Terrible Cereal of the 70s

I'm on a 70s kick. My family is still addicted to cereal, but we try to tone it down a bit. When I was a kid, not only did cereals contain measuring cups full of added sugar, but they proudly proclaimed that fact right on the box. Super Sugar Crisp, anyone? Sorry, you'll now have to settle for Super Golden Crisp.

Currently, cereal promises to lower cholesterol, prevent heart attacks and be part of a healthy lifestyle that includes diet and exercise. No wonder I miss the 70s. At least we didn't sugar-coat it. It already came that way.

Look at these Freakies Cereal characters. They're the color of mold, covered in boils and all have antisocial personality traits. Yet we ate boxes of the stuff just to get their plastic images for a complete set. The cereal was like sweet chunks of sawdust. I didn't care. I had the complete set. Thanks, Mom.




When you envision breakfast, do you think of monsters, vampires and ghosts? The 70s have you covered. All of these cereals contained neon-colored, ultra-flavored marshmallows. Franken Berry tasted like throat lozenges. Count Chocola tasted like mud, and Boo Berry tasted like cough medicine. The commercials kept us coming back for more. Advertising: it really works.




My dentist was smart. He created a wall display full of cereal boxes with the purported amounts of sugar within them. Most had four to eight tablespoons. I believe King Vitaman had something along the lines of fifteen tablespoons of sugar per box. I was impressed enough by this anti-propaganda to say "no" to King Vitaman from that day forth. And do you see King Vitaman on the shelves today? Way to go, Dr. Gardiner, DDS, of Concord, California.




Quisp was an appealing lunatic character with a built-in propeller hat and seriously crazy eyes. But let's face it, his cereal was crap. Best part was its flying-saucer shape, which allowed you to suck out all the sugary flavor on the tip of your tongue as it disintegrated quickly to corn dust on the roof of your mouth. Cut way down on mouth sores that way.




Bonus: Super Sugar Crisp was actually a pretty decent cereal--ultra-sweetened wheat puffs will always work for me. And Sugar Bear was the coolest--every kid thought so. Plus over the years you could collect cut-out cardboard records from the backs of the boxes that actually played. I got some Archies tunes that way. Anyway, Super Golden Crisp doesn't have the same streetwise tone, does it?




Let's listen to cereal-box recorded music, shall we?