
Cereal box toys date back to the 1940s. Sugar Crisp had an Archie’s record, Cap’n Crunch had a glow-in-the-dark acrobat, and Kellogg’s offered a set of miniature muscle cars.
Early Cheerios boxes featured booklets with secret messages from the Lone Ranger himself. Other boxes contained race cars, ghost detectors, license plates for bicycles, secret decoders, robots, whistles, diving submarines, Star Trek weapons, Puff Shoot Monsters, tiny terrariums, rings, and miniature baseball helmets.
Young Boomers insisted on certain brands of cereal, not because they tasted good or were healthy, but because of the valuable prizes inside, or better yet, to redeem the box tops. With three box tops of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes – remember Tony the Tiger – the sky was the limit for super gifts and toys. Eat enough cereal and Tony would make a personalized nameplate, just for you!
Kids would eat two and three helpings of a preferred cereal to finish one box and go on to the second. Our parents must have considered us cereal-aholics when all we were really interested in were the prizes.
The covers of the cereal box were also interesting. Wheaties featured key athletes, which drew the attention of lots of 8-year-old baseball and football wanna-bes.
My first recollection of an athlete on a Wheaties Box was Bob Richards who won the decathlon in 1958. Other notables include Lou Gehrig way back in 1934. Also gracing the covers of the old Wheaties boxes during the early Boomer years were the likes of Bob Cousy, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, Raymond Berry, Mary Lou Retton, Michael Jordan, and Bruce Jenner (not in a dress.)
Today, there are no prizes in cereal boxes primarily because the manufacturers fear a lawsuit if some 6-year-old happened to swallow a race car.
I’m not aware of even one Boomer child who ingested a valuable prize while wolfing down a bowl of Rice Crispies, Post Raisin Bran or Cheerios. That’s because we always reached to the bottom of the box and got the prize out first!