Cereal Boxes and Prizes: 1960s - A Tribute and Price Guide [Paperback]

I hesitated at first to give this book 5 stars, on the basis that no book that lacks a narrative text deserves the highest rating. But on reflection I do feel that the pleasures of this book were so considerable as to deserve the ranking, and that a book's fun can come from photographs and memories as surely as it can come from prose composition. Anyone who is interested in popular culture, particularly the colorful, innocent, and optimistic childhood culture of the 1960s, will find this book wonderfully enjoyable. I imagine that most people will be charmed while leafing through the photographs of cereal boxes and their prizes, by following the evolution of the Sugar Crisp Bear, and noting the horrid political incorrectness of So-Hi, the Sugar Krispies mascot. But for those of us who actually grew up through this time in history, and who through this book were able to locate obscure recollections in the dim recesses of memory, it's a barrel of fun. I had forgotten all about my Captain Crunch plastic handpuppet, my Jungle Book characters, and the memory of snapping together my little Archies car, until I read this book. Other readers may well find themselves transported back to delightful memories long-ago forgotten. This book was a great present to me, and would be a fun present for anyone in my age group (mid-30s.)

The book's photography is great. All clear color photogrpahs of cereal boxes, many front and back, and their enclosed prizes. Each photo has a caption but I would like to have seen a little more text. Still, it will bring back many memories of breakfast in the 60's.

Well, maybe not the cereal itself. After the marbit was invented, the evolution of the product seems to have stopped. It's now merely a formula of recombining the 4 basic grains (flaked, puffed or biscuit-style) with some combination of artificial flavors, colors and shapes (marbits optional).

But the pinnacle of confluence of product and marketing was definitely the '60s (and arguably the early '70s -- any decade that produced both Frankenberry and Count Chockula and Freakies must have done something right). In the 1960s, animation for television hit like a blockbuster, and nothing made for a more natural symbiosis than early-morning TV cartoons and a sugary prepackaged breakfast food that kids could make for themselves without having to wake up Mom and Dad. All that was needed were spokesmen, and Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward Studios blazed the trail that others followed. First Huckleberry Hound (WHY did this character never have his own cereal?? We had to wait for Boo Berry) and Yogi Bear hawking Kellogg's cereals, then Rocky & Bullwinkle humping for Cheerios. Leading to the creation of The Linus the Lionhearted Show, an entire half-hour program starring cartoon characters specifically created to serve as mascots for Post kids' cereals. When Jay Ward decided to get out of the competitive arena of network TV cartoons, Quaker Oats Company kept him employed creating original commercial cartoon characters Cap'n Crunch, Quisp, Quake, Quangeroo, and King Vitaman. With all of this, it's amazing to me that the universally-recognized stables of cartoon studios Disney and Warner Bros, with the likes of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck & Goofy, and Bugs Bunny & Daffy Duck never wound up hawking cereal on TV.

The synergistic cycle of character icon, cereal, cartoon animation, cereal, packaging design, cereal, promotional prize, cereal, was never more perfect than it was in the 1960s. Then parents and congress got into the act, and we found out that cartoons were too violent, cartoon characters were forbidden from endorsing products in advertising during their own shows, and before long the word 'sugar' became a dirty little secret and was removed from product names and box logos (although it didn't move anywhere down the list on ingredients labels on the packages).

The 1960s was a simpler time. With myriad cable channels today, there really is no more "Saturday morning TV" in the sense that we knew it when the triumvirate of CBS, NBC, and ABC ruled all. In the last 20 years or so, the resurgence of a once-moribund television animation industry has also coincided with an enormous profusion of TV and movie character tie-in cereals. Every year brings new kids' cereals that bloom briefly like cherry blossoms for a month or so, only to fade like a passing fad.

Thank you, Scott Bruce, for letting us relive the memories.