Vintage Cereal Premiums

Once upon a time, children in the United States would race to the kitchen table for breakfast. It was not hunger that drove them to their morning meal, rather, it was the toy prize, or premium, that had been packed into boxes of Kellogg's, General Mills, and Post cereal boxes. The first kid to reach the table would tear open a new box of Corn Flakes, Sugar Crisp, or Cocoa Pebbles, force their unwashed mitts into this container of formerly sanitary food, and retrieve a paper- or cellophane-wrapped toy, from Navy Frogmen swimming in boxes of Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes in the mid-1950s to Bo'sun Whistles that were prizes for kids whose tastes ran to Cap'n Crunch—for those in the know, the whistles became notorious for emitting a 2600Hz tone that allowed "phone phreaks," as they were called, to use the toys to make free long-distance telephone calls. While the Cap'n Crunch Bo'sun Whistle was a toy that was repurposed for technological hi-jinx, the first cereal-box prize wasn't a toy at all. Instead, reflecting the mores of a simpler time, the first cereal premium was a roughly 6-by-8-inch children's book titled "Funny Jungleland Moving-Pictures Book." From 1909 to 1937, Kellogg's mailed customers of its Corn Flakes cereal this clever little volume for the price of one Mercury dime—the first year, the premium was given away by retailers at point of purchase. Over at General Mills, prizes didn't begin until 1933, when the company printed a dozen Skippy cards—Skippy was a newspapercomic-strip character of the day—on the backs of boxes of Wheaties. By 1954, General Mills was enticing customers to eat a whole lot of Wheaties by enclosing a small, steel, license plate in each box, one for each of the then-48 states. More recently, fans of such sugary breakfast treats as Trix, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, Honey Nut Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Cookie Crisp have been buying up boxes to collect all six members of the so-called Cereal Squad (Trix the Rabbit, Lucky the Leprechaun, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, etc.), as well as one of the elusive, limited-edition gold versions of each figure. Other popular prizes over the years include the Yo-Yos given away in packages of Super Sugar Crisp in 1974; the Beatles "rub-ons" offered by Nabisco in 1968 when "Yellow Submarine" was released (an undamaged cereal box is even more sought); and Star Trek or Star Wars items, such as the Star Trek badges in boxes of Sugar Smacks in 1969 and the Star Wars Droid Viewers distributed by General Mills in 2015, prior to the theatrical release of "The Force Awakens."