When I was young cereal was different than what it is now. It seemed like rather than what you were actually eating, people cared more about what the prize was that you got in the box for eating said cereal. What’s funny about that is you would eat some really bad cereal to get a good toy as opposed to eating a really good cereal to get an average prize. If this mentality still existed today, people would be caught saying, “Nutritional value? Who cares! We’ve got Pokemon in the boxes. Kids are going to murder their parents if they don’t buy this!”
For your reading pleasure, here are my Favorite Five cereals I remember eating as a kid.
5) Boo Berry – One of the few cereals that sticks to its guns and comes out every Halloween still (and can sometimes be found in the off season), between Franken Berry and Count Chocula, Boo Berry was always my favorite (with Frank a close second because there are already so many chocolate flavored cereals to eat).
4) C3PO’s – While I don’t entirely remember the taste of this cereal, I remember that on the back of the box you used to get a mask you could cut out to become your favorite Star Wars character. While C3PO himself and Yoda were fun to wear, Luke Skywalker’s mask was just downright creepy.
3) Captain Crunch – As a child I remember spending a lot of time (At least one day a week, if not more) at my grandparents house. My mother is one of eight children and she had many brothers who loved Captain Crunch. With that being said, they would eat the cereal even if they had outgrown the prizes that came inside. One of my earliest and fondest memories of cereal was my grandparents having that drawer in their kitchen full of toys and prizes from various boxes of cereal that their own kids were too old to appreciate but us grandkids were allowed to play with instead. From the submarines that actually sink and bubble in water to the Captain Crunch and Soggy water squirters, I guess you could say that the Captain has always been a part of my family.
2) Mr. T – I still recall the taste of this cereal as if I ate it yesterday (And I wish they still made it or something close to it) What I remember most about this cereal though was getting sheets of stickers inside the boxes. I don’t remember the animated series as a kid, but would later see it on Boomerang, yet I still remember being very fond of these stickers.
1) G.I. Joe – Much like with Mr. T, I remember the taste of this fondly and still miss it very much. If they would ever release a cereal that tasted like this again I could be happy. But what I remembered most about this cereal- and why I liked it the best- was that it had various gadgets on the back of the box that you could cut out, fold up and tape together for your 3 ¾ inch G.I. Joe figures to play with. Sure, it would have been easier if they just put the piece of plastic inside the box, why not, but this required you to actually do something you felt good about. It wasn’t like someone was just handing you a toy; it was like you were making the toy yourself and that was its own reward. Oh, if only cereal could be like this nowadays.
