Lileks: What’s your snack-food zodiac sign?

The Taste of Home website has produced a list of food products released the year you were born. I hate to check, because I'm getting to the age where the answer would be "cultivation of grain."

But I'm also indifferent to the answer, just as I'm indifferent to birthday cards that detail all the things that happened the year you were born. None of that is familiar. Oh, Elvis stubbed his toe in Vegas when I was three hours old? I remember that! It was quite the formative event!

No. Your memories start later.

You remember a new snack cracker from age 10, at the earliest. Nowadays, with over 35,000 products on the shelf of an average supermarket, we see new products every time we go to the store. Back in the prior era, though, the announcement of a new snack food was like a revelation of a new planet.

For example: Bugles, released to a grateful public in 1966. Invented by a Minnesotan — Verne E. Weiss, from Plymouth — and made by General Mills, they were an immediate hit, because you could put them on your fingertips and pretend you had claws. Their bags call them "America's #1 Finger Hat," which really makes you want to know who's in second place. Is this a fact? Do we have J.D. Powers and Associates data on this? Hmm?

Bugles were part of a massive '66 snack launch by General Mills: Buttons, which were suffused with cheddar cheese; popcorn-flavored Bows; Whistles, also dusted with cheddar-adjacent flavors; Pizza Spins, which tasted like licking the lid of a can of Chef Boyardee, and Burlap Rhomboids, which tasted like vinegar, woe and regret.

OK, I made up that last one. But you get the sense that they were full of enthusiasm for new ideas, and why not? We were going to the moon! Anything was possible! Fire up the IBM mainframes and let the electronic brains come up with new combinations!

They all failed, except for Bugles. They still can be found. The recipe has changed, and so there are, of course, Bugle Purists complaining online that New Bugles taste too salty, and Bugle Truthers who insist they're full of seed oils and microplastics, and the conical shape is used to transmit 5G signals.

Anyway, the chronological list of food products makes you wonder if your birth year was affected by these innovations, a sort of gustatory astrology. Does it determine your personality, though? I was born in 1958 under the sign of Rice-A-Roni, so my personality trait should be "sings 'The San Francisco treat!' every time he hears a bell." Which I definitely do not do. Half the time, but hardly every time.

Let's see what some other daily hunger scopes might look like:

1964: Pop-Tarts. Today you will, at some point, leap 3 feet in the air while clutching a stiff white blanket.

1965: Kraft Singles. Be prepared to feel damp, limp, wasteful and lazy.

1966: Doritos. Every argument you make will have three points.

1967: You were born on the sign of Slurpee. Today you will have the sensation of flossing your frontal lobe with an icepick.

1968: Your sign is Big Mac. Today your relationship with the world will feel like a sesame seed on a bun — seemingly secure but individually insignificant and easily dislodged. Note: if you are born under Big Mac but have Burger King rising, someone may ask you to hold a pickle, and then hold some lettuce.

1969: Tic-Tac is your sign. Today you consider the eternal mystery of a mint that has 0 calories but is 95% sugar.

1974: Pop Rocks. Today you may have an urge for a novel oral sensation only slightly more pleasant than chewing tinfoil.

1981: Lean Cuisine. If you feel a bit salty today, resist the compulsion to stab someone three times and open up a slit an inch or so in length. We know you need to vent, but that's a bit much.

1986: Pop-Secret Microwave Popcorn. You'll start the day feeling flat. Later you will be quite agitated.

And so on. These are not guarantees that these things will happen, and are provided for entertainment purposes only. Although if you were born in 1996, the year of Olestra Fat Substitute, carry an extra pair of underwear when you leave the house.