So, as you can see, I think cereal is pretty gosh-darned neat-o. It all started out back in nineteen-sixty-none-of-your-business when I could finally chew solid food. No more strained turkey necks, tapioca goo or other disgusting stuff that looks like it was wiped from the face of a sniffling third grader. No more! I had graduated to cereal. Wholesome oats and grains and milk...all a part of this balanced breakfast. Oh, and I forgot - about 10 wheelbarrows's worth of pure can sugar. But first, a little revisionist history on cereal.
Cereal was invented back in the 1800s by some self-righteous quack who served cold gruel in his sanitarium. That's right, you heard me - cereal was invented for the insane. One day, whilst concocting this fine blend of food mortar, some spilled on the stove. It cooked, cooled and flaked, creating the first dry cereal. As the years rolled into even more years, companies added spokespeople and mascots to get kids to pester their parents to buy it. Some things never change. Then, afraid that too many kids were pouring so much sugar into their bowls that the spoons actually could stand on end, the Battle Creek, Michigan cabal decided to create pre-sweetened cereal in an effort to CURB sugar from the diets of the pre-adolescent monsters.
Ok, pencils down. Before you know it, America was bombarded by cartoon tigers, sea captains and mysterious onomatopoetic elves. Sugar was still something that was a concern for parents, but only mildly so. It's what explains such names as SUGAR Pops, SUGAR Frosted Flakes, and most damning of all - SUPER SUGAR Crisp. The result were entire generations of kids eating so much sugar they vibrated across the living room floor while watching The Banana Splits. Bright colors, sing along jingles and progressively more annoying cartoon mascots brought things to critical mass and the moms of the world kicked a soccer ball into the crotch of the cereal manufacturers. Gone were any references to "sugar" in the name of the product, and seemingly overnight, we were buttonholed with officious-looking actors stressing the importance of fiber. The idea, I suppose, was to bring the kids off the swing set and into the bathroom. The sharp increase of children yelling, "Mommy, help!" from behind those bathrooms doors was deemed acceptable collateral damage.
When I was a kid, it was all about the prizes, from the cut-out Archies record on the back of Honeycomb cereal (the song was "Sugar, Sugar," according to the printout from my Irony Machine) to the rubberband-propelled car in Cap'n Crunch to the "Help Sugar Bear find the stash he ditched when the cops pulled him over" maze. As these novelties start impacting the bottom lines of these already-overpriced breakfast meals, more and more companies started giving away junk after you sent in about 100 box tops. My brother, Dave, and I saw through all that and always went for the cereal that had the coolest prize, like the zombie monkey paw or the fake vomit with little pieces of Alpha Bits embedded in the gunk. Good times. Often, Dave and I would be so torqued up to get the prize, we would jam our disease-laden hands deep down in the box to feel around for the plastic package. If it was Cap'n Crunch, we would pull our hands out, raw and bloody, from cereal that was as tough as unripened pine cones. The box opening, by that point, would resemble a gigantic oval and about two full bowls-worth of cereal would be all over the floor and summarily crushed under our feet as Dave and I wrestled over who would get the Frankenberry pencil sharpener.
In the 1970s, cereals really started to boom as cross-marketing tools for whatever hot new movie, video game or limp, wimpy cartoon was all the rage. There were Pink Panther Flakes, C-3POs (I'm not kidding), Donkey Kong, Pac-Man...hell, I won't be surprised if there's a South Park cereal on the horizon. Personally, I think the cereal manufacturers should have been a little more aggressive and dived in with both feet. Can you imagine the following cereals:
Godfather Cereal - shaped like little machine guns, with a picture of a strangled Luca Brasi on the front. The prize could be a life-like Sonny after he was machine-gunned down on the Causeway. Hey, it's the cereal "You Can't Refuse."
Pulp Fiction Cereal - shaped like little "Royale With Cheese" burgers and suitcase marshmallows, the prize would be a cut-out Gimp mask on the back. The front of the box would be Jules Winfield (portrayed by the amazing Samuel L. Jackson) saying, "Mmm-hmm, this IS a tasty burger!" Substitute Ezekiel 25:17 for the mask in Piggly Wigglys in the Bible Belt.
Boogie Nights Cereal - shaped like little disco balls and having an art deco design, it would have a cut-out record of "Disco Duck" by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots (along with a suicide hotline number) on the back with the words, "You're a Star. You're a Great Big Shining Star" on the front. The prize would be, well, if you've seen the last minute of the movie, you'll be wrestling your mom for the oversized prize, let's put it that way.
