In fourth grade my teacher distributed weekly catalogues
from Scholastic, the publishers of flimsy paperbacks
like The Babysitter's Club books and Goosebumps.
To encourage reading, my parents allowed me to order
liberally from the catalogue.




In order to maximize the volume of stuff I got in a
given package, I usually ordered the specials that
were advertised rather than individual books. A
'special' might be a Boxcar Children package
featuring two books, a compass and a fictional map
relating to the adventures of the Alden kids.

Scholastic's Animorphs series was the unofficial
class favorite. The science-fiction series was about
kids who could morph into animals, and each cover
illustrated this process:




According to the Scholastic website, Animorphs is still
around. The rather creepy promotional page shows a
crosshair focused on a human eye and includes a link to
a sample chapter of Animorphs #54: The Beginning.

The Animorphs covers relate to another great childhood
pleasure: time-lapse photography. Flowers blooming,
eggs hatching, old men growing beards in the snow--
these things were primally captivating.





As with most things (I am nothing if not hungry), this
general interest has a food-related correlate as well,
which could be called Gastromorphs. These are foods
that imitate other foods, and end up halfway between
point A and point B. In Animorph terms, it would be
like a person who was stuck at the midpoint of the
transformation:




Gastromorphs are fascinating and successful in an
imaginative sense, if not always a culinary one. You
could argue that certain foods (like yogurt or ice
cream) are always morphs, which is true, but I'm more
interested in two specific kinds of Gastromorphs.

The first kind includes bizarro examples like candy-
corn flavored soda and Grapples (grape-flavored
apples):




The second kind includes foods that mimic other
fully-formed foods. A yogurt flavored like key lime
pie counts; but plain lime-flavored yogurt does not.




More examples of Gastromorphs would include
cocktail-flavored gum and fish or fruit-flavored
dairy:





There are also things like Peeps (duck-shaped
marshmallows) and yule logs (log-shaped sponge
cake) that deserve special mention.

One of my wishes is to create Animorph-like diagrams
that show the Gastromorph transformation. If
anyone is equipped to do this (with Photoshop
or animated gifs?) please get in touch.



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