Back Talk

The Great American Cereal Book from Abrams Publishing

I remember I ate an awful lot of cereal as a youngster and to be quite honest, I didn’t really much like any of it. I was just fascinated by all the cartoon style characters which adorned the boxes and flooded the air waves on Saturday mornings. Each commercial was like a mini serial(pun intended) each week.

Would Cap’n Crunch and his crew defeat Jean LaFoote? Who would win the big race, Quisp or Quake? At some point didn’t you start to feel sorry for that poor rabbit and figured he deserved some Trix? With each new cereal, I hoped against hope that I would really like the next one, but usually I was disappointed. At least there was the consolation prize of the toy packed at the bottom of the box. That was something missing from my favorite breakfast food, peanut butter toast. It just would have been too messy to shove your arm into the peanut butter jar to retrieve some piece of plastic. I would have done it, mind you, but I’m sure my mom would not have appreciated it.

We continue to see licensed items based upon these child hood favorites with questionable nutritional value, thus proving their lasting appeal. It really is a shame that all the fun stuff in life is so bad for you. I doubt twenty years from now, anyone will be telling their kids about those great Saturday mornings pouring a bowl of Kashi and watching the Today show.