I just read that Nabisco, in honor of the 100th birtday of Barnum's Animal Crackers, is adding a new animal. You get four to choose from: walrus, cobra, koala, and penguin.

If you want to judge for yourself and vote, go to www.nabiscoworld.com now. As you might imagine, I have an opinion on this that I'll expound upon presently.

Looking at the cookies, I immediately decided against the koala and the cobra. My feeling about animal crackers is that they should be the shape of the animal, not just a cookie with the animal design on it. Neither of these pass the test, though I do think a cobra would be cool if it could be made into a stand alone cracker.

The walrus is, quite honestly, an indistinguishable blob. It could be a manatee, or a slug, or a Barbapapa.

So I cast my vote for the penguin. This will not surprise some of you, as I do have a fondness for penguins. They're my favorite part of the New England Aquarium, and when we were at Sea World this past September, the penguins were the only thing that I wanted to see among the standard exhibits (and, I have to say, the penguin house at Sea World is pretty lame). There's also Opus, the loveable mensch of a penguin from Bloom County, a cartoon fave of mine, even if he looks more like a puffin.

Most of these "we're adding something new" votes tend to rub me the wrong way. It's like a consumer version of cousin Oliver or Scrappy Doo, trying to reinvigorate interest in a product through flash rather than a reinvention involving anything of substance.

Consider the M&M "election" that led to the blue candy. There was no need to change colors. M&Ms are popular, never seemed to waver really, making such a change an obvious marketing ploy for kids, who seem attracted to any food incorporating blue (note all the raspberry flavored things colored blue). You'll notice that the option to not change any color, leaving tan in its rightful place, was never mentioned in the ad. You only heard about it when you called, and who would call intending to vote for a new color only to then change their mind? I called and called, but my one man jihad against a new color of M&M was doomed to failure.

Similar votes for a new Monopoly player token and new Crayola crayon shades were less annoying for some reason. Maybe I just found the process there less disagreeable. In looking at it, the money bag token was an added one, not replacing the traditional tokens (even the more pedestrian ones, like the iron or wheelbarrow). The Crayola vote mostly dealt with naming new shades, though they did solicit names for 8 colors in 1993. They "inducted" the old shades into the hall of fame. The likes of raw umber, yellow green, and maize made way for vivid tangerine, dandelion, and jungle green. Not as annoying as the new shades Crayola named themselves in 1998: brink pink, fuzzy wuzzy brown, banana mania, carribean green. Ack!

At least the idiot who named those got back on his/her feet coming up with the name Verizon.