THE CEREAL PRIZE PROJECT: GROUP 015
(Mad Scientist Monster Stickers, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Wallet, Stupid Radical Poster, Sugar Bear Adventure Figures and Monster Footprint Stickers)
#58 - Mad Scientist Monster Stickers (Kellogg's, 1987)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Full sticker sheet. Monster Lab backgrounds. Instructions.
Since writing "this rules" won't quover my quota, I will go into great detail on just how wonderful and amazing this
Mad Scientist premium is, given out with certain Kellogg's cereals in 1987. I'm not sure what the freebie's official name was, but what we've essentially got here is a sticker sheet full of monsters (some whole, some with their body parts on separate stickers to allow for mixed mutations) and what amounts to a sticker book dressed like the Mad Scientist's various laboratories. You'll remember Mattel's hideously underrated line specifically for the "Monster Lab," which was like a really gross version of a really easy chemistry set. You'd make monsters, tear 'em apart and usually find a few ways to stain things.
The monster stickers look rather generic, but the creatures were actually based on the then-current
Mad Scientist toys. I see "Ogore," who in not-a-sticker form needed a big tub of "Monster Flesh" to realize sentience, and "Monster Flesh" felt a lot like what you'd imagine Sterno to feel like if any of the elders would, just once, let you touch it. It rocked. Another bunch of stickers on the sheet represent "I-Chomp," a purple dragon who needed "Living Ice" slime to be anything more than a name in the wind. I can't remember the third monster's name, but he's blue and icy, so I'm sure I liked him best.
Not that the
Mad Scientist line ran very deep or anything, but this cereal premium scores big for capturing every endearing element of its proud papa. Assuming you only bought the cereal it came in for the prize, you also got a big ass bang for your buck. With the amount of stickers provided, they could've gotten away with doing four separate sets. But they didn't. You know why the Mad Scientist never really caught on? Motherfucker never sold out.
#59 - Cinnamon Toast Crunch Wallet (General Mills, `80s)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Close-up on holographic magic thing.
You know those holographic reflective stickers? That's not what they're really called, but you know what I'm talking about -- the stickers that swap images as you look at them from different angles. Sometimes, the technology is utilized to make the stickers serve as a more adhesive flipbook. Other times, it's a way to get three wholly different stickers in one. What's seen above is more or less a holographic reflective sticker that doesn't stick, and a holographic reflective sticker that thought people were going to care more about it if it used all of its gluey power to cement itself inside the world's crappiest wallet. It's the Cinnamon Toast Crunch bakers -- Mike, Phil and Jacindo -- urging everyone who knew how righteous the cereal was to "save their dough" with their awesome, wouldn't-cost-five-points-at-a-casino-arcade plastic wallet that literally isn't big enough to house paper money. Unless you fold it. Then it'll fit.
#60 - Rad Kids, Rad Moves Poster (Post, Honeycomb Cereal, 1992)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Facts about Jessie. Giant picture of Jessie's head.
The
Sports Illustrated For Kids poster all but concedes that Ninja Turtles were more popular than sports or sports magazines by making the word "rad" and the art of skateboarding a focal point, but this does beg a very chicken-and-the-egg sort of question: Which came first, the Ninja Turtle or the rad skateboard movement? And did these events happen independently?
The poster depicts a boy named Jessie Roach, who could've very well been famous to some degree, but the person writing this certainly wouldn't have heard about him because Jessie Roach was neither toon nor toy. The poster bears both the
Sports Illustrated For Kids and Honeycomb logos, footnoted by a radly abstract pink and blue graphic motif that so makes me pine for the acceptance of Trapper Keepers in the corporate office environment. The more I look at Jessie, the less I think he was anybody special; this was probably just some weird ass promotion starring "real kids" in "real situations" in order to make other real kids think they had a chance to see their real situations real-ized on a Honeycomb poster. Why Jessie Roach picked the day of his big photo shoot to finally give his sister's helmet a whirl, we may never know.
#61 & #62 - Sugar Bear Adventure Figures (Post, Super Golden Crisp, 1988)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Special offer from Sugar Bear!
I don't know much about Sugar Bear's "Adventure Team," but we can safely suspect that a long string of Post Super Golden Crisp commercials featured Sugar Bear and his ragtag allies fighting against a bevy of beasts, not the least of which being an uptight, upright tiger with an eyepatch. What I
do know is that there were seven different figures in the series, though it's entirely possible that three or four of those were just Sugar Bear in various action poses. For free shit shoved into cereal boxes, these are pretty neat.
I'm not sure how it would rate with my tongue today, but there was a long stretch of time when Super Golden Crisp was my absolute favorite cereal. It was one of the few brands that enabled me to stomach milk, and when eating it dry, I'd typically pick of box of the heavenly sticky gunk over God's own potato chips. My point? I was going to chuck Super Golden Crisp into my mother's wagon whether it came with a free prize or not. The fact that it came with
cool free prizes helps me understand that the world isn't as evil as all those death metal bands had me believing. The pliable-but-hard rubber figures have nice detail and paint jobs, each standing around two inches tall -- just big enough for them to waltz into the M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling arena and have everyone throw championship belts their way without even considering a title match first.
#63 - Monster Footprint Stickers (Kellogg's, 1988)
Additional Images:
Sealed premium. Full sticker sheet. Instructions.
Not everything needs rhyme and reason, so we're allowed to love these stickers without really having to justify them. Just a sheet of eight simple monster footprint stickers, which was the less-desirable entry in a set of four sheets -- the best one was
previously reviewed, and came with a Bigfoot sticker on
top of the footprint stickers. It's hard to love a sheet full of footprints when you know there's one that came with Bigfoot, too. On the plus side, the side of my computer now looks as if a six inch bear once defied gravity by running straight up it. I hope that makes sense.
--
Matt (2/5/06)
