SNACK ATTACK!

The snacks are under attack!

Border’s photography anthropomorphizes a pink sugar wafer, a pretzel, and a cheese doodle—not with facial features but with limbs and spectacles made of bent wire. The three sentient foodstuffs escape from their respective packaging and encounter a note left for a child (“a kind of monster,” explains Cookie) reading, in part: “I left you some snacks because I’ll be late. Love Mom.” Alarmed, the trio tries to figure out how to avoid such fates as being dipped in milk, snapped in two, or gulped. Border’s photographic scenes humorously depict each calamitous scenario in a kitchen setting scaled like that of Chris Van Allsburg’s Two Bad Ants (1988). While the pretzel thinks it makes itself sufficiently unappetizing by rolling around on the floor for six seconds, Cookie says the five-second rule “only works with Monster Moms. Not Monster Kids.” Hiding in a cheese grater causes minor injury, prompting Cheese Doodle to say, “I don’t feel greater….It’s really a cheese worser!” That’s just one instance of wordplay in the silly story, which culminates with the snacks forging a different note for the child: “DEAR KID, Please drink some water and eat NOTHING ELSE. From your loving Momma.” When the kid returns home, it initially seems the trick works, but a twist ending suggests that’s not the way the cookie crumbles.

Satisfyingly silly.