![]() ![]() Do you want candy? Do you want gum? How to choose? Is that a choice you’re prepared to make? And do you really even have to make it? For almost 50 years, when sugar cravings strike, candy connoisseurs have been choosing not to choose with Razzles. You’ve got a sweet tooth, but you aren’t quite sure what for. Ah, memories.We’ve all been there before. If there was one thing kids back then loved more than superheroes, it was monsters.įrankenberry – the perfect cereal to munch while wearing your Mork pajamas and watching Superfriends early Saturday morning. Sir Grapefellow was, as a I remember, purple nirvana. Now here’s a cereal I wish would make a comeback. What kid could resist these DC superhero prizes? Cheerios offered a dartboard in 1979 and Fruity Pebbles offered posters in 1981. “Each one comes complete with a plastic ‘Earth’ disc and a packet of Luther Burbank Sweet Basil and fine curled cress seeds” – training 70s kids to one day grow more “smokeable” herbs. In 1974, Cheerios offered a terrarium as a prize oddly enough, they weren’t the only cereal company to go with the terrarium idea…Īlpha-Bits offered terrariums from the mid-seventies through 1980. “Desk Signs” seems like an odd idea, but we were suckers for anything free spilling out of a cereal box. ![]() I include the Flintstone’s coin holder because I actually used this – not sure exactly why, but I loved this little prize back in the day and kept my precious-few coins in it. I think it’s a stretch to call this a “Mini Computer”, but it’s still a valiant effort at trying something beyond the standard plastic toy. Sometimes cereal companies thought “outside the box” Late 1940s Wheaties had a whole series of cut-out masks my favorite being “Iron Jaw the Robot” Everyone remembers Boo-Berry, Frankenberry and Count Chocula, but we often forget Fruit Bruit (and Yummy Mummy) Quentin Tarantino certainly doesn’t, as he featured this cereal in Pulp Fiction. The 1979 Fruit Brute cereal offered Animal Friends Decals. In 1985, S’Mores cereal offered the “Freaky Fascinating Fire Eyes Stickers”, featuring the spooky tiger, fly and owl… and the oddly lethargic alligator. I’m not sure why kids were obsessed with stickers in those days but like any fad, there’s rarely a solid reason why it became popular in the first place. A while back, I included Dynamite as one of the Six Greatest Magazines for Seventies Kids.Ĭheerios’ 1978 Keds cards “action stickers” were an embarrassment, but their “Bionic Stickers” from 1976 were epic. ![]() In 1961 Wheaties offered Classics Illustrated a decade later, they dumbed it down a bit for us seventies kids with joke books. ![]() cereal offered a lousy fifteen cent coupon for the E.T. Records for PrizesĪdding to the variety of prizes offered in cereal boxes, you could even get records. The 1980 Wheaties box featuring the iconic Jenner picture offered football jerseys for $6.95. What could be cooler than a “Ghost Chompers” cap from your “Crunchy Sweetened Corn Cereal with Marshmallow Bits”? Not sure that I would have been caught dead in a “I’m a Smurf Superstar” T-shirt back then, but I’m sure there were plenty who sent in for this “Smurfy T-Shirt Offer”. In 1971, you could get a Globetrotters T-shirt from your box of Count Chocula in 1985 the monster cereals offered “Shoe Taggers” But I suspect the primary reason is that there isn’t that appreciation for these simple and cheap prizes to make it worthwhile. The reasons cited are lawsuits (choking hazards and other risks that come with small toys can bring legal problems) and trimming down any frills to lower costs. Kellogg’s, the first to put prizes in their cereal boxes, has stopped doing so, as has General Mills and other cereal manufactures. I don’t know the answer, but the fact is that appreciation for cereal box toys is gone. Perhaps it was because we weren’t given much back then outside of Christmas and birthdays, so we appreciated any sort of present, no matter how pitiful. With each pouring came the rapturous hope that the prize would make an appearance as it fell into the bowl… but most often resulting in abysmal disappointment.Īnd what was all this hubbub over cereal box prizes about, anyway? The toys were generally cheaply made crap. Mine had me wait until the prize fell out naturally when pouring a bowl an exercise in patience that was borderline child abuse. Some parents let their children dump out the entire contents of the box to get at the glorious prize within some let their kids dig their grubby paws, elbow-deep, into the box to catch hold of the cherished booty. It sounds a bit pathetic now, but in decades past, unearthing a crappy toy from within a box of sugary cereal was like finding buried treasure for a kid in the 1960s-1980s. Kids today will never know the simple joy of finding a prize in a cereal box. ![]()
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