For generations of New Yorkers, walk-up apartments have been an inconvenient but vital staple of vertical urban life, a gritty first berth up the ladder of success for the newcomer and the striver.
The pace slows, there are fewer multicoloured dinosaurs, and instead, you have the steady, lulling voice of Michael Palin narrating Clangers – about a family of pink, mouse-like creatures who live underground on another planet – followed by the unchanged, vital staple of In the Night Garden.
And let's not forget that vital slasher staple: pure, unadulterated sex appeal.
A study led by the Harvard School of Public Health found that rising levels of CO2 are stripping staple foods of vital nutrients, rendering staple crops such as wheat, rice and soya less nutritious for millions of people in developing countries.
What has not received as much attention, however, is the fact that Staples.com has emerged as a vital part of Staples' business strategy, offering lessons for other chief executives faced with re-evaluating their e-business strategies.
The only concern here is that the pair might prefer twirling through the cosmos while creating new life forms and exploring the spectacular reach of their combined superhuman intellects to vital everyday comic book staples such as saving the world from evil and looking cool in a cape.
Finding new staple foods will be a vital part of that.
Adults revere it as a hangover remedy, a vital source of Vitamin B and a staple breakfast food — spread lightly on hot buttered toast.
When people do not have enough calories, staples such as rice and wheat are vital: they provide the most calories per dollar.
Coffee is a common denominator of Vital's worlds: a product of Africa and a staple of Italy, where, in the fourteenth century, many of Vital's forebears migrated to open cafés and pâtisseries.
