THE CEREAL PRIZE PROJECT: GROUP 013
(Fred Flintstone Figure (FFF), Tale Spin Silly Straw, Garfield Magic Card Trick, Animal Stamp Collectors Book & Smurfs Poster)
#051 - Rubber Fred Flintstone Figure (Post, Pebbles Cereals, 1987)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium.
I can't remember the specifics on these (they probably were borne of an actual concept and not simply thrown inside cereal boxes for the heck of it), but I've owned more rubber Fred Flintstone figures than I could ever explain. The figures (Barney made the conversion, too.) came either in the purple seen above or in a more assaulting magenta, each serving no real purpose but still managing to delight all who've ever held them.
The figures had some paint detail, but as I recall, it took no more than six or seven runs through the filthy palms of a kid's hands for all the paint to smear away, leaving you with this sort of Fred Flintstone esophagus deal. Though the soft, very pliable rubber was just begging to be scented, I sadly report that it has no odor. Not even a little tiny plasticky one. Don't cry.
Wait, esophagus wasn't the right word.
#052 - Tale Spin "Louie" Silly Straw: (Kellogg's, `90s)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Full view of straw.
It took me a long ass time to get into
Tale Spin when it joined the Disney Afternoon. I'd never actually seen
The Jungle Book, so I didn't have the advantage of any vested previous interest in these characters. Sucks for me, because I'm sure it was fun for everyone else to see all of them get clothes and jobs like that.
Eventually, I came around. Eventually, I spent the thirty minutes between 4:30 and 5 PM hoping, praying and pleading for a patented Shere Khan cameo appearance. This Kellogg's straw lets you sip juice through a tunnel shaped partly like Louie's head, and if only because I got to say "tunnel shaped partly like Louie's head," I'm all about this straw.
#053 - Garfield "Mind Reader" Magic Trick: (Kellogg's, 1978)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Main card - front. Main card - back.
I'm listing this as a 1978 release, but that's really just Garfield's date of birth thingy. The "Magic Card Trick" premium came out much later. It must have, because I completely remember owning it, and I completely remember never bothering to learn how to use it because the stupid instructions were 60,000 words long. Now that I look at it again, the same feelings of this not being worth the effort swarm my brain and make my hands decide on something other than forging a Garfield-inspired magic card trick. I'm not saying I can't ever make sense of it. I just refuse to.
#054 - Animal Stamp Collectors Book: (General Foods, 1981)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. First two pages. Animal stamps. Special offer on back cover.
What can an Animal Stamp Collectors Book do you for? With this book, you will begin your collection of many fine novelty animal stamps. They will provide you with extreme lion understandingness. They will serve up the cold truth about seals. Giraffes, too. They will teach you that chimps generally prefer picking and eating fleas with their left hand, and they'll do it with such monotone science speak that there won't even be any jokes about the right sides of brains. Then you'll lose the book between two couch cushions and howl yourself to sleep at night using the suggested pitch on the fact sheet attached to the wolf's novelty animal stamp. Can no story have a happy ending?
This was the ultimate scam to use on kids like me, unable to resist collecting anything being presented to them as "collectibles." You only got a few of the animal stamps needed to fill the entire book in cereal boxes -- for the rest, you had to mail two proofs-of-purchase and part ways with just as many quarters. I'm not saying that fifty cents was worth
that much more at the time, but still, we're going back almost twenty-five years here. Surely fifty cents could've bought our fathers a car.
I was sucker for this shit, in each and every form it took on. Stamps from cereal companies were nothing compared to those "animal pages," each featuring more information on a particular animal than could truly exist, arriving with three holes punched -- just perfect considering that you got a free, fancy, three-ring binder as a gift for signing up for the monthly program. I loved that program. Getting pages full of animal facts every third Tuesday of every month made every third Wednesday of every month feel like a bad drug comedown.
Every time tigers get cover shots, they do the same pose. I've been sick of that pose since the second grade.
#055 - Smurfs Poster: (1983)
Additional Images:
Larger view of poster.
I'm not sure which kind of cereal this Smurfs poster came with -- it's easy to assume that it was packed inside one of the two Smurf-related cereals, but as the blue freaks were as popular as blue freaks could get, this could've just as easily come in a box of Honeycomb. It's a great poster regardless, showing a zillion Smurfs enjoying an absolutely awesome nighttime shindig in Smurf Village. It's the kind of image you need to look at eight times to completely soak up the various bits of Smurf party fun, ranging from a full blown orchestra to a ritualistic fire dance, and if you look really close, there's even some cake robbery going down. More ominous is the giant owl lumbering near the top of the poster, suggesting with its pose that he wants to eat Smurfs. If this was the second in a series of four different Smurfs posters given away in cereal boxes, we can only hope for continuity and that the mysterious owl's unfolding plot was revealed by poster #4. I bet Papa Smurf invited him to the party, the only known surefire method for making owls forget that they want to eat you.
--
Matt (8/27/05)
