What are a child’s waking thoughts? Speaking for myself, I was up at daily at 5 a.m., ready to be entertained by the Electronic Babysitter. Instead, I was fed a pablum of offerings of early morning television (The morning Ag report, the last few moments of Bob Shreve’s Past Prime Playhouse, and Sky King were the only choices). I would watch, bored to tears, but trying to keep quiet lest I wake up my parents.
Which leads me to breakfast, which offered a shiny oasis to make up for the desert of awful television. When I was a kid, cereals provided not only delicious tastes, but also cheap toys that promised, to my adolescent mind, a series of adventures.
My interests as a young’un were science fiction and spies. As a result, any item I thought could be used as a tool of survival was highly prized. For example, the Pink Panther Flakes five-in-one spy kit. This 1973 classic (shaped like PP himself) could be configured as a telescope, a microscope, as well as a whistle, a beacon to tell other agents whether or not the coast was clear and, in case of extreme emergency, a tool to pass on secret messages. Let Little Orphan Annie’s decoder ring try and top that.
Monster cereals arose from the primordial ooze and invaded grocery store shelves when I was a youth and brought with them a bounty of booty. Like my personal favorite, Frankenberry.
Not only did this pink-hued confection offer a sugar deprived child crunchy sucrose infused flakes, but also marshmallows that I contend should be considered its own food group. Yet like an overnight infomercial sales pitch, that’s not all! Frankenberry promised a young me the chance to command a Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper cockpit simulator.
To good to be true? Of course! That, Gentle Reader, was when children were introduced to the more insidious tactics of inducement from Big Cereal: The dreaded Proof of Purchase. To you, a Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper cockpit simulator might not seem like a big deal. The Cylon at the gate, however, was the aforementioned Proof of Purchase.
To obtain my entry into Space Flight School, I needed five of the coveted tickets to possess what was, at the moment, my heart’s desire. In kid-speak, that was my chance to be a Galactic Cadet and (at least in my imagination) fly through space for untold adventures.
Man, did I ingest a lot of pink dye in the quest for my prize. Be it by the bowlful or the handful, I choked down five boxes of Frankenberry over a span of time probably not advised for a foodstuff of this type.
And then, the wait (it was always four to six weeks-why was it always four to six weeks?). Walking back and forth across the road from Route 4, Box 453 to our mailbox was an exercise in frustration and futility.
Yet, like heartburn eventually follows a spicy meal, the cereal premium arrived. And, unlike a lot of mail order items, this toy did not disappoint.
Imagination was always my ticket to the stars. I spent winter afternoons escaping snow covered hollows for the brilliance of space, and unlimited adventures.
Space Battles and Spy Missions, all as close as the nearest box of cereal. Boy, those were the days.
