When I would accompany my mom to Farrier's IGA store for the weekly purchase of groceries, I would spend a long time at the cereal aisle. Eventually I would select a box of sugar-sweetened goodness and present it for her approval.
"You just want this one because of the toy inside!"
How could she say such a thing? I mean, of course, it was TRUE, but still...
Indeed, sometimes I would select a cereal whose flavor didn't really ring my bell for the prize inside. I remember selecting a box of Sugar Crisp once whose back featured a cutout record covered with images of Sugar Bear, Shoobee Bear, and Doobee Bear (snicker, snicker! Those clueless cereal execs at it again!). I just had to have that record, even though the cereal itself was awful (to this kid, obviously millions disagree). The internet being the amazing thing that it is, here's the record on YouTube!
Anyhow, many was the time I proved my mom right by getting home, tearing into the box, fishing out the toy, and barely touching the remaining cereal. Fortunately, due to the presence of the venerable calcium disodium EDTA, it could sit for months in the cabinet perfectly preserved.
Thus, I would be frequently forbidden to get cereal with toys. But even then, there were often times goodies on the back.
Games, collector's cards, the aforementioned records, and cutouts meant to be constructed into cardboard toys frequently graced the backs of the boxes.
That meant that you didn't get the prize until you finished the contents. Mom LOVED that!
There were two types of cereal: plain old, and with fruit!
A cut-up banana could transform the most mundane bowl of soggy cereal into a fruity delight, savored until the final slice was fished out of the milk.
I remember hearing on a 1970's radio talk show that a cereal manufacturer put dried banana chips in with the product to become reanimated in the milk, but that it had to be pulled because "hippies" were smoking the banana chips as an alternative to marijuana. True or not (probably not), it was a short-lived experiment which has recently been resurrected by Kellogg's Corn Flakes! Presumably, today's hippies are better behaved?
A bit of marketing genius by the cereal manufacturers was the production of miniature boxes that were packaged in multi-packs.
The upside: no matter what cereal you liked, it was in there. The downside: no matter what cereal you hated, it was also in there. Another downside was that nary a toy was found inside, although the cardboard wrapping might contain games or puzzles.
The boxes could be sliced open and made into miniature bowls into which you poured the milk. Occasionally, feeling adventuresome, I would do so, usually making a mess that mom had to clean up. What patience that woman had!
The miniature boxes were (and still are) sold to restaurants, but kids were attracted to them as well. We liked kid-sized versions of products.
It's been years since I had cereal and milk. The rare occasions that I partake in a traditional breakfast, it's more likely to be a saturated-fat-and-cholesterol-laden bacon and eggs affair. It's fortunate for me indeed that breakfasts are rare.
Nonetheless, here's a tip of the hat to Kellogg's, Post, Quaker, General Mills, and Nabisco, who helped get our sleepy bodies up and at 'em for school so long ago.
Comments (4)
Don't thank the cereal companies...thank the sugar cane industries...most cereals back then where sugar coated or had a bunch of sugar in them. So, it was a sugar rush that got you going!
Our generation...our Mothers had to start working and cereal was a quick fix to get us out the door. Divorces were becoming more and more common place and so there where a lot of single Moms...not like our grandparents.
Econonics had a great deal with how our food was prepared...TV dinners replaced home cooked meals, as parents rushed home to feed us, already tired from working.
Now, most Moms that I know, look for natural and non sugar cereals.
Back then it was never mentioned...except by perhaps my Mother! LOL She always read the labels.
They don't put cool toys in the cereal boxes anymore...
And you don't see kids in the isles reading the boxes and looking for the toys. Now if you send in 6 box tops and $6.95 you can get a disc.
Thank goodness that Cracker Jacks still gives a toy in every box...they still do, don't they...??? It has been a long time since I bought them...
Sharon
~The Baby Boomer Queen~
Posted by Sharon | July 18, 2008 1:15 PM
Posted on July 18, 2008 13:15
Speaking of premiums, in the 50’s my mother got several rose bushes by sending in a quarter and 2 box tops from Kellogg’s All Bran and I was allowed to get a “Genuine Palm Tree” for box tops which died in about a month probably due to over watering.
During the 60’s, Post came out with a slew of cornflake cereals with “Fruit in the box”, I recall freeze dried strawberries, peaches, and blueberries as well as the above mentioned dried bananas (I’m pretty sure that there is no truth to Donovan’s Electrical Banana buzz – dried bananas can be found in almost any natural or health food store.)
Oddly after spending over an hour searching the web – I found just one reference to this history and it was an obscure squib from the Oregon Freeze Dry Company stating “Oregon Freeze Dry was formed in 1963 in Oregon's Willamette Valley to produce dried sliced strawberries for a General Foods breakfast cereal called Post Toasties corn flakes.” Given the number of boxes with freeze dried fruit I consumed back then I find it passing strange that there is such a dearth of information regarding the phenomena. Any boomers out there who remember these cereals?
A bit of cereal trivia: When you see a mouth watering picture of a bowl of cereal with milk, the preferred milk substitute for a realistic photograph is Elmer’s Glue which photographs whiter than milk (which has a bluish cast) and the cereal doesn’t get soggy.
Congratulations are in order – kudos Ron – you got through a whole column with the merest innuendo of sugar stimulus.
Now to pedagogically disabuse Queen Sharon:
The sugar cane/beet industries produce sucrose (molecular formula C12 H22 O11) and because the human body cannot directly absorb sucrose it has to add a molecule of H20 to break it down into 1 molecule of glucose and 1 of fructose (C6 H12 O6) for absorption. This process takes place in the small intestine via the enzyme sucrase and causes a much slower insulin response (glycemic index) to blood sugar. Cereals are primarily starch which is directly converted into glucose by the enzyme ptyalin in saliva which rapidly raises one’s blood sugar (particularly rice and corn – wheat is somewhat slower.) So if there were such a thing as a sugar rush (which there isn’t – see the links in my previous post (Breakfast Cereals: Part 2) then it would be caused by the breakdown of the starch i.e., the cereal itself.
BTW Cracker Jack still has prizes but they are mostly paper puzzles or occasionally plastic gewgaws whose function is questionable.
Posted by Burt | July 18, 2008 11:52 PM
Posted on July 18, 2008 23:52
I Remember JFK, the internet hotbed of controversy regarding whether sugar gives you a buzz or not!
Keep those comments coming, friends :-)
Posted by Ron Enderland | July 19, 2008 10:34 AM
Posted on July 19, 2008 10:34
I remember Post putting Baseball cards on the back of cereal boxes in the early 1960's. My brother & I would race home to cut them out and add them to our collection. Needless to say, the resulting cereal box was hard to deal with and led to a number of messes (that we would have to clean ... but it was worth it).
Posted by Mike | July 19, 2008 3:50 PM
Posted on July 19, 2008 15:50