Saturday morning hunkering down watching your favorite cartoons would not have been the same without a bowlful of your favorite cereal. You were wrapped in a blanket cross-legged on the floor in only your Underoos. Saturday morning had arrived. Your parents were locked in their rooms away from the world hoping to sleep in at least one day of the week. You were lord of the television. You cruised through the major network television channels and picked your favorite cartoon in the first time slot. In front of you was a bowl of cereal. Once the show and bowl was over it was back to selecting a new show for the next half hour and pouring another bowl of your favorite cereal.





It all started by cruising down the cereal aisle. While hanging from the shopping cart in a precarious way you saw the wondrous boxes of cereal go by as a blur. Remember the constant begging for your cereal of choice at the moment? Or begging for the spontaneous choice because of a prize that you saw offered inside the box? There were every type of cereal imaginable from television shows, to movies, to action figures, etc. When you saw your favorite your eyes lit up just like Mr. Rogers in the picture above.

Old Standbys

These were my go-to favorite cereals and still are to this day. You can bank on any of these old reliables, if you want a satisfied tummy at breakfast time.

Cinnamon Life, Mikey liked it and so should you! It is still one of the best cereals on the planet.



Cinnamon Toast Crunch was my wife's favorite cereal growing up and we still get it quite often.



Cocoa Pebbles was probably my favorite chocolate cereal of all time.



Once in a while we would get Cocoa Krispies because it was cheaper. Although I also loved it, it seemed like it paled in comparison to the Chocolately goodness of the Pebbles.

Cocoa Krispies



Rice Krispies were great for making Rice Krispy treat squares. The original Snap, Crackle, and Pop.



Fruity Pebbles for those who don't want chocolate all the time.



Frosted Flakes, I actually got this box with the sardine can plastic treasure chest prize inside when I was a kid. They're Great!



Captain Crunch, for those who would like to destroy the roof of their mouths while eating breakfast.



Lucky Charms, They're magically delicious! Pink Hearts, Orange Stars, Yellow Moons, Green Clovers, Blue Diamonds, and Purple Horseshoes!

Movie Cereal

C-3PO'S, from a galaxy far far away came this cereal and it tasted like it too. I bought it anyways being the die hard Star Wars fan that I was.



E.T. Cereal, I never had it because I am allergic to peanuts.



Ghostbusters, Who you gonna call? I mailed away for the glow in the dark Frisbee.



Gremlins cereal was okay to get wet with milk but don't let your mom catch you eating them from the box after midnight while hiding in the pantry. I also sent away for the plush Gizmo.



Batman cereal

In 1989 when I was 12 years old I discovered Batman Cereal in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. It was a promotional tie-in for the upcoming Batman movie. You can bet I bought it. It had bat shapes that tasted sort of like Cap'n Crunch. What was really cool was that each box had cool prizes, from a Batman coin bank shrink-wrapped to the outside of the box,  to mini-comic copies of the 1980 comic book series The Untold Legend of the Batman.





Addams Family

Who remembers the Addams Family cereal? I had all four flashlights thank you very much!

TV Cereal

G.I.*JOE

The real American cereal? I barely remember Gi Joe Action Stars.



Smurf-Berry Crunch and Smurf Magic Berries
Two smurfy cereals to choose from. C'mon it wasn't as bad as your friends catching you eating Strawberry Shortcake cereal.



Strawberry Shortcake cereal



or Rainbow Brite, Trix are for kids silly rabbit. Oh wait wrong cereal.



MR.T

I pity the fool that doesn't eat my cereal. It was like alpha bits for the illiterate. It only came with "T"s



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cereal

A delicious blend of rice chex like wafers with a sugary coating with marshmallow weapons. There was a bowl offer that also came on cookie crisp in each of the headband colors of your favorite turtle. There was also a mug offer.

Videogame Cereal

Pac-Man, wakka, wakka, wakka bweeu-bweeu-bweeu, boop boop. I always made video game noises while eating these.



Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Junior



Nintendo it's a cereal wow! Mario or Link? You choose. Two bags of cereal in one box.

Healthy Cereals

Body Buddies, for some reason I really liked Body Buddies sort of like a sweeter version of Kix.



King Vitaman is the cereal your mom would pick for you if you were unlucky enough to not be able to go to the grocery store with her. It was a funky version of Cap'n Crunch but tasted like... well vitamins and not the Flintstones kind either. I ate a ton of this stuff growing up.



Triples cereal was my favorite for a long time. I remember doing a triple take every time the commercial came on and nearly getting whiplash. Crisp Rice + Crisp Corn + Crisp Wheat = delicious! Please bring it back.

Monster Cereals

My favorite cereals of all time! It really makes me grumpy that in my area they are only available around Halloween. Some of you may not even remember Fruit Brute or Fruity Yummy Mummy, Admittedly not the best of the series but still worth remembering. Originally it was shaped like a button with eraser shaped marshmallows. I remember when the new Pac-Man-esc ghost shapes came into being.

