THE CEREAL PRIZE PROJECT: GROUP 007
(Dunk-A-Balls Cereal)
#028 - Dunk-A-Balls Cereal: (General Mills, 1984)
Additional Images:
Front of box - large. Back of box - large. Checkin' out the goods. Side panel, part one. Side panel, part two. Came with coupons!
The box ponders for you. If Wheaties cereal was the breakfast of champions, what would "Dunk-A-Balls" be? Simple: The breakfast of champions...for kids! Dunk-A-Balls arrived in 1993 under the Wheaties banner -- the breakfast equivalent of NBC letting a new show go on after
Seinfeld. I can't tell you if it was a smash success. It's not around anymore, but the box clearly states that it was only to be available for a limited time only, so we can't read that much into it. Successful or not, it was a 100% unique undertaking that got kids like me into basketball in the only was possible: By letting us eat it.
Featuring cereal pieces shaped like none other and an on-box "prize" that nobody could resist trying out, Dunk-A-Balls were going to birth buzz even without General Mills' sickeningly gratuitous amount of puns written on the
side panel. As we grow older, it's more typical for us to choose cereals based only on taste. Even if we appreciate silly rabbits, marshmallows shaped like diamonds and pictures of Dracula, it's still coming down to taste. With kids, that couldn't be more untrue. We didn't give a shit what the junk tasted like -- ambiance was a zillion times more important than flavor, and a cereal that features pieces shaped like basketballs and a cutout net that let you slam dunk said pieces before eating them was as good as anything possible -- as good as God himself crawling down from Cloud Mayhem and giving it his personal recommendation. It was the breakfast of champions...
for us!
But then came the sad truth: Cereals marketed at kids -- limited editions, in particular -- are only worth as much as the box they come in. Dunk-A-Balls were only around for a scant few weeks...repeat business wasn't important. General Mills could totally afford to disappoint kids with basketball-shaped cereal pieces far smaller than the box suggested, just about ruining their incredibility and unforgivingly mixing tears with our 2% milk.
You know those cylindrical jars full of assorted, terrible hard candies everyone ends up with during the holidays? Okay, think back...you're opening the jar...you're reaching in...you pull out a couple of those white "barrels" striped in red. Dunk-A-Balls are about half the size of that, and worse, they look like rotted versions of that. Basically, what we have here are rotted, half-sized versions of those white, barrely Christmas candies nobody liked to begin with.
On the flip, at least they come in red and black. Finally, something in common with licorice.
Now the back of the box is where shit gets funky. The "prize" that came with Dunk-A-Balls, if you can call it that, was the box itself, which could be cut to reveal a pop-up basketball hoop that fit over your cereal bowl. It's just too absurd to pass on...
Because of the completely insane method of making this already ridiculous concept a reality that General Mills chose, you've gotta poke and pluck with a steak knife to trim around the dotted lines. It works about as well as the photo indicates -- you can't possibly get it to look "clean," not even with an Exacto knife, no matter what you think a knife with the balls to call itself "Exacto" could do.
I managed to poke myself eighteen times, so I can only imagine how many emergency room trips were caused directly by kids refusing to seek adult supervision. It's a lot of trouble to go through for what's essentially only an opportunity to get milk on a cereal box and thus make the box reek of sour milk forever more, but I look at it this way: Michael Jordan was a spokesman for Wheaties. Dunk-A-Balls is the bastard son of Wheaties. So Michael Jordan is kind of like Dunk-A-Balls' estranged grandfather.
Actually, I guess that doesn't really help justify the box cutting thing, but at least my cereal is related to Michael Jordan.
It's sort of interesting to look at, but I don't think I get it. While you're eating a bowl of Dunk-A-Balls, you're supposed to use the spoon as a shooter and try to make goals? Not to be prissy, but that sounds kinda messy, and even hardcore mudslinging snakebiting biker types hate milky messy things. I could see the allure if you didn't add milk to the bowl, but if you're gonna skip milk, you might as well just eat it out the box... BUT YOU CAN'T -- BECAUSE YOU CUT THE BOX UP!!! GOD DAMNIT!
I...I...I'm done.
--
Matt (6/20/05)
Hey! Check out the other Cereal Prize Projects on the list at top right! Or, check out the new
Kool-Aid Section!
