The Count looked in his mailbox, but yet again, it was empty. It had been so long, in fact, since he had sent in those box tops in his self-addressed, stamped envelope that there was a spider in there lazily spinning a web. The Count's neighbors, Boo and Crook, came around the chocolate hedges at the edge of his yard.

"Still nothing?" asked Boo, a bunch of electric blue grapes in his incorporeal palm.
"Not a bloody thing," moaned the Count. "Wait 'Four to Six weeks for delivery', they said. So here I am with a case of Hershey's Chocolate Syrup and my lawn chair for the last two months, and I haven't gotten anything but a sunburn."
"We'd love to stay," said the Crook, "but you see, I've got to burgle Otis Spunkmeyer's high security vault later today. We're meeting up with the Silly Rabbit on the way"

With that, the Count was left alone once again. Occasionally, he would take a pull off of one of the squeeze bottles sitting next to him and stare longingly up the side street of his Levittown-like "retirement community". Now and then, he would see one of the other residents -- Sam, following his nose, or Cap'n driving around the block in his enormous Crunch-powered ship.

"They wouldn't understand," he muttered under his breath. "No, we can't, we can't tell them. Oh, it is such a shame that the only group that would appreciate such a lovely plan to take over the world by spreading sugar-laden cereals is the Cereal Villains Club."

He sat a while longer, sipping on the syrup. Some of it had begun to ferment in the sun, and the brown-ish bottle bulged in the afternoon heat. "I reckon," the Count said to a stray cat wandering by, "that I can attribute my downfall to that Atkins fellow. It's so hard to be respected as an animated spokes-monster after the product you represent has been villainized. Why, I'm made from hearty corn meal!" The cat licked a puddle of syrup it had stepped in off its paw daintily before wandering away in as much haste as it could manage and still remain nonchalant.

The Count glanced up again, looking across the street. "Ahh well," he sighed and pulled the hood of his cape over his tousled chocolate brown hair. "At least that fellow with the all-natural rolled oats crap is out of work too."

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