olfactory profile. Given that Sam was a bird, it would be more accurate if he shouted, "I follow my beak, it picks up the reek," but that probably wouldn't move much product.

There is a Trix candle. I defy anyone to tell me how Trix smells. An honest smell would be "humiliated rabbit." The awful commercials of my youth delighted in cliquish, exclusionary behavior, denying the rabbit a taste of the thing he so dearly craves. He is literally called The Trix Rabbit on the General Mills website, which just twists the knife. It's like your name is Steak Human, and every time you order it at a restaurant, they throw you out.

Why? Because Trix were for kids, not Silly Rabbits. What if the rabbit was not silly, but sober and learned? What if the rabbit was young? Are we allowed to give Trix to tiny bunnies without worrying that we'll find ourselves at the Hague facing the International Criminal Court for violating the laws on sugary orb distribution?

There's a Cinnamon Toast Crunch candle. Aka, "slap a new label on the unsold Christmas candles." I don't think anyone sniffs the air after it's lit and says, "Definitely a top note of toast."

Another candle option: Cheerios Honey Nut. Again, holiday sugar candles. There's no cereal with pine flavor, and that's just as well. Cap'n Crunch periodically releases "Oops! All Berries," so I wouldn't put it past them to come up with a piney "Oops! All Cones!"

Cocoa Puffs in candle form? Yes. The name makes you wonder if there was a cereal called Puffs, later retooled to assume a cocoa profile. Sugar-Frosted Puffs, part of this complete breakfast! Also part of this incomplete, fragmentary breakfast. But no. They were sold to us by a disturbed bird who bounced off the walls and proclaimed he was "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs." Wikipedia notes that his name is Sonny, and "in 2004, he was redesigned in a more simplistic fashion, this time without clothing."

So the candle has the scent of a buck-naked songbird unable to concentrate? I have to admit, I'm curious.