Breakfast became boring when there no longer were free prize stashed inside every box.
“But, Burt,” you say, “my Super Frosted Sugar-Coated Flakes do have prizes. All I have to do is scan this QR code…”
Stop it! At the risk of sounding like someone who walked five miles to school, uphill, both ways, in 10 feet of snow, when I was a kid, there were no such things as QR codes or URLS to type into browsers or other such nonsense.
The worst-case scenario was to send 10 cents and six box tops, and wait four to six weeks for delivery. Four to six weeks could take four or five years. Back then, there were nearly 10 years between Christmases.
Everything took longer back in the olden days. It built character.
Speaking of characters, that’s what we found in the bottom of our cereal boxes — characters. One year, we collected a whole fleet of plastic molded Robin Hood characters. We wanted Robin or at least Little John. But we kept getting stuck with Maid Marian. It was enough to curdle a guy’s milk.
My first cars came in breakfast cereals. My tabletop garage included two or three Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bangs (with wings that flapped), a dozen Wacky Racers and a Monkeesmobile (Monkees not included).
Then there was the submarine that actually dived in the bathtub (just add baking soda pellets), a Flintstones car, and some glow-in-the-dark rides.
We collected trading cards, buttons, bike-sized license plates, slimy wall-walkers, catapults, rocket launchers, terrariums and, of course, secret decoder rings.
When plastic, snap-it-together-yourself secret decoder rings plopped into our cereal bowls, we spun dials to match up symbols to send sneaky messages — which we wrote with glow-in-the dark pens and detective notebooks that came free inside the boxes.
It was all stuff that got us up and running (the sugar helped some, too).
Today, kids get QR codes to download a game for their electronic devices to keep them glued to screens, with only their thumbs getting a workout —unless you count eye strain.
Decades later, I owned a Jeep that was breaking down. I hiked to grocery stores and searched the cereal aisles. Not a single box came with a free key to a new car inside the box. Also, the word “sugar” had been removed.
I grew up on cereals with names like Sugar Smacks, Sugar Frosted Flakes, Sugar Crisp and Sugar Pops, all of which came with great spy toys or plastic cartoon characters free inside. What I found were boxes rebranded with names like Honey Smacks, Frosted Flakes, Golden Crisp and Corn Pops, none of which anything glow-in-the-dark free inside. But if you went to this website and typed this code into your phone…
I miss the days when I stocked all my needs with cereal boxes.
If the prizes weren’t IN the box, they were ON the box. I filled my music library with cardboard records with vinyl overlays. I scored the Archies’ chart-topper “Sugar Sugar” on the back of Super Sugar Crisp (seriously, sugar used to be considered a good thing); the Monkees’ smash “I’m a Believer” off Honey-Combs; and the Jackson 5’s biggie “ABC” off an Alpha-Bits box.
But I had to send in a bunch of box tops to get the 45 rpm-sized record that played 10 songs from “H.R. Pufnstuf” at 33 1/3 rpm. (Note to younger readers — rpm refers to how fast our pet dinosaurs had to run to crank the turntables.)
Where else but in your very own pantry could you get nine essential vitamins AND cool tunes to keep you hoppin’ and be-boppin’ all day long?
Wouldn’t it be gr-r-reat to bring back real free-inside-prizes to the breakfast table? I could use a Monster Mitt or a spy periscope or groovy decals or — with 50 cents and four box tops — cartoon-shaped breakfast set.
I wonder how many Cocoa Puffs box tops it would take to get a Batmobile to replace that old Jeep?
Send four proofs of purchase and 25 cents to Cole at burton.w.cole@gmail.com or on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook for more stories from the olden days by the resident grouch.