
Ah, the good old days when cereal boxes were blatantly wacky! I'm curious what cereal advertisers in the '70s were thinking? Now, you can check out campy, ridiculous, slightly freakish cereal boxes from the '50s, '60s, and '70s on The Imaginary World's archive of cereal boxes. Fellow blog, lemondrop, comments on several of the boxes of cereals that no longer exist, such as Fruity Freakies, Crazy Cow, and King Vitaman (to the right).
The names of these cereals alone leave plenty to the imagination. Or do they? The box of King Vitaman cereal is mildly creepy. An old man dressed as a king looks as though he's going to feed you cereal. The juxtaposition between this odd-looking "king" and the ad for the toy give-away appears slightly perverse. As lemondrop says, "this is not the guy we want feeding us breakfast."
Then, there's the absurd Kellogg's Puffa Puffa Rice cereal box that seems to shout "absurdity!" There's a volcano exploding with cereal. To think that this past year Kellogg's reduced the size of its cereal boxes...Where has its creativity gone? The cereal box archive is extremely amusing and I am now trying to figure out different ways in which one can use the images. I foresee trendy retro tee-shirts and posters.

For years and years, the best thing about eating cold cereal in the morning was the fact that toys came in the boxes. They were tiny and cheap, but they were free and that is all that matters when kids are concerned. As sponsors moved their toys to happy meals and cereal companies began cutting costs, the free cereal toys became fewer and farther between. To delight of kids everywhere, and probably more than a few adults,
A Belgian man, Philippe Meert , used to have difficulty getting all his cereal in the bowl in the mornings. Like many people, he would simply open the box and rip open a portion of the cereal bag within, causing it to spill out the sides of the box and onto the table as he poured. It's hard to say whether residual sleepiness or sloppy box-opening was the main problem, but Meert wanted something that would make pouring easy (and accurate) for even the laziest breakfaster.