And now, I'd like to bring us to the part of the program where I get to share with you some of my favorite cereals from my youth. Pull down the blinds and put the gum under your desk.
Ah yes, the Freakies. Where else but in this country and during the early 1970s could you find a product AIMED AT KIDS named "Freakies"??? Pretty much like every other sugar-sweetened toasted oats cereal on the block, but the weird characters, oddly entrancing jingle and chuckling older siblings made this THE cereal to have when you were an aspiring adolescent. I had all the Freakies magnets and used to sing this song at the TV screen when the commercial came on. It explains my fondness for straitjackets.
Oh man, does this cereal ever bring back memories. Knowing full well how EVERYONE loves clowns and aren't creeped out by them at all, General Mills presented us with this eerie concoction of Stepford-smiling cereal pieces. Favored by Uni-Bombers and Ed Gein enthusiasts, it wouldn't have been a stretch to call THIS cereal "Freakies."
The name says it all. Nope, no drug culture references here. Taking a cue from those renowned counter-culture tricksters, Syd and Marty Krofft, creators of H.R. Pufenstuf (think about that name) and the less-veiled "Lidsville" (a "lid," in drug parlance, is a measure of drugs. Of course, no two people could ever agree how much was in a "lid"), Magic Puffs was just the next natural progression in getting youngsters to grow their hair long, smoke dope and build their entire code of ethics around Jim Morrison lyrics. The magic "trick" inside was how to turn a stalk of celery into a bong.
Ah, Quisp, my personal favorite. I still have a Quisp T-shirt somewhere around here. You never see this cereal anymore although legend has it Quaker is still producing it. Don't you dare say anything bad about this cereal or I will come to your house and beat you up.Another favorite of mine. One of the Monster Cereals that never gained any traction. Count 
Chocula, Frankenberry and Boo Berry had a good racket going and money split three ways goes a lot further than split four ways. Pretty much the Pete Best of the Monster Cereals, and later replaced by the staggeringly similar Yummy Mummy, Frute Brute lives on in the widescreen edition of Pulp Fiction when Lance is watching the Three Stooges at night before John Travolta careens his car into the side of the house.
Chocula, Frankenberry and Boo Berry had a good racket going and money split three ways goes a lot further than split four ways. Pretty much the Pete Best of the Monster Cereals, and later replaced by the staggeringly similar Yummy Mummy, Frute Brute lives on in the widescreen edition of Pulp Fiction when Lance is watching the Three Stooges at night before John Travolta careens his car into the side of the house. 
See? SEE??? I TOLD you Cap'n Crunch made a vanilla crunch cereal! And you didn't believe me. Oh, you believed me when I told you my dad built the Empire State Building all by himself, but NOOOOOO, you didn't believe me when I told you about Vanilly Crunch and Wilma the White Whale! This is my sweet, sweet victory for all you bozos to face up to after years and years of doubting me. Feel the sting!
Let's see here. There's a cheeky rodent on the box (yes, beavers are rodents) and what looks like rodent droppings in the bowl. You first. Actually, these weren't bad...and that says more about me than I care to share.
Let's see here. There's a cheeky rodent on the box (yes, beavers are rodents) and what looks like rodent droppings in the bowl. You first. Actually, these weren't bad...and that says more about me than I care to share.Part breakfast cereal, part ensemble comedy cast. G&S&G&L took longer to say than it was on
the shelves, but that didn't stop me from plowing through several boxes of it in my youth. Something about an anthropomorphic cereal machine with ears by its mouth appealed to my cosmic adolescent nature. From Purina, this Kid Chow featured mascots who looked like middle management accountants tripped up on nitrous oxide with the only normal character being the funky robot with cereal for brains. Most likely made on a dare, this product was the AMC Pacer of breakfast cereals. The person responsible was probably not only fired by Purina but brought up on charges for treason.I still enjoy a bowl of cereal today. Like many idiots my age, quite a number of people can groove on a bowl of Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs or, as I am finding out, Fruity Pebbles, which has an almost cult-like following. Dad can keep eating his bland shredded wheat and Wheaties. Mom can have her Grape Nuts and Total. Me? I'm about to tuck into some Frosted Flakes. I still think they taste good. Oh hell, you know it's coming and I know it's coming. Breakfast cereals aren't just good food.
They're GR-E-E-E-A-A-T-T!
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