THE CEREAL PRIZE PROJECT: GROUP 008
(Raspberry Bubblicious Bubble Gum, Snakey Wheel Rattler, Sugar Bear Yo-Yo, No Money Stamper & Cap'n Crunch Demon Machine)
#029 - Raspberry Bubblicious Bubble Gum: (Ralston, Cookie Crisp, 1985)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Sealed premium -- back view. THE GUM! Arrived with Cookie Crisp coupon.
It's one of the coolest premiums you'll see here, guaranteed. It's Raspberry Bubblicious. Given away
twenty years ago in boxes of Cookie Crisp, the now-extinct flavor still smells as overwhelmingly fruity as any current store-bought pack. Actually, since it's been sitting tightly wrapped in plastic for two decades, the aroma has rolled over itself so many times that, upon slitting the plastic open, fruit-loving wolves from the Appalachians soon rendezvoused at my back door, barking and pleading for a raspberry flavor spicier than they'd ever smelt before. And that's a true story, folks.
Finding candy in a cereal box - real, big time candy - wasn't as uncommon as those liars who lie might have you believe. It was a win/win/win situation:
Winner #1: Ralston! Cookie Crisp benefited from a cereal prize that no kid would ever make fun of behind its back. Good prizes equal more cereal sales, and that could only mean one thing: Cookie Crisp got one step closer to becoming the official food of the entire solar system.
Winner #2: Bubblicious! Aside from paying grocery store cashiers to turn a blind eye when a kid goes for the five-finger discount, there's no cheaper or more thorough method of getting some gum sampling going on.
Winner #3 Kids! They got Cookie Crisp
and Bubblicious. Previous to this promotion, only the few children who celebrated their birthday on Christmas Day knew what this kind of double-punch freebie heaven felt like.
The gum, though rock hard at first, slowly reverts back to nice, fresh pieces of Bubblicious after you start chewing - and yes, I did. It's yummy. The fermented sugar gives it a flavor a hundred times stronger than any new stuff out there, leading me to believe that the bubble gum industry at large should take a lesson from the wine business and let their wares get really, really old before throwing it on the market. A fine vintage raspberry, if you will. A+ on this one. Only through the magic of cereal prizes could we ever find out the intricacies of twenty-year-old Bubblicious.
#030 - Snakey Bike Wheel Rattler: (Quaker, 1989)
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Sealed premium. Unpunched wheel rattler. Wheel rattler instructions. Losing instant winner card.
Bicycles were honored quite often in the realm of cereal prizes, from miniature license plates to affix just below your ass under the seat, to kooky reflectors, to those twirly rainbow handlebar tassels, to
this -- a "wheel rattler" in the shape of a snake. A rattlesnake. They've redefined comedy and given you another method to make loud, annoying noises in one foul swoop. I think you're all with me when I say
QUAKER! QUAKER! QUAKER! A cheer, see.
So whatcha do is, ya take the wheel rattler, ya punch it off its housing sheet of plain white cardboard, ya go find yerself a bike and ya slip this snakeofabitch near the wheel. Then ya start ridin, and every time dat dang snake's head gets to slappin' ginst the spokes, you've got yerself the biggest plum audio treat since the hogs went crazy.
Second only to milkcrates fastened to the front of the handlebars to serve as a sort of storage trunk, things that made your spokes go bump were the greatest shit ever to put on a bike. Except for maybe during that brief period when so many companies indulged us with battery-operated super mega horns -- the kind that'd either make atomic explosion sounds, or hurl loud insults voiced over by Jackie Mason. This snake thing is pretty low end for a wheel rattler, but then, we can't expect a cereal box to give us as good of a present as our aunts and grandmothers do.
#031 - Duncan Sugar Bear Yo-Yo: (Post, Super Golden Crisp, Date Unknown)
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Sealed premium. Unassembled yo-yo.
This Sugar Bear yo-yo is interesting, if only because it's an "official" Duncan. It's almost surprising that Mr. Duncan, forever promoting his bastard yo-yo children as high art and as precious baubles that knew how to have fun would sink to such inferiority. Sad that Mr. Duncan, Mr. Duncan the Once Great, would allow his name -- his holy name! -- to be slapped on a yo-yo so small, so cheap, so disgusting...
Let's calm down. We'll live. The yo-yo arrives unassembled and indeed sucks, with a quarter-sized diameter and a string so thin you couldn't wrap a box of fancy bakery cookies with it. On the upside, it comes with three more sticker sheets than the yo-yo actually requires, essentially giving you permission to use the cool nose-punched Sugar Bear sticker heads for destinations far better than shitty, soft plastic yo-yos. Everything on and within the package is undated, but while I can't give you its exact date of distribution, I can narrow it down to a range...
#032 - Say-No-To-Money Stamper: (Kellogg's, 1986)
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Sealed premium.
I don't know the significance of this anti-money stamper. Just can't remember the deal for the life of me. Maybe one of you know-it-alls can tell me why anyone would have ever wanted to stamp out money -- for good! Works fine, but the stamper is only appealing to the Poor and Loving It. #032 probably won't be highlighted in a flashback montage when I get around to producing the Cereal Prize Project's 100th episode clip-show. See, prize? That's what happens when you buck the buck. You bucking moneybucker. It's from
Duck Tales, actually. Full details in 2006.
#033 - Cap'n Crunch "Crunch Bot": (Quaker, Cap'n Crunch, `80s)
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Sealed premium. Unassembled toy.
Cap'n Crunch commercials of the late `80s and early `90s were unbelievable. Just absolutely tossing aside any typical, bullet point-driven television campaign, the commercials were actually thirty-second episodic cartoons, with Cap'n Crunch and a ethnically rotating group of kids fighting for their rights and their breakfast against the Soggies -- the evil, living embodiments of what milk does to cereals lesser than Cap'n Crunch. It was later revealed that the Soggies served an even higher power: The Sogmaster, a huge, robotic beast hell-bent on finding the withered, merry pirate and cracking his skull open with giant metal feet.
The adventures grew to an unbelievably large scope, including one story arc where the Soggies shot meteors of milk by the millions from outer bucking space, down to Earth, with cereal bowl after generic cereal box being pummeled into milky sogginess. I'm pretty sure it ended with Cap'n Crunch flying a giant, Robotech-ish robot into the sun in the kind of self-sacrifice that'd have Jesus himself wishing he'd tried harder. This "Crunch Bot" premium -- based on Cap'n Crunch's crazy giant robot -- threatened to eat the included bunch of baby-sized Soggy pogs. It's not assembled correctly in the photo above, because I'm a rebel.
--
Matt (6/23/05)
