The Wonderful Worlds On The Backs Of Cereal Boxes.

This is a re-working of a previous posting.

Only a few things held my attention as a child. Movies, comic books and recorded music were the most powerful sensations I responded to with total concentration but the backs of cereal boxes were right up there with them.

   My favourite cereal was Cheerios and I had them for breakfast practically every morning, though I tried all the others like Wheaties (the breakfast of champions) and Puffed Wheat (shot from cannons) and definitely knew what they all tasted like.

   Looking at the backs of cereal packs was like gazing into a portal onto other worlds. While chewing my cheerios I'd lose myself in whatever full colour illustration covered the back of the box. It might be a wild west landscape or an illustration of a jungle or something in outer space. It took me into the same zone I visited through comic books or watching the Saturday matinee at the Sequoia.

   The cereal companies, General Mills, Kellog's, Nabisco and a few others all must have done regular deals with toy manufacturers and movie companies as they always had activities which tied in with such products.

   A particular movie might have a background picture for which you had to cut out foreground characters. This was always an unsatisfactory exercise for me as the kinds of scissors we children were allowed to use were not good for cutting the thick cardboard with any accuracy. I remember trying to follow the jagged dotted line around some cartoon character and constantly slicing into the picture. The instructions made it all seem so simple but I was never able to achieve the end result. With hindsight I suspect that you really had to be an adult graphic designer using tools like metal rulers and scalpels, not those clunky little scissors.

   So I would go at these projects full of enthusiasm but soon would find myself frustrated. Such experiences, however, had not the slightest effect on my fascination with the backs of cereal packs. Each new special offer came at me with all the wonder of a spectacular sunrise. Sometimes there would be small plastic figures inside the box. Other times you'd have to send away with a coupon and 25c in coin.

   It was during the year of 1954 that I fell under the spell of the Navy Frogmen. As the Myers household had no television my brother Jim and I had to fall on the generosity of those with TV sets to see programs. Dennis Brogan didn't have a TV either, but his grandfather, old Jim Brogan, did.

   Grandfather Jim lived with his wife in an impressive fairly large house which sat on the corner of Molino and Janes behind a high hedge right opposite our local playground. We would see Walt Disney's Sunday night Disneyland and also used to watch the annual broadcast of Mary Martin playing Peter Pan in a televised stage production.

   There were also after school programs which we would join Dennis to see and somewhere along the way I saw the commercial featuring the Navy Frogmen. After a shot of a miniature toy gunboat steaming through the water we then saw three Navy Frogmen falling effortlessly overboard in formation and descending to put explosive devices on the bottoms of enemy ships. The voiceover told us how they "work swiftly and secretly! Look how real these Navy Frogmen are!" Dramatic closeups demonstrated the frogmen's dexterity as they ascended through the water past large nets. "These miniature navy frogmen swim, dive and surface by themselves."

   As the first of the frogmen reached the water's surface a young boy's hand lifted it gently out. We then saw two of the frogmen lying on a clean table top while the boy's hands, having unscrewed the chamber at the base of its feet, began to shake in some powder. "Look! Here's where your free supply of high performance propellant goes. Ordinary baking powder will work too."

   To get these amazing frogmen all I had to do was cut off a coupon from either a box of Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes or Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops and send it along with only 25 cents to an address in Battle Creek, Michigan.

   My soul burned with a passionate desire to own these wonderful toys but the obstacles in my path were formidable. If I were to go to my father Blackie and make a straight forward request for them he almost certainly would laugh out loud at my falling for such an obviously commercial bit of trickery. Also there was the problem that neither of the cereals were ones I ever ate. As I've pointed out I was, by the age of seven, a committed consumer of Cheerios and it looked like the only way I could get the frogmen was to convince my father I wanted this new brand of cereal.

   The battleground for this operation was the Saturday morning shopping trip to Safeways. All four of us Myers kids would always accompany Blackie to the Safeway for the week's shopping and, as we approached the cereal shelves, I began enthusing about the virtues of the Sugar Corn Pops. Blackie examined the box and, shooting me a penetrating glance, asked if I'd eat them all up. Of course was my disingenuous reply. I don't think he was actually convinced but decided to get them for me and stage one of the operation was a success.

   When it came to appropriating funds for such activities it was always my mother I turned to. Officially our allowance from Blackie was a mere thirty cents on Saturdays so Jim and I could go to the Matinee at the Sequoia. Admission cost a quarter and the remaining nickel would buy us each a large sucker which lasted longer than most other forms of candy.

   So it was Beth I had to get the twenty five cents plus postage out of and when this was done I filled out the coupon and put it in the mail. Then I waited. Sending away for things always tested what little patience I had to its limit and beyond. Our mailbox was one of about seven which sat nestled in a row on Molino across from Seymour. The first few days I was fine about finding the mailbox empty but by the third day I'd begun stalking it in the afternoon and, since it would inevitably take weeks, I found that disappointment soon became my constant companion. I would develop strategies in which I'd convince myself not to be disappointed but I inevitably was.

   Finally after what seemed like an ice age, the frogmen arrived, all three beautifully wrapped with their little propellant chambers at the base. They were red, yellow and green and the packet of baking powder was also included.

   I immediately set to work in the kitchen, finding a glass bowl my mom used for cake mixes. I filled it with water and then unscrewed the chamber on one frogman and sprinkled in the special powder. In the commercial we never actually saw the frogmen descending, just falling forward into the water and then the camera dissolved to them under the ship. Next we saw them going up and now I discovered that getting them to descend was practically impossible because the baking soda in the base simply made the bottom of the blasted thing float to the top upside down. The best you could do was put them on the bottom of the bowl and let go but every time the frogman would bob up to the surface upside down. It wasn't weighted properly.

   It was a shame that I couldn't share my disappointment with anyone as the entire enterprise had been clandestine. It was probably a bigger shame that I learned no lessons from this experience. I would continue to be dazzled by the neverland promises on the backs of cereal boxes for many years to come.