Well, look who flew in to pay us a visit at Sun City Peachtree!  It’s Toucan Sam (a.k.a. the Froot Loops mascot)!  I wonder if he was looking for Woodstock…  Marcie and Frieda are hanging out on other benches in the community; however, the rest of The Peanuts Gang has gone off to play somewhere else. 

Meanwhile, Toucan Sam, sans his bowl of Froot Loops, looks happy to be here!  Why not?  It’s a beautiful day, the azaleas are blooming crazy all over the community, and it couldn’t be prettier.

Some of you may not know who Toucan Sam is, but I saw plenty of him on our breakfast table, thanks to my brother who was a Froot Loops fan.  Not me; I was a Cocoa Puffs girl, until I grew up and realized that I was putting a lot of empty calories in my gut to start off the day.

Toucan Sam has been around for a while, and he is almost as old as I am!  He’s 58 years old, and he still has as good of a nose for sniffing out a bowl of Froot Loops as I do for chocolate.  “Follow your nose!  It always knows!” is what he used to always say.

Now, here’s a bit of trivia I’ll bet you didn’t know about the colorful bird:  In commercials, Toucan Sam was voiced by Mel Blanc, best known as the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig.

How about those colorful stripes on his beak?  Back in the 1970s, each stripe represented the flavors of Froot Loops cereal:  cherry (red), lemon (yellow), and orange.

Last year, Kellogg’s changed the look of Toucan Sam to a neon-colored bird with a six-colored beak, to represent the six colors of the current Froot Loops cereal.  Big mistake; all hell broke loose!  The hate mail that followed was relentless.  Artists even took it upon themselves to improve (or, in some cases, not) on the new look and post their artwork on social media.

I would have to agree with that negative feedback.  I liked Toucan Sam just the way he was.