A Prize in Every Box!
Posted on March 29, 2011 by Leslie Blythe 1 comment
As a child, the ONLY reason I wanted to go to the grocery store with my mother, was to go the cereal aisle. The main reason was to scan the selves for the best prize inside. Sadly, we now live in an overly cautious, wear a bike helmut, seat belt (how many of you slide from side to side in the back seat of the car?), don’t choke on that kind of world. How did we ever survive our childhood? If you ask me, it’s adulthood that is the scary part of life.
Basically, cereal was a very serious business. Capt n’ Crunch with Crunch Berries, Lucky Charms, Trix, which one to chose? Kashi? Really? I think not! Once, home, you would open the box and start digging and shaking (while being yelled at by a parental unit) to get to that wonderful wrapped piece of plastic, perfect to get lodged in your throat. You can picture me wearing my “Devil Made Me Do It” ratty t-shirt. Collect all six!!! 1960s Trix tiddly winks (on sale on ebay for $9.99, by the way), which was a plastic container with a raised image of the Trix rabbit on both sections and the tiddly winks inside. Choking hazard?
When I was 10 years old, I bought a bag of 10 bags of popcorn – with a prize in EVERY bag! Imagine the look on my face when I opened up all 10 bags to find nothing! It was my first feeling of real rage. I immediately wrote a letter to the company demanding an explanation. A few months later and very large box arrived with millions of plastic prizes and every snack product they manufactured. This started my quest to find products with false marketing. I have received cases of soap and a few lame letters of apology.
Anyway, I will stop reminiscing and get to my point. A few weeks ago, I had lunch at Mix ‘n’ Munch Cereal & Grilled Cheese Café. You can have 25 kinds of cereal. What a concept. I had no idea that there are Cereal cafés all over. There is one with PJ-clad servers pouring cereal day and night, topping it off with everything from fruit to malted milk balls.
Here are a few examples of the new phenomenon.