Count Chocula came out in 1971 as the first chocolate flavored cereal.



I loved to smell these scratch 'n sniff stickers that I stuck on my Trapper Keeper while in school.



Franken Berry came out in 1971 as the first strawberry flavored cereal. I remember that it turned your milk pink.




Boo Berry came out in 1973 as the first blue berry flavored cereal.



Fruit Brute a fruity cereal with lime marshmallows came out in 1974 and lasted until 1983.





Fruity Yummy Mummy a fruity flavored cereal with vanilla flavored marshmallows came out in 1988 and lasted until 1993.



Super Sugar Crisp





I have two of the monster posters on my door.





I had a Sugar Bear Christmas ornament hanging from my tree. It played a snippet of Jingle Bells, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas when you squoze his tummy.

Miscellaneous Cereals I still remember

Cap'n Crunch's Choco Crunch was like the regular Cap'n Crunch with Coco Puffs mixed in. I had this box with the Chockle monster stickers inside.



Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries with the Crunch Berry Beast.



Circus Fun was like Kix with marshmallows.



Morning Funnies knew that you were going to read the box anyways so they decided to put comic strips on it for your reading pleasure. I remember eating these while watching the Dennis the Menace cartoon and getting ready to go to school.



Dinersaurs, fruity dinosaur shapes.



Donuts for breakfast. Well sort of.

Donutz



Dinky Donuts



Dunkin' Donuts Cereal



Ice cream for breakfast.

Rocky Road



Ice Cream Cones from Mr. Ice Cream Jones.



Candy for breakfast.

Nerds cereal had two bags in each box.



There was a mail-a-way offer to get a divider bowl so you could eat both flavors without mixing or for the adventurous you could lift the gate and eat them simultaneously.



Cookie-Crisp, cookies for breakfast, still one of my favorites.

Free Inside Prizes

When I was a kid there were some pretty cool mail away offers on cereal boxes. However even better was the instant gratification of in-the-box prizes. I remember reaching my arm down into the cereal box and digging around looking for the prize, hoping to get it before my brother could. Some of my favorite free inside prizes were:



I had a baking powder submarine. You put a small amount of baking powder in the conning tower and the submarine would sink in the tub because of the weight. The baking powder would then create a bubble inside the tower and the bubble would lift the sub to the surface. When the air escaped it would sink again. It would dive then rise to the surface over and over again for about 10 minutes.





The Wacky WallWalker was a sticky rubber octopus that would tumble down any surface it was thrown against. It worked the best on the windows or a bathroom mirror, it would sometimes work most of the way down a wall before suddenly plummeting to the floor to be covered in lint fibers.



Similar to the octopus above was the Wacky Whipper sticky arm that you could fling and pick up paper with.



It was just another version of the classic sticky hand. After they got all dirty and grimy you could wash them with soap and water and they would be like new.






The Cap'n Crunch Treasure Chest came with paper coins in either blue or red plastic. I used it for my action figures.



I also had a map of Crunch Island with a game board and tokens as a in box prize.



The glow-in-dark Circus Acrobat would spin around backwards and forwards on a bar when you moved your hands up and down holding the bar. I had Max the Great.



I remember putting a Garfield bike reflector on my BMX bike.





I remember getting this plastic Starbot transforming toy space shuttle/robot.





Monster Eraser pencil toppers.





I had a Toucan Sam secret decoder. It came with two inside so that me and my twin brother could say secret messages and decode with no one else in the room understanding.



Spooky Speedsters barely rolled at all, but it didn't matter because they were of my favorite cereal mascots.






Cap'n Crunch velcro ball target. You tried to crunch the Soggies.



Monster Stamps



Once in awhile there was candy or coupons for candy or both.

Bubble Yum Bubble Gum



M&M's



Skittles taste the rainbow.



Nestle Crunch Enn-Eee-Ess-Tee-Elle-Eee-Ess, Nestle makes the very best, choc-late!



Wax Gum Lips, Fangs, or Moustache



Starburst

The Alternative

Maybe you were one of those kids whose mom forced them to eat instant oatmeal or cream of wheat. At times I was too. Funny thing now is that I like them. Truth is I liked them back then too but would never admit it to my mom. I guess you could count the Cream of Wheat box that doubled as a pencil box when empty as a prize.

Cream of Wheat came in honey graham, apple cinnamon, brown sugar cinnamon, and hot chocolate.




My favorite of course was...

Oatmeal Swirlers it came with a little packet that contained fruit jelly that you could draw a picture with on top before swirling it into your oatmeal. There was also a chocolate flavored one.



I have reacquired some cereal boxes that I remembered as a kid and I collected a few of the retro styled monster cereal boxes a few years back. If you look closely you can see my variant Uncle Fester Addams Family flashlight with a black coat instead of grey, my Monster Cereals Trick-Or-Treat bag, and my glow-in-the-dark Ghost Flyer.