In all honesty, my hatred of the purple monstrosity from the black lagoon stems from childhood trauma. My mother tried her hand at some dish and botched it badly. This was in the days of "you will sit here, until you finish it" which led to some real battles of will. My father, in this instance, was hoist on his own petard because he hated it too and refused to eat it, thus undermining his authority to insist we finish our dinner or else . That led to a royal fight between him and my poor, culinarily challenged, mother. Yikes!
Around the same time he brought home some fresh ground sausage that had been destined for spaghetti sauce that evening. And we all loved spaghetti. However, when my 7 year old sister asked what was in the package, he opened it up, showed it to us and declared, "it's bear meat". The chorus of dismayed "yucks" must have been heard in the next county and nothing he could say would persuade us to eat it. That led to another fight with mom which she, I am happy to say, won. Thus equilibrium was restored to the universe.
