Obsolete Cereals • Vol. 18: #3

It’s the most important meal of the day! Do you remember these breakfast cereals from days gone by, with their clever names and flashy packaging? For one reason or another none stood the test of time, but many still linger in our memories. This week Tidbits takes time to reminisce about some of these favorite forgotten cereals, sprinkled with a few facts about their relatively short lives.

• Post Cereals co-sponsored the animated “Pink Panther Show” on Saturdays, beginning in 1972. As a product tie-in, the company showcased Pink Panther Flakes in 1973, bubblegum-pink, sugar-coated corn flakes. This nauseously sweet cereal, inspired by the cartoon character and targeted to kiddies, was in production until 1980. The jingle told us the flakes were “so sweet, so pink,” but the novelty was also so short-lived.

• When the Pac-Man arcade game was introduced in 1980, it became an immediate nationwide success. Within one year, the game had grossed more than $1 billion worth of quarters! General Mills capitalized on the success by unveiling Pac-Man cereal in 1983.

It was a sweetened corn cereal with marshmallows shaped like the game’s ghost characters – Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde. Larger marshmallow bits were added later, in the shape of Ms. Pac-Man, wearing a “shocking pink bow.”

• No time to make the kids waffles? No problem! Ralston-Purina produced “Waffelos” from 1979 to 1984, describing the crunchy little waffle bites as “a sweetened cereal with artificial maple syrup flavor.” Waffelo Bill and his guitar-playing horse were the mascots.

• Fill your bowl with Frute Brute and you’d have a fruit-flavored cereal with lime-flavored marshmallows.

Introduced by General Mills in 1974, packaging featured a werewolf aptly named Frute Brute for its eight-year run. If you didn’t care for the lime marshmallows, you could opt for the vanilla-flavored bat-shaped ones in a cereal known as Yummy Mummy. Movie director Quentin Tarantino must have had a fondness for Frute Brute, as he featured the cereal in his two movies, “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction.”

• “Monster” cereals were a thing in the ‘70s. In addition to Yummy Mummy, there were Boo Berry, Count Chocola, and Frankenberry.

• General Mills introduced Sprinkle Spangles in 1993, star-shaped mini sugar cookie pieces covered with multi-colored sprinkles. TV commercials claimed that they “spangled every angle with sprinkles.” Their cartoon mascot was the Sprinkle Genie, voiced by Dom DeLuise, who promised, “You wish it, I dish it!”

• If you believed the TV ad, Kellogg’s Puffa Puffa Rice was produced in an active volcano, which erupted the cereal right into your bowl. The rice cereal with a “brown cane sugar” coating, produced from 1967 to 1975, was actually produced in Battle Creek, Michigan, and had a Hawaiian theme in their packaging and advertising, ads that pledged “oceans of energy.”

• We all know that Frosted Flakes are “Grrrreat!” but what about Banana Frosted Flakes? Debuted by Kellogg’s in 1981, these flakes had actual banana bits adhered to the flakes. Tony the Tiger was also the mascot for the short-lived banana variety, telling consumers, “My new Kellogg’s Banana Frosted Flakes have real appeal!”

• Hitting the shelves in 1984, E.T. cereal had pieces shaped like the letters “E” and “T” with a chocolate and peanut butter combination flavor. The box and the ads both included the Extra-Terrestrial’s glowing finger pointing at the bowl of cereal, using the slogan “a glowing part of a good breakfast.”

• On the heels of the success of the 1989 comedy film “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” Ralston-Purina launched Bill & Ted’s Excellent Cereal. An animated series sponsored by Ralston then followed in 1990 based on the teen time-travelers working on their high school history presentation.

The cereal, promoted as a “most awesome breakfast adventure,” consisted of toasted oat flour and cinnamon squares and enhanced with marshmallows shaped like music notes.

• The year 1991 brought us Urkel-O’s, a strawberry and banana-flavored cereal based on the popular ABC sitcom “Family Matters.” The nation’s obsession with the nerdy Steve Urkel made these red and yellow loops a hit. Unopened boxes of Urkel-O’s have sold to collectors for as much as $100 on eBay.

• Cabbage Patch Kids cereal, appeared on grocer’s shelves in 1985, with crunchy rice flour bits shaped like the “happy faces” of Cabbage Patch Kids. Their bragging point to moms was that it was low sugar, and in fact it was, with just three grams per serving. Even though the famous dolls had generated over $2 billion in sales by 1984, the cereal wasn’t a big hit, and ceased production after paltry sales of just $10,000. You can still find Post’s Fruity Pebbles and Coco Pebbles at the store, but Dino Pebbles got the ax in the early 1990s. Based on the Flintstones’ pet dinosaur, Dino, it was really just Fruit Pebbles with purple, yellow, orange, and green dinosaur-shaped marshmallows. Palm tree, sun, and surfboard marshmallows were added later. According to the ads, they were “Marshmallow Dino-licious!”

• Who ya gonna call? Back in 1985 we could call for Ghostbusters cereal! Fruit-flavored oat rings were mixed with green and purple ghost marshmallows, with the ad slogan “What you gonna crunch?” a take-off on the movie’s catchphrase. In conjunction with the Ghostbusters sequel and animated series, Ralston unveiled three different cereals over the years, although all three seemed to have been the same cereal with different packaging.

• General Mills brought us Sir Grapefellow cereal in 1972, named after a fictional British World War I pilot. This product consisted of “grape-flavored oat cereal with sweet grape starbits,” another name for marshmallows. Grapefellow’s German pilot rival was Baron von Redberry, with that cereal made from berry-flavored oats and sweet berry marshmallows.

• Naturally, there would be a cereal honoring the best-selling doll of all time! Kellogg’s was responsible for three of them – Breakfast with Barbie, Barbie Fairytopia, and Barbie Multi-Grain. The Multi-Grain variety, a 2008 creation, consisted of red and purple heart-shaped pieces, and, of course, marshmallows! These were shaped like butterflies, hand mirrors, jewels, and flowers. The back of the bright pink box included games and cut-outs, such as Barbie cardboard picture frames and badges.

• For those kids who enjoyed action figures rather than Barbies, there was G.I. Joe Action cereal! Military-themed action figures were in the spotlight on the packaging, including Duke, Gung-Ho, and Shipwreck. Oat pieces were shaped like hollowed-out stars, with a taste very similar to Lucky Charms, but, alas …no marshmallows!

• The success of “The Simpsons” generated the production of Kellogg’s Bart Simpson Peanut Butter Chocolate Crunch, Homer’s Cinnamon Donut Cereal, Krusty-O’s, and Bart Simpson No Problemo’s. □

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