MARK MY WORD: `O' WHAT A MESS WITH KID'S FAVORITE MEAL

Thirty years ago, Campbell Soup Co. marketing executives came up with SpaghettiOs and dinnertime for kids hasn't been the same since.

My 3-year-old daughter, Becca, likes that canned pasta. So do countless other children.

A TV commercial once billed SpaghettiOs as "the greatest invention since the napkin."

Of course, you need plenty of napkins to clean up a SpaghettiOs mess.

Like other parents, I'm amazed by this kiddie pasta. To adults, SpaghettiOs look and taste like orange-colored mush.

But put the stuff near a toddler and some of the pasta is quickly inhaled. The rest ends up on the kid's hands, hair, face and clothes.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson was president, "The Sound of Music" was a big hit and Franco-American SpaghettiOs hit the grocery shelves.

It was advertised as the "neat, new spaghetti kids can eat with a spoon."

Who were they kidding? Kids prefer to eat the slimy stuff with their hands as Becca will attest.

Campbell's people claim that 90 million pounds of the product are consumed annually, an amount that is nearly 200 times the weight of the Statue of Liberty.

Personally, I think most of that amount isn't consumed as much as it is smeared all over floors, dining room tables and people.

Parents learned long ago it's best not to stand too close to people who are eating this stuff.

These days, the "O" often wears high-topped sneakers and rides a skateboard. This pasta gets around faster than a virus.

Campbell's and its subsidiary Franco-American are so proud of their product they recently sent out a whole packet of press releases.

SpaghettiOs, it seems, are all over the place.

It's hard to count all of them. For one thing, there are more than 1,750 "Os" in a 15-ounce can, Campbell's tells us.

No wonder it creates such a mess, particularly in Michigan. Grand Rapids, Mich., has been called the "SpaghettiOs Capital of the World." Per capita consumption is higher there than anywhere else. Residents there reportedly consume more than 3 million servings a year.

But then what else would you expect from a state that was home to the first person to observe digestion -- an Army doctor who treated a wounded fur trader.

The trader was shot by accident in the abdomen in 1822 and the wound never closed. The fur trader was known as "the man with a window in his stomach."

If he were alive today, he would be a regular guest on the David Letterman show. He'd be perfect for a SpaghettiOs commercial. You could count all those smiling "Os" dancing around in his stomach.

It is reported that if all the cans of this pasta that have been consumed in the last three decades were laid end to end, they would circle the equator more than nine times.

This probably accounts for much of the ozone problem.

If only we could get our kids to eat broccoli.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian