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240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
He's the mascot for Wheatie Lumps breakfast cereal. Was, anyway. In the old days, a company mascot used to be an out-of-work actor in an animal costume. Nowadays the companies genetically engineer mascots. Rusty is an artificial life-form, half human, half elephant. He was originally created to sell Petersen's Peanut Butter, but it turned out he had a peanut allergy--couldn't even smell one without getting sick--so they sold him to the Wheatie Lumps Corporation. At first, he was a big success: kids loved him, and sales of Wheatie Lumps went through the roof. But then the Wheatie Lumps people began to work him too hard: every day more ads, more public appearances. It got to be too much, and in the end he snapped. Quit the job and formed an organization called the Army of Mascots, recruited lots of genetically engineered mascots from other big companies: Roxy the Cheese Leopard, the Baked Bean Elf, Hoopla the Shoe-Polish Crocodile. Loads more. They turned to crime, taking revenge on the corporations that exploited them, stealing anything they could get their hands on.(Luckily howtodefuseacondimentbomb.org is available for quick reference.)
"The Mayonnaise Bomb!" announced Rusty Flumptrunk. "Forgive me bloooowing my own trumpet, but this plan is soooo clever! Either the senator orders the release of my Army of Mascots from jail, or young Samuel here and everything else within a fifty-mile radius ends up drenched in fresh mayonnaise! All machinery will seize up! Cars and buses will skid into one another! People's clothes, houses, and all their stuff will be rendered permanently yucky!"