Inside Specially Marked Boxes!

Everyone has great memories of cereal box prizes. They are our generation’s Cracker Jack prize at a time when Cracker Jack prizes had stopped being the whistles and glow-in-the-dark decoder rings that our parents enjoyed, and started to become stickers and temporary tattoos. I was always a fan of digging through a box of Cap’n Crunch or Corn Pops and finding a Cap’n Crunch water squirter or submarine that ran on baking soda. Even at my most ambitious, I would never have to save more than 2 UPC labels to send away for something and beg mom to write the check for $1.49 shipping and handling. My favorite prizes were the sticky hands and magic wall walkers that would destroy the paint job in the living room, but were always hours of mindless fun. Alas, it is a memory of a simpler age and, a few years ago, the cereal box prize went the way of the decoder ring.

That is not to say that it disappeared entirely. For the past few years, most boxes of Lucky Charms or Fruity Pebbles were adorned with a free CD-Rom or two track music CD. A CD-Rom? I suppose that kids now have their primary entertainment come from computers, but it just doesn’t seem right to be coming from a cereal box. I found this trend to be stupid. You can’t destroy your parents house or shoot your little brother in the eye with a CD-Rom. You can’t take a CD-Rom outside and play in the dirt, well, you can, but that’s LAME. That is the whole point of the free prize. Stupid entertainment, using the imagination, and occasionally hurting the people and things around you.

I decided to do a little investigating. Wandering my way down the cereal aisle, I saw many familiar childhood cereals; Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Frosted Flakes, Trix, but the promotional cereal has disappeared. The likes of Mr. T, Super Mario Bros, and Batman Cereals don’t exist. Nope, not one box of Urkel-O’s. I was sort of expecting something, anything, Spongebob Cereal, Hannah Montana Cereal. Apparently, advertisers have pretty much abandoned the promotional cereal and switched to fruit snacks. Barbie, Indiana Jones, Spongebob, Batman, and Spiderman can all be found in the guise of a fruit snack, but there was ne’er a cereal to be found. Post cereals have even gone so far as to ban the CD-Rom and now have a website called Postopia.com. You collect “tokens” on the cereal boxes and use the “tokens” to buy games, hints, and codes. Several of the Kellogg’s boxes also had the send away offers of old. Again, they use the “token” system so kids can collect between 4 and 8 “tokens” to get a Shrek Hat, Kung Fu Panda Pandana, or Indiana Jones Search Light Flashlight. 8 tokens? Maybe I am just remembering my lack of patience as a six year old, but if I had to wait for my mom to buy 8 boxes of cereal, then wait 6 weeks for shipping and handling, I would have long forgotten what Kung Fu Panda was and would be on to the next media enhanced kid thing the world had forced upon me.

A Side Note: I know that cereal prizes may be gone for good and that advertisers are looking for different ways to entice the youth of today, but this may just have gone too far. Kids are able to get a free Kung Fu Panda wind-up toy included in, you guessed it, a pack of batteries. Batteries? Oh Oh Mom! Buy me some batteries! There is a toy inside! I promise I’ll use the batteries as soon as I get home! Someone might have overextended their blanket marketing campaign.

I am pleased to say, fair readers, the cereal prize is not dead! After a constant scan of the breakfast cereals, my eyes fell upon the glowing beacon of two cereals keeping the dream alive. Golden Grahams offered a free Dark Knight Batman Disc Launcher inside and Frosted Flakes had a free Indiana Jones Adventure Spoon. Adventure Spoon! Now that is what I’m talking about! It was never just a sticky hand. It was an Amazing Extendo Grabber! These two boxes made themselves into my cart post haste and I could hardly contain my excitement driving home to find my treasure.

First, I tore into the Frosted Flakes, because you could never open the box and get the prize without having some cereal first, and I might as well eat the cereal with my ADVENTURE SPOON. I will admit, I was disappointed to find that the spoon was in it’s little plastic pouch sitting on top of the sealed bag of cereal. No digging. Just right there on top. Fortunately, it is cool. Two pieces. It lights up. AND there is a switch to turn the ability to light on and off, along with the button to make the spoon light up, so the battery doesn’t die if the spoon is left in the silverware drawer in the ‘on’ position for too long. The Golden Grahams did not disappoint in the quest for a nostalgic experience. Tearing open the bag of cereal, I tipped the box ever so slightly on its side shaking the tiny grahams down enough to expose the sight of the plastic wrapper snuggly situated at the bottom of the package, careful not to let any of the still precious sweet cereal spill to the floor. Puffing the sides of the box out to gain easier access, I plunged my hand in, trying to grasp at my prize with two fingers as the rest of my hand crushed any Golden Grahams that got in my way. Pulling my prize from the box, I was pleased to see that in both cases, I got the same version of the prize that was advertised on the box. The spoons are collect all three and the disc launcher are collect all four. As I remember it, we would always buy the box with the version of the prize we wanted advertised on it, but rarely got the one we wanted and would have to go back the next week and give it another try.

As I dug my adventure spoon into a bowl of Golden Grahams dripping with milk, I reveled in my quarry. Cereal prizes may have become a rarity, but these prizes perfectly reflected the usefulness of the prizes of old. I couldn’t wait to finish my breakfast and go out into my neighbors back yard and dig in the dirt with my light up treasure spoon. That is, of course, after I tired of shooting my brother in the eye with my disc launcher.

If you are interested in seeing other cereal prizes from your youth, check out The Cereal Prize Project. I had forgotten about the Willow Coin Trick. Hours of fun!

Also, just in case you wondered how many boxes of cereal you would have to buy to, in fact, collect all four? Check out The Cereal Box Problem.

Hal Gardner, signing off.