File under: Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes…(Turn and face the strange).
The lede of this New York Times story by Matthew Haag:
After 116 years of captivity, animal crackers have been freed from their cages.
It was a symbolic victory for animal rights activists, notably People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which had argued that the immediately recognizable yellow-and-red boxes by Nabisco portrayed a cruel bygone era when traveling circuses transported exotic wildlife in confinement.
The new boxes are expected to arrive in stores this week. They show a zebra, an elephant, a lion, a giraffe and a gorilla roaming free side-by-side in a natural habitat, a sweeping savanna with trees in the distance.
And here’s what the old packaging looked like:
As the great David Bowie once sang (emphasis mine):
I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet