June 20, 2019 • 39 mins
Is Cap'n Crunch Really a Captain? Is the Silly Rabbit using psychological tricks on kids? And why did everyone stop putting prizes in cereal boxes? Will and Mango take a trip down memory lane, exploring why America is so nostalgic for those sugary sweet breakfast treats. Featuring Cereal Time TV's Gabe Fonseca.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of I Heart Radio.
I Guess what Will? What's that Mango? So at our
first week in college, I remember being in line for
breakfast and and there was just this wall of amazing
breakfast cereals, remember this, And we were, of course away
from our parents for the first time and being independent
(00:25):
and responsible, and so I piled my bowl high with
Lucky Charms. I mean, I think it was Lucky Charms,
but whatever was the most nutritious cereal out there. I
love that when you were finally like free from the
overside of your parents, like that was the first thing
you did to express your freedom, was like, get a
big bowl of cereal. But yes, I do remember that big,
awesome wall of cereal. Yeah, and the people we were
(00:47):
with started making fun of me for eating a kid
cereal instead of musically or whatever. And and right then
the star basketball recruit Eldon Brand walked up and got
a bowl of the same thing, and it was just
pure silent and I felt like such a trend setter.
And I remember that that's when you became the most
popular kid on campus. And not really, but part of
(01:08):
the reason I love breakfast cereals so much. And you know,
we used to have big serial parties in Metal Flaws
where everyone would bring a box of their favorite cereal.
But uh, there's just such a wonderful association with childhood
and Saturday Morning cartoons, and that's actually why we're talking
about cereal today. Let's dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners,
(01:45):
welcome to parts. I'm genius, I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend man Guesh Ticketer
and the man on the other side of the soundproof
glass eating a big bowl of frosted many weeks good
choice today as our producer, Tristan McNeil. But today we're
heading back to the growth trial for a closer look
at all things cereal, you know, the most whimsical or
nutritionally questionable at all of this, at every part of
(02:08):
a complete breakfast. And so we'll dig into the weird
stories and surprising facts behind our favorite brands, as well
as a few of the lesser known breakfast cereals that
time forgot. And then a little bit later we'll be
joined by Gay Fonseca. He's a TV writer and he's
spent more than a decade collecting childhood nostalgia in the
form of vintage cereal boxes. It's a fascinating collection. Yeah,
(02:29):
and he's also the host of this really fun YouTube
series called cereal Time, which is the series on the
subject of breakfast cereal. I mean, he's been doing it
for a couple of years now, so I'm super excited
to just hear how he got started. Yeah, well, we'll
gabs among the most devout of cereal enthusiasts, but he's
definitely not alone in this. I mean, lots of people
love cereals, and in the hundred and fifty plus years
(02:49):
since it came onto the market, cold breakfast cereal has
become a staple for millions of people around the world.
And you know, strangely, this love affair got its start
in the late nineteenth century kind of as an accident.
You know, it was this invention of fundamentalist Christians who
were seeking to promote a healthy, sin free lifestyle. And
much of this is you know, stories that people have heard,
(03:10):
but it's still pretty interesting that the bland foods, as
you know, like toasted corn and oats, where they were
thought to help suppress sexual urges and prevent arousal. And
so this thinking led to the creation of a few
notable foods, including Graham crackers, of course, but the one
that really caught on what the public was sereal. So
Dr John Harvey Kellogg, the superintendent of a sanitarium in
(03:31):
Battle Creek, Michigan, and his younger brother Well they stumbled
upon the recipe for what would ultimately become corn flakes.
After allowing some of the cooked wheat to sit out
for too long, the Kelloggs returned to find the wheat
had gone stale, but rather than toss it out as
you might think they would, they decided to roll it
out into thin flakes and then toast them. And the
corn flakes were a big hit with their patients, so
(03:54):
the Kelloggs decided to start marketing them to a broader public. Yeah,
and as interesting as that early history is, it's pretty
familiar by this point. So instead of going deep on
sanitariums and grape nuts were, we're gonna focus mostly on
the second act of the serial story. That's the period
from about nineteen fifty to the early nineties when marketing
to children really took off and sugary cereals really began
(04:15):
flooding grocery store aisles. Well, before we dive into that
colorful history, I thought we could take a quick look
at the state of cereal today, you know, just by
the numbers, and it's amazing how far cereal has come
from its early years as this niche product to the
mammoth industry that it is now. So just looking at
the US market alone, the breakfast cereal industry now generates
(04:37):
nearly ten billion dollars in annual revenue. And that that's
according to mord Or Intelligence. Did you say word or intelligent?
Feel like a hobbit? It's kind of a jarring name
if you're a Lord of the Rings fan. But it's
just the coincidence, unfortunately. But like I was saying, Americans
lead the world and serial consumption. It ranks fourth on
the list of the top ten package goods sold in
(04:59):
the US, and of American households by a box of
cereal at least once a year. And we're not the
only ones who love it. Canada, the UK, Australia, they
all have cereal markets that rival the size of our own.
And in recent years cereal has also gained in places
like China and India and Brazil. In fact, the breakfast
cereal marketing industry rakes and about thirty five billion dollars
(05:21):
in revenue each year from the foreign markets. So when
I took my kids to India last year, I remember
waking up jet lag the first day and they were
already up watching cartoons and we're wired on a bowl
of chocos. We didn't have chacos in all my years
agoing in to India though, we never ate breakfast cereals
and we never ate in from the TV. So it
was almost jarring to see this American experience transplanted to India.
(05:44):
But you know, sugar and grain is obviously this winning combination.
But I have seen a few reports about sagging sales
as more and more people opt for, you know, either
easier or healthier breakfast options, so pop tarts or avocado
toast or you know, maybe a quick trip to the
drive through on the way to work. And and of
course there's this growing segment of the population that just
(06:05):
doesn't eat breakfast period. So when you were listing those
easier and healthier options and you said pop tarts, which
one of them, I'm guessing that's the easier option there.
But they are delicious well as big as the cereal
industry is today, There's no question that it used to
be bigger. According to NPR, serial consumption peaked right around
nine I guess it was, and has steadily gone downhill
(06:26):
ever since, generally by a full percentage point each year.
And while the stuff you mentioned is definitely played a
part in that decline, it's really due to a combination
of factors. You know. For example, back in lawmakers passed
the Nutrition and Labeling Education Act, and that made it
mandatory for all products to include the now commonplace list
of nutrition facts on the packaging. And this made it
(06:49):
easier than ever for consumers to see the nutritional value
or lack thereof, I guess, and they could look at
this and all of their cereals now at this point,
and as more people became edge caated about just how
much sugar and carves they were eating or feeding to
their kids, you know, they started to think twice before
tossing a box in the car whenever they're with grocery store.
(07:09):
So I looked into just how sugary cereal can be,
and it's insane, Like the whole cereal industry uses around
eight hundred sixty million pounds of sugar in its products
every year, and apparently most of that's going into honey Smacks.
You know, for some reason, you don't know out there,
that's the one with the cool frog wearing the backwards
baseball cap on the box. I thought you were talking
(07:30):
to me for a second, was like, I know, honey Smacks, mango,
Come on, Well, honey Smacks is consistently ranked the worst
cereal for your health because it has less than two
grams of five or per serving and its ingredients breakdown
to almost sixty sugar. It's tasty, but according to the
Environmental and Working Group, there's more sugar in one cup
(07:51):
serving of honey Smacks than there isn't a Hostess twinkie,
no way. I know that it's sweet, obviously, and I
knew it wasn't good for you, But honestly, the taste
of honey Smacks, I wouldn't have guessed it was the
most sugary cereal. But it kind of makes my teeth
are just thinking about that. And you know that that
sugar to fiber ratio might make us cringe. But there's
one particular serial leading demographic that you're not going to
(08:13):
hear complaining about this, and that's kids, or at least
my kids. Yeah, my kids to Actually, do you remember
there was this great Calvin and Hobbs where Calvin's eating
his favorite cereal. I think it's something like chocolate frostage
sugar bombs, and he gives Hobbs a try, and Hobbs
just starts shaking, gagging from the sweetness, and Calvin says,
actually they're kind of blend until he scoops some sugar on.
(08:37):
But what I find really interesting is how deeply ingrained
the fondness for breakfast cereal is and so many people,
and how so much of that seems rooted in their childhood. Yeah.
I mean, i'd say for most adults serial leaders, it's
a big part of the allure. I mean, it's what
you were saying about your kids. There's these memories of
watching Saturday morning cartoons with a big bowl of Captain
Crunch in your hand, or maybe indulging in a late
(08:58):
night fix of Lucky Charms sitting in your college dorm.
I don't know who you're talking about, right, Well, it's
sort of a comfort food in a way. I mean,
it takes us back to simpler days when most of
us were a little more carefree about what we ate
and why. Yeah, so nostalgia is definitely a strong factor. Actually, well,
what are some of the weirdest discontinued cereals you can
think of? I was trying to think about this earlier,
and I remember seeing cuber cereal when I was a kid.
(09:21):
Do you remember Cuberta that video game character? And and
also eating one with smurfberries. Like, my parents only really
bought us sugar cereals for maybe a year or two,
but I remember sampling some weird ones. Yeah, I mean
I always thought it was completely bonkers that some cereals
didn't even mask the fact that they were candy, Like
you know, Kellogg's did a candy corn Pops. But even
(09:42):
more blatant than that, there was a Nerds Cereal and
I'm ticked off that I never tried it Nerds Cereal,
by the way, listeners, I just wanted to break for
a second because Will and I have been debating what
the official candy of Part Time Genius should be, and
Will was saying it should be atomic fireballs, and I
was thinking Nerds. So if you have any thoughts on this,
(10:03):
please let us know on Facebook or Twitter. But well,
you're right, nerds, cereal is insane. But looking back, like
the box was so cool. It came in these two flavors,
just like the candies, and you could pour orange out
of one side and cherry out of the other. Can
you imagine, Like, who would let their kids buy this? Probably?
It also makes me wonder like if so much a
(10:24):
serials appeal is rooted in the past, Like what does
this say about our future? Well, you know, there's a
new generation of kids getting hooked on cereal now, and
many of them will stick with it into adulthood. And
that's part of the reason there's so many brands duking
it out, you know, trying to get kids to eat
these cereal is because people's breakfast routines tend to be
the same, you know, pretty much every day. But there's
(10:45):
another point to consider, and those declining sales numbers we
mentioned earlier also coincide with declining birth rate, So you know,
it's it's not like the birthrate will ever drop to
zero or anything like that, but fewer kids does result
than fewer cereal fans, obviously. Yeah, It's it's funny that
something that started out as health food became so dependent
on selling sugar to kids. But I guess that's usually
(11:07):
how it goes with food trends. Like someone with these
very altruistic intentions gets the ball rolling, hoping to better society,
and and then you know, at a certain point, the
marketing team steps in writing eximally. Yeah. Dr Kellogg used
to give lectures about his methods for leading a healthy lifestyle,
and he would sometimes give out the recipes for his
corn Flix so that people could make them at home.
And at one talk he told the crowd, you may
(11:29):
say I'm destroying the health food business here by giving
these recipes, but I'm not after the business. I'm after reform.
I mean, yeah. He really did seem to believe and
what he was selling, sure, But the problem was that
the same couldn't be said of his brother, Will Kellogg.
And and Will try for years to convince his brother
to add sugar to their cereal, believing it would add
some flavor to what he called horse food. But the
(11:50):
tipping point came into late forties when their competitor Post
Cereals released Sugar Crisp. So Posted branched out beyond the
health food market with its first sugarcoated sea and like
it or not, Kellogg kind of had to follow the suit. Yeah,
but it's really post World War Two that the industry
started to focus on marketing directly to kids. I mean,
companies had dabbled with these ads before, including Kellogg's use
(12:13):
of Snap, Crackle and Pop as the characters for Rice Crispies,
and that marketing began in the nineteen thirties. But even
with cartoon gnomes pleading their case, you know, these highly
processed oats and grains were a tough sell without adding something,
you know, sweet to it. That's crazy though, I like,
I had no idea that the Rice Christie's trio had
been around that long. I thought they were post fifties
(12:33):
like most other cereal mascots. Yeah, Snap cracklin Pop are
actually one of the longest running ad campaigns in history,
and as I was looking up at that, they're actually
the longest for cereal brands. Actually, by the way, did
you know that their names are on amount of pia
sounds for what you hear when milk is added to
the cereal. But apparently Rice Crispies were always marketed as
the cereal you can hear, and this was even before
(12:55):
the mascots came along. In fact, the guy who created
the characters did so after being inspired by one of
the brand's previous radio jingles. Because I know you're dying
to know what it was. You're the lyrics, I jotted
them down, So all right, listen to the fairy song
of help the Mary Corus sung by Kelloggs Rice Crispies
as they merrily snap, crackle and pop in a bowl
of milk. If you've never heard food talking, now is
(13:17):
your chance. I'm so hungry for a bowl of cereal. Now,
why didn't we do this before? And also that was
a jingle like it doesn't even rive. I was I
was gonna put it to song that I just made
up sided against it. So, I mean, obviously mascots were
a smart move, since it's hard to market like a
fairy song of health without them. But wasn't there also
a fourth gnome for a while, Yeah, you bet there
was Pal He stood for the serials nutritional punch, I think,
(13:41):
And of course he didn't last very long. But let's
get this back on track. So gradually the Sweden Cereals
come to dominate the market, thanks, you know, because of
product placement and children's programming and they've never looked back since.
And in fact, the breakfast Cereal industry is still one
of the top spenders for a commercial air time. More
than a million series adds air on TV each year,
(14:01):
which cost companies like Posting Kellogg's more than I want
to say, like half a billion dollars. Yeah, well so,
so all those old TV ads are a big part
of why Cold Cereal took such a hold in the
hearts and minds of baby boomers, and then they of
course passed on that fondness to their now adult children.
But you know, there's another element that helped in dear
entire generations to breakfast Cereal that I want to talk
(14:23):
about it, and that's the prizes that came packed inside
those boxes. I mean, the prizes played such a big role.
Like I might have wanted a box of Cookie Crisp,
but if the Apple Jacks had one of those wacky
wall walkers in it, I mean you remember those sticky
octopuses that were walked down the wall of course. Yeah,
and then of course that's the box I'd end up with. Yeah,
I mean, I'm with you on that. Actually I would
buy a box of cereal for one of those. Now
(14:44):
it's been years since I played, and they were awesome.
But you know, let's talk a little bit about how
toys and games ended up inside the boxes, as well
as some of the coolest and strangest ones to come
along over the years. But before we do that, let's
break for a quiz. Then we've got Gabe Fonseca on
(15:04):
the program. Now, gabees an accomplished TV writer, but he's
also got the best unboxing series on YouTube. It's called
Serial Time TV, and this is where he unboxes and
reviews incredible breakfast cereals. Welcome to Part Time Genius, Gabe,
Thanks for having me. I'm I'm a fan of the podcast,
so I'm honored to be on the show. Thank you
so much. Now, I know you're out in Los Angeles.
(15:24):
Man Guesh is actually on vacation today. He's out on
your coast in Portland's so he sends his best But
but I hope you're still willing to chat with me today,
of course, of course. All right, now, so, Gay, we've
read that you have over three hundred Cereal boxes in
your collection, and I have to ask, like, how did
you get into this? In the first place, and what
are some of your more prized cereal boxes. You know,
(15:47):
I've always been a collector, and I think at one
point I saw Old Spider Man, So I think that
was my first box. Um, it was from Zerio and
I saw it on eBay when I was just browsing,
and I was like, that'd be cool to have on
my bookshelf, and I bought it and then uh, and
then I was like, well, you know what, there are
some other ones that I remember from back in the day,
and and then it kind of just turned into this
black hole on eBay where I just was was scouring
(16:10):
and finding old cereals that that brought back to these
nostalgic memories to me. Wow. Wow, Now I think I've
read that you've tried some even some like thirty year
old cereals. Is this right? Yeah? Yeah. When I first
started this unboxing channel on YouTube, and I started it
because I started to run out a room of just
having these unopened cereal boxes on my shelf and it
was like, you know, this is just taking up space
(16:30):
and this is kind of silly. I could just flatten
them out, so I I decided like, well, let's for posterity.
Let's just record myself opening these boxes and and you know,
recording with the cereal looks like and documenting it so
I'll have it, you know, for posterity. And uh. And
I never thought I was like going to try him,
and then I'd opened some boxes and uh, I'd be like, well,
let me just see if it holds up. I think
(16:51):
the oldest one I might have tried was a grim
smiles giggles and last cereal, which was from the seventies,
I believe, and it was pretty grass guessing. Oh man,
they're terrible. They just don't you know. It tastes mostly
like it tastes like the plastic in a way. It
takes great toxic and disgusting. But I would I definitely
do not recommend it. I can't imagine now. In terms
(17:11):
of cereals, are there any that you wish you could
have tasted if you could go back in time? Yeah. Absolutely.
There's one from before my time, in the seventies called
It's a Great Fellow. It was actually, um they released
a Great Fellow and Baron von red Berry. There were
General Mills cereals and uh, this is a Great Fellow
one tasted like you know, grape the grape cereal or
grape kool aid, I imagine I never actually got to
(17:32):
try it, but I'm a I'm a sucker for great
flavored things. And uh and even though I got a
Nerds cereal which came out in the eighties, which I
which I got to try back and back then, I
it just wasn't the same, you know, it wasn't it
wasn't that great great flavor. It was kind of it
wasn't a great cereal, and Sir, great fellow, just just
like I look at the ad campaigns I see on
(17:52):
YouTube and I'm just like this, this was like, this
is great. I really wish I was alive for this one.
I could I could try that one. Yeah yeah, Now,
how about any boxes you'd love to add to your
collection but haven't been able to get ahold of? For me?
I I kind of at this point, I feel like
I'm at peace and I've kind of completed my collection
and kind of everything I want. There is one really
random cereal from General Mills in the nineties. It was
(18:15):
called Buen Alitos, and I remember it. It was on
shelves for a limited time, and I just can't find
a box of that anywhere, and that's probably like the
last you know, my great you know, white whale that
I'm trying to obtain. Still, I don't know, Gabe. I'm
hearing in your voice that maybe you're not quite at
piece yet until you find that so off, if if,
if any of our listeners out there know how to
(18:35):
get ahold of some did you say bueno altos? Yes,
all right, we'll see what we can do for you.
There'll be a free part time Genius t shirt on
the line for these people. But but before we let
you go, Mango did leave me a quiz titled the
Most Important Meal Quiz of the Day. So I'm gonna
ask you a few questions if you obscure serial questions,
(18:56):
and all you gotta do is answer them. How does
that sound? All right? I'll give it my best, alright?
Question number one. According to a nineteen fifty six confidential
magazine report, what breakfast cereal was supposedly responsible for Frank
Sinatra's success with women? It is Wheaties. Yeah. The article
claimed that Sinatra could thank Wheati's for his reputation as
(19:17):
the quote Tarzan of the Boudoir. So yes, congratulations there, alright?
One for one. Question number two. Before a certain tiger
became spokes animal for this breakfast cereal, he had to
beat out three other contenders, Elmo the Elephant, Newt the
new and Katie the Kangaroo. What cereal are we talking about?
(19:38):
That's right, it's frosted flakes. Now. Katie actually appeared on
boxes in the nineteen fifties before Tony the Tiger started
out selling her. All Right, here we go. Question number three.
What popular breakfast cereal created by John Harvey Kellogg was
eating aboard the Apollo eleven cereal? Christie. It's a pretty
good guess. It was actually Kellogg's corn legs, and so
(20:01):
the cereal was mixed up with fruit and formed into
cube since eating it with milk was impossible without gravity. Alright,
two for three the last question here the big prize
is on the line. While Saddam Hussein loved Raisin brand
and requested it for breakfast in prison, he detested this cereal. Oh,
I actually read the article about that fruit. Yes, it
(20:24):
is fruit looks and according to US soldiers, one of
the few times he actually looked defeated in prison was
when a bowl of the fruity cereal was brought to him.
But so congratulations you got three out of four, which
qualifies you for our top prize, which is a note
to your mom or your boss singing your praises. So, Gabe,
congratulations and thanks so much for joining us on Part
(20:45):
Time Genius. Well thanks for having me. Well it's been
it's great. Thank you very much. You're listening to Part
Time Genius and we're talking about the heyday of breakfast cereal.
(21:06):
You know, when kids became the target market, and nutrition
kind of took a backseat to things like marshmallows and prizes,
and you know, speaking of cereal box prizes, you know,
those were another way that Kelloggs tried to attract kids
to cereal in the pre sugar days and three the
company started putting pen back buttons inside boxes of their
pep cereal. So they started with a series of thirty
(21:28):
six pins that featured World War two squadron insignia from
the US military. And this was before switching over to
fictional heroes like comic book characters. Yeah, so those are
some of the earliest inbox prizes we know about. But
if we're talking buttons, my favorites are the Urkel for
President campaign buttons they were giving out during the Clinton
Bush Senior campaign. Do you remember those? We're talking Steve
(21:49):
Urkel from family that I can't say I remember him
running for president? But what what cereal was that? Kels?
Of course, it was one of those short lived novelty
cereals that crops up for a few months and then disappears,
like basically it was a sweeter version of cheerios, but
wackier with banana and strawberry flavors. But uh, obviously we're
getting ahead of ourselves with all these in the box
(22:11):
buttons because Kellogg's actually got into the prize game long
before that. In the earlier days, the prizes, or premiums
as they're called in the industry, weren't in the box
at all. And as far as we know, the first
prize used to market cereal was this nine nine children's book.
It was called the Funny Jungle Land Moving Pictures Book,
and it was given to customers who bought two boxes
(22:32):
of Kellogg's corn flakes that they're participating grocery stores. After
a couple of years, of course, Kellogg's decided to stop
handing out the books on location instead offered them as
mail and offer, and within four years the company had
distributed two point five million copies of the book, Isn't
that insane? Like? It was obviously a hit with customers,
so Kellogg's kept releasing new editions, and they kept going
(22:54):
on with jungle Land books all the way up until
ninety seven. I mean, I guess that's pretty cool. I
have to say I was never a fan of those
mail in prizes. I mean, I was all about the
instant gratification. You don't want to dig in there, like
get elbow deep and some cocoa puffs or something and
then just be able to like fish around and find
that cellophane bag. Yeah, and then you got to eat
(23:14):
the cereal dust off your arm. But those were definitely
the days. But I never really minded the mail ins,
like I think it was partly the joy of receiving
any kind of mail as a kid. The fact that
anyone was sending me anything was exciting enough, even if
I had to save up like a bunch of box
tops and wait six to eight weeks to make it happen.
Though that was mostly dying out by the time we
were kids. I only remember doing it a few times.
(23:36):
But you know that the real reason the cereal industry
stepped up its game and the prize game specifically in
the nineteen fifties is pretty interesting. And it's it's thanks
to this invention of what was called the screw injection
molding machine and and and that's what made plastic prizes
faster and cheaper to produce. And this wasn't the only
time the inventor of injection molding his name was James
(23:56):
Watson Henry would lend a hand to cereal prizes. So
in the nineteen seventies, Henry's developed the first gas assistant
injection molding process, and this is what made it possible
to produce these finally detailed hollow plastic objects, you know,
the ones that environmental groups love so much. This cut
cost even more and paved the way to a golden
age of these in box serial prizes. That explains why
(24:19):
so many of the cool prizes I found were from
the sixties and seventies. And and of course I'd be
remiss if we didn't mention the Boson's whistle that came
inside the box of Captain Crunch in the early seventies.
If we're talking about things, we'd be remiss not mentioning
about Captain Crunch, what about Gen Lafoote, which was Captain
Crunch's stinky, barefooted rival. But anyway, going with your whistle story, well,
(24:41):
obviously the whistles just like really high pitched little whistle,
and the Boson's whistle was one that was historically used
on naval ships when commanders need to pass orders to
the crew but couldn't be heard because of the waves
or weather or whatever. And these days it's mostly used
in naval ceremonies. But in Captain Crunch's case, it turned
out that when you covered one of the whisp those
holes in blue, it produced this frequency of hurts, which
(25:05):
was the exact tone a T and T used to
control its long distance lines. And basically, this legendary hacker,
John Thomas Draper, who was also known as Captain Crunch
or Crunch or crunch Man, he learned that he could
use one of the whistles to hack the phone system
and get free long distance calls. I love that they
figured that. It's why that old hacking magazine was actually
called hundred, and then why Steve Jobs and Steve Woes
(25:28):
even tracked down the whistle and built a box that
replicated the frequency to try and prank call the Pope.
I love that as I love that they pretended to
be Henry Kissinger. And it almost got there until this
like suspicious bishop caught on like and and then the
Pope didn't get on those pesky bishops. And you know,
while injection molding allowed for all kinds of awesome plastic toys,
(25:50):
you know, some of the funniest ones that came across
were actually even like metal, or some of them even paper.
Like in nineteen fifty four, Wheaties gave away these miniature
state license plates and they were made of solid steel,
and you got one in each box, but you could
also buy them in four sets of twelve by mailing
in a box top and a quarter a whopping quarter.
(26:10):
And that was the only hitch to this was that
Alaska and Hawaii had not yet become states, so there
were actually only forty eight plates and all man So
do you think people were like pissed when those two
states got statehood a few years later and suddenly their
collections were incomplete? Well, actually, Post Serials did release a
set of the full fifty later on, but apparently wed
still gets letters about the original campaign to this day.
(26:33):
So maybe there's still a few determined fans out there
just pestering them about their missing plates or something. I
hope so. But one of the most unique prizes I
read about was this paper prize. It was a deed
to one inch of land in the Yukon, so like
a serial company was giving away land by the inch. Yeah,
it's a great idea, right, So Quaker Oaths sponsored a
(26:54):
show in the fifties called Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.
You remember Sergeant President of the Yukon, And this was
their way of linking the show to the product and
full disclosure, this was a mail in prize, but this
one was totally worth the weight. So for just a
single box top kids would receive a deed for one
square inch of the nineteen acres of Yukon territory that
Quaker purchased, and they actually purchased this from the Canadian
(27:16):
government for a thousand dollars. The promotion was this massive success,
and Quaker actually sent out more than twenty one million
deeds in just a few weeks away. Yeah, and then
lots of people would write the company or even the
Canadian government from time to time to check in on
their property, but sadly the reply was not good news.
Apparently none of the deed holders were actually landowners because
(27:37):
the individual deeds were never formally registered after the recipients
signed them, I know. And in the end, Canada repossessed
all the land in nineteen sixty five due to non
payment of get this, thirty seven dollars and twenty cents
in property taxes. You know. I mean. It also reminds
me of the time during the eighties when General Mills
started giving out actual one dollar bills as prizes and
(28:00):
boxes of cherios, which it just sounds kind of like lazy,
like let's let's just put a dollar in there, and
except in this case the prize was actually worth something. Yeah,
and it's way better than the promotion Cheerios offered in
the fifties when they gave away color reproductions of Confederate
money and an album to keep them in. Oh, that's
so strange. I actually I think I'd rather have the
phony d than But we sort of transition into these
(28:20):
more lackluster I don't know, dare I say, like crappy prizes,
but honestly, at least they're still prizes. And and much
like serial sales, serial premiums seemed to be on the
decline these days. Yeah, so I noticed last time I
was in cerealisles there seemed to be fewer boxes advertising
physical prizes, but there were a bunch of boxes offering
some kind of digital prize, like access to an online
(28:41):
video game. And I I guess serial premiums changed to
reflect the times and and most kids these days would
prefer some type of like instant online entertainment over a
plastic figure. But I also read a report from the
Center for Science and the Public Interest and it determined
that it was far cheaper to make an online and
then to produce a traditional plastic premium, and that definitely
(29:03):
figures into the decision to scale back the physical prizes. Yeah,
I think you're right. And not to mention that there
have been a few safety scares that lead to recalls
on millions and millions of these plastic prizes that were
deemed choking hazards, and that's actually the reason prizes were
moved from the inside of the Cereal bag itself to
between the bag and the box lining. This happened in
the early nineties. Is you know Sereal companies saw that
(29:24):
this was kind of a risk or a great risk
if kids accidentally started gobbling up these prizes. It's it's
funny because Crackerjack went through like a similar adjustment with
the prizes inside their boxes and concerns about safety and
rising cost of production next anything but paper prizes, whereas
they used to have really cool stuff in there, like
Dakota rings and tin soldiers mixed in. And and since
(29:46):
Crackerjack was the first food to actually offer box prizes
way back in, it kind of seems fitting that cereal
premiums would follow suit. Yeah, I mean that's true. But
but but all is not lost for these in the
box cereal prizes. I mean there's still some physical knickknacks
sprinkled in there, but most of these are just tie
in with usually like big media events or maybe movie releases.
(30:07):
You know, the new Star Wars movie had some of
these accompany that. And besides, there's another serial philosophy that
suggests it's what's on the outside of the box that matters,
not the inside. Okay, mango, So we've covered the actual
cereal as well as the cool prizes that you find
inside the bag or just outside it. So how about
we conclude our anatomical tour of the cereal box by
(30:27):
focusing on the box itself. Yeah, that sounds good, So
I'll start us off with a little cereal box psychology.
Back in two thousand fourteen, researchers from the Cornell Food
and Brand Lab study eighties six different cereal box mascots
and ten grocery stores throughout New York in Connecticut. And
from this whirlwind tour, they found that boxes are strategically
positioned to make eye contact with children. On average, the
(30:50):
kid targeted cereal boxes are placed on the lower shelves,
usually at a height of twenty three inches, while adult
and cereals tend to sit higher at forty eight inch shelves.
And uh to capital is on this ideal. Like the
mascots on the kids cereal boxes tend to feature mascots
with eyes pointing downward an average angle of nine point
six degrees, but the spokes characters on boxes of adult
(31:10):
cereal generally looks straight ahead. Wow, that's almost kind of creepy.
And so both the manufacturer and the retailer in on
this scheme, and and and they wanted to make eye
contact with their target markets. But so why is that?
I mean, I understand wanting your product as visible as
possible so it attracts more attention, but why is making
eye contact with the character or the spokesperson matter that much? Yeah, well,
(31:33):
that was the question behind a second study where researchers
looked into how much eye contact with Cereal box characters
influences people's feelings towards the brand, and they asked sixty
three participants from a private Northeastern university to examine a
box of Tricks Cereal and rate their feelings of trust
and connection to the brand. And the catch was that
some participants were given a box where the tricks rabbit
(31:54):
was looking straight ahead and others had this box where
the rabbit was looking away or down from the view.
And I'm guessing people preferred, you know, whichever rabbit was
looking their way or Yeah, but by a wide margin.
It's really incredible. So the finding showed that participants who
had eye contact with the rabbit felt more brand trust
Proba Shilly rabbit, and their feeling of connection to the
(32:16):
brand was twenty eight percent higher than participants who looked
at a box of tricks with the rabbit looking away
and not only that were participants who made eye contact
with rabbit actually said they enjoyed the serial more compared
with another cereal that lacked eye contact component. Way, I mean,
that's so creepy, like it's it's also notes that looking
at the picture of a cartoon rabbit in the eyes
(32:37):
can generate so much good will and actually cause us
to buy their party, and the fact that they chose
this crazy rabbit that it works is just baffling. Yeah,
but there's an upside to the research because now healthy
cereals that are well intentioned can actually make mascots that
do the same thing. Yeah, but you know, I don't
want to leave the subject of Tricks because actually I
found some interesting stuff during our research here. So for
(32:59):
as that, did you know that before he was an
animated character, the Tricks rabbit was this really like Jankee
looking hand puppets, and I guess General Mills it was.
You know, they were unsure early on of how to
sell the concept of a serial obsessed rabbit, because you know,
the original slogan for the cereal was I'm a rabbit,
and rabbits are supposed to like carrots, but I hate carrots.
I like tricks. That really rolls off the tongue. Yeah,
(33:22):
and it also makes the whole silly Rabbit Tricks Are
for Kids campaign sound like poetry. Yeah. But that campaign
had problems of its own. I mean, for one thing,
it made General Mills worry that they were sending a
bad message, you know, by having this rabbit continually failed
to achieve his goal. You know, but where Charles Schultz
concluded that Charlie Brown missing the football was what made
the whole thing work. General Mills took the more democratic
(33:44):
round in nineteen seventy six. They put this question to
a vote, should the tricks rabbit finally get to eat
the cereal? He craves and kids also turned out to
be more merciful than Schultza, so almost a hundred percent
of the votes were in favor of giving the rabbit
his long away bowl. And that same verdict came again
during a campaign I think it was in nineteen eighty,
(34:05):
which was the last time the rabbit got his own
bowl of tricks. That's been a long time. I mean,
you can tell why he's jones in for a bowl,
No kidding, I mean, so these sereal mascots tend to
break down into two camps. So there's the more laid back, confident,
relaxed characters like Tony the Tiger or the Golden Crisp Bear,
and they mostly sell cereal on the basis of their
(34:26):
friendly demeanor and cool look. I mean, how cool is
Tony know, bandana jacket awesome? You know. And then that's
these unhinged cereal junkies who looked like they just, I
don't know, like busted out of the looney bin. So
these are your tricks Rabbits and Sonny the Cuckoo Bird
and like all of these crazy characters. Yeah, those guys
(34:47):
are pretty terrifying and and most of their designs have
only gotten more over the top as time's gone by.
What do you mean by that? So too can Sam
used to have the proportions of an actual bird, but
you know his body, shave, wings and feet have slowly
more human like, and and the colors too, like they're
all super exaggerated and brighter and bolder, and it's crazy.
And actually, have you seen Captain Crunch's latest look? Like
(35:09):
he used to be this old, weary sea captain but
now he has these huge popping eyes and wide grin
and even his eyebrows have gotten more excited, like their
way up over his hat. Now his hat has eyebrows.
That's very impressive. Well, I mean there's always been something
suspect about that guy anyway, if we're being honest that
did you hear the controversy a few years back somebody
(35:30):
had noticed that the sleeves of his uniform only had
three yellow stripes instead of four. I love that people
are paying this close attention to it, but apparently that
pegs him as a commander in the Navy, not a captain.
So to his credit, when fans called him out, Crunch
took to Twitter to plead his case. And so here's
what he said, all hearsay and misunderstandings. I captain the
SS Guppy with my crew, which makes an official captain
(35:53):
in my book. Besides, it's the Crunch, not the clothes
that make a man. It almost gives me goose behind.
It's a great speech. But it's always been my belief
that the facts make the man. So I think it's
time for a little fact off. All right, let's do it.
(36:17):
I'll go first here. So all right, so, speaking of
Captain Crunch, did did you know that in two thousand
nine a woman in California filed a class action suit
against the maker of Captain Crunch's crunch Berries. And she
did this because she said, for four long years she
had been eating these crunch berries and thinking they were
real furuit. I mean, you know, you've got strawberries and blueberries,
(36:38):
raspberries and of course crunch berries. But of course the
judge and Sacramento did not see it her way and
quickly dismissed the suit. So, according to one study commissioned
by Kellogg, more than ten percent of Americans had tried
eating cereal with orange juice or coffee instead of milk.
I mean, is that true, Like, have you ever done that?
I have never done that before. That would ruin a ball. No,
(36:58):
absolutely not all. Well, according to a different study, women
who regularly ate cereal before conception are slightly more likely
to have boys. There's something about having a high energy
intake before conceiving that leads to these greater odds, And
the food that seemed to increase the odds the most
was cereal. That's crazy. So you're an oatmeal leader, right, well,
I mean sometimes yeah, yeah, Well do you know that
(37:20):
the quote strawberries and peaches and quicker instant oatmeal are
actually dehydrated apples. I didn't know, and the blueberries are
dehydrated figs. And for a quicker sake, I hope that
the crunch Ferry Lady doesn't find out. But at least
the real fruits, that's true. They're real fruits, yeah, unlike
the crunchberries. So well, as kids, we always heard that
we should eat a good breakfast anytime we need to
(37:40):
do anything important that day, and studies do back that up,
often showing that breakfast eaters will perform about ten percent
better on memory tests than those who skipped. But it
also appears that eating not just breakfast, but specifically cereal
leads to a better mood. So according to research from
Bristol University, there are long term effects of eating cereal
for breakfast, and their findings quote, people feel better, serials
(38:05):
boosted their mood. So I mean, that's just the kind
of support we needed as serial leaders. And what a
happy way to end this episode. I'm gonna let you
take home the trophy this week, and listeners, if there
are any great seial facts we forgot, please let us know.
You can always write us at Part Time Genius at
How Stuff Works dot com or call us on our
seven fact hotline one eight for four pt Genius. You
(38:26):
know we love hearing from you well, and don't forget
to join us again next week when we publish episodes
asking the questions how big is the US military and
what are the worst jobs in the world, including a
peek into the important world of Wales not collecting. That's
gonna be pretty interesting. Are you sure that's right? Yeah,
that's right. All right. Well that's it for today's episode.
Thanks for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(39:02):
is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things
we couldn't even again to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact
producer thing. Gabluesier is our lead researcher, with support from
the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas
Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
(39:24):
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
hope you'll subscribe, and if you really really like what
you've heard. Maybe you could leave a good review for us.
Do we do we forget Jason? Jason who
Welcome to Part Time Genius, a production of I Heart Radio.
I Guess what Will? What's that Mango? So at our
first week in college, I remember being in line for
breakfast and and there was just this wall of amazing
breakfast cereals, remember this, And we were, of course away
from our parents for the first time and being independent
(00:25):
and responsible, and so I piled my bowl high with
Lucky Charms. I mean, I think it was Lucky Charms,
but whatever was the most nutritious cereal out there. I
love that when you were finally like free from the
overside of your parents, like that was the first thing
you did to express your freedom, was like, get a
big bowl of cereal. But yes, I do remember that big,
awesome wall of cereal. Yeah, and the people we were
(00:47):
with started making fun of me for eating a kid
cereal instead of musically or whatever. And and right then
the star basketball recruit Eldon Brand walked up and got
a bowl of the same thing, and it was just
pure silent and I felt like such a trend setter.
And I remember that that's when you became the most
popular kid on campus. And not really, but part of
(01:08):
the reason I love breakfast cereals so much. And you know,
we used to have big serial parties in Metal Flaws
where everyone would bring a box of their favorite cereal.
But uh, there's just such a wonderful association with childhood
and Saturday Morning cartoons, and that's actually why we're talking
about cereal today. Let's dig in. Hey, their podcast listeners,
(01:45):
welcome to parts. I'm genius, I'm Will Pearson and as
always I'm joined by my good friend man Guesh Ticketer
and the man on the other side of the soundproof
glass eating a big bowl of frosted many weeks good
choice today as our producer, Tristan McNeil. But today we're
heading back to the growth trial for a closer look
at all things cereal, you know, the most whimsical or
nutritionally questionable at all of this, at every part of
(02:08):
a complete breakfast. And so we'll dig into the weird
stories and surprising facts behind our favorite brands, as well
as a few of the lesser known breakfast cereals that
time forgot. And then a little bit later we'll be
joined by Gay Fonseca. He's a TV writer and he's
spent more than a decade collecting childhood nostalgia in the
form of vintage cereal boxes. It's a fascinating collection. Yeah,
(02:29):
and he's also the host of this really fun YouTube
series called cereal Time, which is the series on the
subject of breakfast cereal. I mean, he's been doing it
for a couple of years now, so I'm super excited
to just hear how he got started. Yeah, well, we'll
gabs among the most devout of cereal enthusiasts, but he's
definitely not alone in this. I mean, lots of people
love cereals, and in the hundred and fifty plus years
(02:49):
since it came onto the market, cold breakfast cereal has
become a staple for millions of people around the world.
And you know, strangely, this love affair got its start
in the late nineteenth century kind of as an accident.
You know, it was this invention of fundamentalist Christians who
were seeking to promote a healthy, sin free lifestyle. And
much of this is you know, stories that people have heard,
(03:10):
but it's still pretty interesting that the bland foods, as
you know, like toasted corn and oats, where they were
thought to help suppress sexual urges and prevent arousal. And
so this thinking led to the creation of a few
notable foods, including Graham crackers, of course, but the one
that really caught on what the public was sereal. So
Dr John Harvey Kellogg, the superintendent of a sanitarium in
(03:31):
Battle Creek, Michigan, and his younger brother Well they stumbled
upon the recipe for what would ultimately become corn flakes.
After allowing some of the cooked wheat to sit out
for too long, the Kelloggs returned to find the wheat
had gone stale, but rather than toss it out as
you might think they would, they decided to roll it
out into thin flakes and then toast them. And the
corn flakes were a big hit with their patients, so
(03:54):
the Kelloggs decided to start marketing them to a broader public. Yeah,
and as interesting as that early history is, it's pretty
familiar by this point. So instead of going deep on
sanitariums and grape nuts were, we're gonna focus mostly on
the second act of the serial story. That's the period
from about nineteen fifty to the early nineties when marketing
to children really took off and sugary cereals really began
(04:15):
flooding grocery store aisles. Well, before we dive into that
colorful history, I thought we could take a quick look
at the state of cereal today, you know, just by
the numbers, and it's amazing how far cereal has come
from its early years as this niche product to the
mammoth industry that it is now. So just looking at
the US market alone, the breakfast cereal industry now generates
(04:37):
nearly ten billion dollars in annual revenue. And that that's
according to mord Or Intelligence. Did you say word or intelligent?
Feel like a hobbit? It's kind of a jarring name
if you're a Lord of the Rings fan. But it's
just the coincidence, unfortunately. But like I was saying, Americans
lead the world and serial consumption. It ranks fourth on
the list of the top ten package goods sold in
(04:59):
the US, and of American households by a box of
cereal at least once a year. And we're not the
only ones who love it. Canada, the UK, Australia, they
all have cereal markets that rival the size of our own.
And in recent years cereal has also gained in places
like China and India and Brazil. In fact, the breakfast
cereal marketing industry rakes and about thirty five billion dollars
(05:21):
in revenue each year from the foreign markets. So when
I took my kids to India last year, I remember
waking up jet lag the first day and they were
already up watching cartoons and we're wired on a bowl
of chocos. We didn't have chacos in all my years
agoing in to India though, we never ate breakfast cereals
and we never ate in from the TV. So it
was almost jarring to see this American experience transplanted to India.
(05:44):
But you know, sugar and grain is obviously this winning combination.
But I have seen a few reports about sagging sales
as more and more people opt for, you know, either
easier or healthier breakfast options, so pop tarts or avocado
toast or you know, maybe a quick trip to the
drive through on the way to work. And and of
course there's this growing segment of the population that just
(06:05):
doesn't eat breakfast period. So when you were listing those
easier and healthier options and you said pop tarts, which
one of them, I'm guessing that's the easier option there.
But they are delicious well as big as the cereal
industry is today, There's no question that it used to
be bigger. According to NPR, serial consumption peaked right around
nine I guess it was, and has steadily gone downhill
(06:26):
ever since, generally by a full percentage point each year.
And while the stuff you mentioned is definitely played a
part in that decline, it's really due to a combination
of factors. You know. For example, back in lawmakers passed
the Nutrition and Labeling Education Act, and that made it
mandatory for all products to include the now commonplace list
of nutrition facts on the packaging. And this made it
(06:49):
easier than ever for consumers to see the nutritional value
or lack thereof, I guess, and they could look at
this and all of their cereals now at this point,
and as more people became edge caated about just how
much sugar and carves they were eating or feeding to
their kids, you know, they started to think twice before
tossing a box in the car whenever they're with grocery store.
(07:09):
So I looked into just how sugary cereal can be,
and it's insane, Like the whole cereal industry uses around
eight hundred sixty million pounds of sugar in its products
every year, and apparently most of that's going into honey Smacks.
You know, for some reason, you don't know out there,
that's the one with the cool frog wearing the backwards
baseball cap on the box. I thought you were talking
(07:30):
to me for a second, was like, I know, honey Smacks, mango,
Come on, Well, honey Smacks is consistently ranked the worst
cereal for your health because it has less than two
grams of five or per serving and its ingredients breakdown
to almost sixty sugar. It's tasty, but according to the
Environmental and Working Group, there's more sugar in one cup
(07:51):
serving of honey Smacks than there isn't a Hostess twinkie,
no way. I know that it's sweet, obviously, and I
knew it wasn't good for you, But honestly, the taste
of honey Smacks, I wouldn't have guessed it was the
most sugary cereal. But it kind of makes my teeth
are just thinking about that. And you know that that
sugar to fiber ratio might make us cringe. But there's
one particular serial leading demographic that you're not going to
(08:13):
hear complaining about this, and that's kids, or at least
my kids. Yeah, my kids to Actually, do you remember
there was this great Calvin and Hobbs where Calvin's eating
his favorite cereal. I think it's something like chocolate frostage
sugar bombs, and he gives Hobbs a try, and Hobbs
just starts shaking, gagging from the sweetness, and Calvin says,
actually they're kind of blend until he scoops some sugar on.
(08:37):
But what I find really interesting is how deeply ingrained
the fondness for breakfast cereal is and so many people,
and how so much of that seems rooted in their childhood. Yeah.
I mean, i'd say for most adults serial leaders, it's
a big part of the allure. I mean, it's what
you were saying about your kids. There's these memories of
watching Saturday morning cartoons with a big bowl of Captain
Crunch in your hand, or maybe indulging in a late
(08:58):
night fix of Lucky Charms sitting in your college dorm.
I don't know who you're talking about, right, Well, it's
sort of a comfort food in a way. I mean,
it takes us back to simpler days when most of
us were a little more carefree about what we ate
and why. Yeah, so nostalgia is definitely a strong factor. Actually, well,
what are some of the weirdest discontinued cereals you can
think of? I was trying to think about this earlier,
and I remember seeing cuber cereal when I was a kid.
(09:21):
Do you remember Cuberta that video game character? And and
also eating one with smurfberries. Like, my parents only really
bought us sugar cereals for maybe a year or two,
but I remember sampling some weird ones. Yeah, I mean
I always thought it was completely bonkers that some cereals
didn't even mask the fact that they were candy, Like
you know, Kellogg's did a candy corn Pops. But even
(09:42):
more blatant than that, there was a Nerds Cereal and
I'm ticked off that I never tried it Nerds Cereal,
by the way, listeners, I just wanted to break for
a second because Will and I have been debating what
the official candy of Part Time Genius should be, and
Will was saying it should be atomic fireballs, and I
was thinking Nerds. So if you have any thoughts on this,
(10:03):
please let us know on Facebook or Twitter. But well,
you're right, nerds, cereal is insane. But looking back, like
the box was so cool. It came in these two flavors,
just like the candies, and you could pour orange out
of one side and cherry out of the other. Can
you imagine, Like, who would let their kids buy this? Probably?
It also makes me wonder like if so much a
(10:24):
serials appeal is rooted in the past, Like what does
this say about our future? Well, you know, there's a
new generation of kids getting hooked on cereal now, and
many of them will stick with it into adulthood. And
that's part of the reason there's so many brands duking
it out, you know, trying to get kids to eat
these cereal is because people's breakfast routines tend to be
the same, you know, pretty much every day. But there's
(10:45):
another point to consider, and those declining sales numbers we
mentioned earlier also coincide with declining birth rate, So you know,
it's it's not like the birthrate will ever drop to
zero or anything like that, but fewer kids does result
than fewer cereal fans, obviously. Yeah, It's it's funny that
something that started out as health food became so dependent
on selling sugar to kids. But I guess that's usually
(11:07):
how it goes with food trends. Like someone with these
very altruistic intentions gets the ball rolling, hoping to better society,
and and then you know, at a certain point, the
marketing team steps in writing eximally. Yeah. Dr Kellogg used
to give lectures about his methods for leading a healthy lifestyle,
and he would sometimes give out the recipes for his
corn Flix so that people could make them at home.
And at one talk he told the crowd, you may
(11:29):
say I'm destroying the health food business here by giving
these recipes, but I'm not after the business. I'm after reform.
I mean, yeah. He really did seem to believe and
what he was selling, sure, But the problem was that
the same couldn't be said of his brother, Will Kellogg.
And and Will try for years to convince his brother
to add sugar to their cereal, believing it would add
some flavor to what he called horse food. But the
(11:50):
tipping point came into late forties when their competitor Post
Cereals released Sugar Crisp. So Posted branched out beyond the
health food market with its first sugarcoated sea and like
it or not, Kellogg kind of had to follow the suit. Yeah,
but it's really post World War Two that the industry
started to focus on marketing directly to kids. I mean,
companies had dabbled with these ads before, including Kellogg's use
(12:13):
of Snap, Crackle and Pop as the characters for Rice Crispies,
and that marketing began in the nineteen thirties. But even
with cartoon gnomes pleading their case, you know, these highly
processed oats and grains were a tough sell without adding something,
you know, sweet to it. That's crazy though, I like,
I had no idea that the Rice Christie's trio had
been around that long. I thought they were post fifties
(12:33):
like most other cereal mascots. Yeah, Snap cracklin Pop are
actually one of the longest running ad campaigns in history,
and as I was looking up at that, they're actually
the longest for cereal brands. Actually, by the way, did
you know that their names are on amount of pia
sounds for what you hear when milk is added to
the cereal. But apparently Rice Crispies were always marketed as
the cereal you can hear, and this was even before
(12:55):
the mascots came along. In fact, the guy who created
the characters did so after being inspired by one of
the brand's previous radio jingles. Because I know you're dying
to know what it was. You're the lyrics, I jotted
them down, So all right, listen to the fairy song
of help the Mary Corus sung by Kelloggs Rice Crispies
as they merrily snap, crackle and pop in a bowl
of milk. If you've never heard food talking, now is
(13:17):
your chance. I'm so hungry for a bowl of cereal. Now,
why didn't we do this before? And also that was
a jingle like it doesn't even rive. I was I
was gonna put it to song that I just made
up sided against it. So, I mean, obviously mascots were
a smart move, since it's hard to market like a
fairy song of health without them. But wasn't there also
a fourth gnome for a while, Yeah, you bet there
was Pal He stood for the serials nutritional punch, I think,
(13:41):
And of course he didn't last very long. But let's
get this back on track. So gradually the Sweden Cereals
come to dominate the market, thanks, you know, because of
product placement and children's programming and they've never looked back since.
And in fact, the breakfast Cereal industry is still one
of the top spenders for a commercial air time. More
than a million series adds air on TV each year,
(14:01):
which cost companies like Posting Kellogg's more than I want
to say, like half a billion dollars. Yeah, well so,
so all those old TV ads are a big part
of why Cold Cereal took such a hold in the
hearts and minds of baby boomers, and then they of
course passed on that fondness to their now adult children.
But you know, there's another element that helped in dear
entire generations to breakfast Cereal that I want to talk
(14:23):
about it, and that's the prizes that came packed inside
those boxes. I mean, the prizes played such a big role.
Like I might have wanted a box of Cookie Crisp,
but if the Apple Jacks had one of those wacky
wall walkers in it, I mean you remember those sticky
octopuses that were walked down the wall of course. Yeah,
and then of course that's the box I'd end up with. Yeah,
I mean, I'm with you on that. Actually I would
buy a box of cereal for one of those. Now
(14:44):
it's been years since I played, and they were awesome.
But you know, let's talk a little bit about how
toys and games ended up inside the boxes, as well
as some of the coolest and strangest ones to come
along over the years. But before we do that, let's
break for a quiz. Then we've got Gabe Fonseca on
(15:04):
the program. Now, gabees an accomplished TV writer, but he's
also got the best unboxing series on YouTube. It's called
Serial Time TV, and this is where he unboxes and
reviews incredible breakfast cereals. Welcome to Part Time Genius, Gabe,
Thanks for having me. I'm I'm a fan of the podcast,
so I'm honored to be on the show. Thank you
so much. Now, I know you're out in Los Angeles.
(15:24):
Man Guesh is actually on vacation today. He's out on
your coast in Portland's so he sends his best But
but I hope you're still willing to chat with me today,
of course, of course. All right, now, so, Gay, we've
read that you have over three hundred Cereal boxes in
your collection, and I have to ask, like, how did
you get into this? In the first place, and what
are some of your more prized cereal boxes. You know,
(15:47):
I've always been a collector, and I think at one
point I saw Old Spider Man, So I think that
was my first box. Um, it was from Zerio and
I saw it on eBay when I was just browsing,
and I was like, that'd be cool to have on
my bookshelf, and I bought it and then uh, and
then I was like, well, you know what, there are
some other ones that I remember from back in the day,
and and then it kind of just turned into this
black hole on eBay where I just was was scouring
(16:10):
and finding old cereals that that brought back to these
nostalgic memories to me. Wow. Wow, Now I think I've
read that you've tried some even some like thirty year
old cereals. Is this right? Yeah? Yeah. When I first
started this unboxing channel on YouTube, and I started it
because I started to run out a room of just
having these unopened cereal boxes on my shelf and it
was like, you know, this is just taking up space
(16:30):
and this is kind of silly. I could just flatten
them out, so I I decided like, well, let's for posterity.
Let's just record myself opening these boxes and and you know,
recording with the cereal looks like and documenting it so
I'll have it, you know, for posterity. And uh. And
I never thought I was like going to try him,
and then I'd opened some boxes and uh, I'd be like, well,
let me just see if it holds up. I think
(16:51):
the oldest one I might have tried was a grim
smiles giggles and last cereal, which was from the seventies,
I believe, and it was pretty grass guessing. Oh man,
they're terrible. They just don't you know. It tastes mostly
like it tastes like the plastic in a way. It
takes great toxic and disgusting. But I would I definitely
do not recommend it. I can't imagine now. In terms
(17:11):
of cereals, are there any that you wish you could
have tasted if you could go back in time? Yeah. Absolutely.
There's one from before my time, in the seventies called
It's a Great Fellow. It was actually, um they released
a Great Fellow and Baron von red Berry. There were
General Mills cereals and uh, this is a Great Fellow
one tasted like you know, grape the grape cereal or
grape kool aid, I imagine I never actually got to
(17:32):
try it, but I'm a I'm a sucker for great
flavored things. And uh and even though I got a
Nerds cereal which came out in the eighties, which I
which I got to try back and back then, I
it just wasn't the same, you know, it wasn't it
wasn't that great great flavor. It was kind of it
wasn't a great cereal, and Sir, great fellow, just just
like I look at the ad campaigns I see on
(17:52):
YouTube and I'm just like this, this was like, this
is great. I really wish I was alive for this one.
I could I could try that one. Yeah yeah, Now,
how about any boxes you'd love to add to your
collection but haven't been able to get ahold of? For me?
I I kind of at this point, I feel like
I'm at peace and I've kind of completed my collection
and kind of everything I want. There is one really
random cereal from General Mills in the nineties. It was
(18:15):
called Buen Alitos, and I remember it. It was on
shelves for a limited time, and I just can't find
a box of that anywhere, and that's probably like the
last you know, my great you know, white whale that
I'm trying to obtain. Still, I don't know, Gabe. I'm
hearing in your voice that maybe you're not quite at
piece yet until you find that so off, if if,
if any of our listeners out there know how to
(18:35):
get ahold of some did you say bueno altos? Yes,
all right, we'll see what we can do for you.
There'll be a free part time Genius t shirt on
the line for these people. But but before we let
you go, Mango did leave me a quiz titled the
Most Important Meal Quiz of the Day. So I'm gonna
ask you a few questions if you obscure serial questions,
(18:56):
and all you gotta do is answer them. How does
that sound? All right? I'll give it my best, alright?
Question number one. According to a nineteen fifty six confidential
magazine report, what breakfast cereal was supposedly responsible for Frank
Sinatra's success with women? It is Wheaties. Yeah. The article
claimed that Sinatra could thank Wheati's for his reputation as
(19:17):
the quote Tarzan of the Boudoir. So yes, congratulations there, alright?
One for one. Question number two. Before a certain tiger
became spokes animal for this breakfast cereal, he had to
beat out three other contenders, Elmo the Elephant, Newt the
new and Katie the Kangaroo. What cereal are we talking about?
(19:38):
That's right, it's frosted flakes. Now. Katie actually appeared on
boxes in the nineteen fifties before Tony the Tiger started
out selling her. All Right, here we go. Question number three.
What popular breakfast cereal created by John Harvey Kellogg was
eating aboard the Apollo eleven cereal? Christie. It's a pretty
good guess. It was actually Kellogg's corn legs, and so
(20:01):
the cereal was mixed up with fruit and formed into
cube since eating it with milk was impossible without gravity. Alright,
two for three the last question here the big prize
is on the line. While Saddam Hussein loved Raisin brand
and requested it for breakfast in prison, he detested this cereal. Oh,
I actually read the article about that fruit. Yes, it
(20:24):
is fruit looks and according to US soldiers, one of
the few times he actually looked defeated in prison was
when a bowl of the fruity cereal was brought to him.
But so congratulations you got three out of four, which
qualifies you for our top prize, which is a note
to your mom or your boss singing your praises. So, Gabe,
congratulations and thanks so much for joining us on Part
(20:45):
Time Genius. Well thanks for having me. Well it's been
it's great. Thank you very much. You're listening to Part
Time Genius and we're talking about the heyday of breakfast cereal.
(21:06):
You know, when kids became the target market, and nutrition
kind of took a backseat to things like marshmallows and prizes,
and you know, speaking of cereal box prizes, you know,
those were another way that Kelloggs tried to attract kids
to cereal in the pre sugar days and three the
company started putting pen back buttons inside boxes of their
pep cereal. So they started with a series of thirty
(21:28):
six pins that featured World War two squadron insignia from
the US military. And this was before switching over to
fictional heroes like comic book characters. Yeah, so those are
some of the earliest inbox prizes we know about. But
if we're talking buttons, my favorites are the Urkel for
President campaign buttons they were giving out during the Clinton
Bush Senior campaign. Do you remember those? We're talking Steve
(21:49):
Urkel from family that I can't say I remember him
running for president? But what what cereal was that? Kels?
Of course, it was one of those short lived novelty
cereals that crops up for a few months and then disappears,
like basically it was a sweeter version of cheerios, but
wackier with banana and strawberry flavors. But uh, obviously we're
getting ahead of ourselves with all these in the box
(22:11):
buttons because Kellogg's actually got into the prize game long
before that. In the earlier days, the prizes, or premiums
as they're called in the industry, weren't in the box
at all. And as far as we know, the first
prize used to market cereal was this nine nine children's book.
It was called the Funny Jungle Land Moving Pictures Book,
and it was given to customers who bought two boxes
(22:32):
of Kellogg's corn flakes that they're participating grocery stores. After
a couple of years, of course, Kellogg's decided to stop
handing out the books on location instead offered them as
mail and offer, and within four years the company had
distributed two point five million copies of the book, Isn't
that insane? Like? It was obviously a hit with customers,
so Kellogg's kept releasing new editions, and they kept going
(22:54):
on with jungle Land books all the way up until
ninety seven. I mean, I guess that's pretty cool. I
have to say I was never a fan of those
mail in prizes. I mean, I was all about the
instant gratification. You don't want to dig in there, like
get elbow deep and some cocoa puffs or something and
then just be able to like fish around and find
that cellophane bag. Yeah, and then you got to eat
(23:14):
the cereal dust off your arm. But those were definitely
the days. But I never really minded the mail ins,
like I think it was partly the joy of receiving
any kind of mail as a kid. The fact that
anyone was sending me anything was exciting enough, even if
I had to save up like a bunch of box
tops and wait six to eight weeks to make it happen.
Though that was mostly dying out by the time we
were kids. I only remember doing it a few times.
(23:36):
But you know that the real reason the cereal industry
stepped up its game and the prize game specifically in
the nineteen fifties is pretty interesting. And it's it's thanks
to this invention of what was called the screw injection
molding machine and and and that's what made plastic prizes
faster and cheaper to produce. And this wasn't the only
time the inventor of injection molding his name was James
(23:56):
Watson Henry would lend a hand to cereal prizes. So
in the nineteen seventies, Henry's developed the first gas assistant
injection molding process, and this is what made it possible
to produce these finally detailed hollow plastic objects, you know,
the ones that environmental groups love so much. This cut
cost even more and paved the way to a golden
age of these in box serial prizes. That explains why
(24:19):
so many of the cool prizes I found were from
the sixties and seventies. And and of course I'd be
remiss if we didn't mention the Boson's whistle that came
inside the box of Captain Crunch in the early seventies.
If we're talking about things, we'd be remiss not mentioning
about Captain Crunch, what about Gen Lafoote, which was Captain
Crunch's stinky, barefooted rival. But anyway, going with your whistle story, well,
(24:41):
obviously the whistles just like really high pitched little whistle,
and the Boson's whistle was one that was historically used
on naval ships when commanders need to pass orders to
the crew but couldn't be heard because of the waves
or weather or whatever. And these days it's mostly used
in naval ceremonies. But in Captain Crunch's case, it turned
out that when you covered one of the whisp those
holes in blue, it produced this frequency of hurts, which
(25:05):
was the exact tone a T and T used to
control its long distance lines. And basically, this legendary hacker,
John Thomas Draper, who was also known as Captain Crunch
or Crunch or crunch Man, he learned that he could
use one of the whistles to hack the phone system
and get free long distance calls. I love that they
figured that. It's why that old hacking magazine was actually
called hundred, and then why Steve Jobs and Steve Woes
(25:28):
even tracked down the whistle and built a box that
replicated the frequency to try and prank call the Pope.
I love that as I love that they pretended to
be Henry Kissinger. And it almost got there until this
like suspicious bishop caught on like and and then the
Pope didn't get on those pesky bishops. And you know,
while injection molding allowed for all kinds of awesome plastic toys,
(25:50):
you know, some of the funniest ones that came across
were actually even like metal, or some of them even paper.
Like in nineteen fifty four, Wheaties gave away these miniature
state license plates and they were made of solid steel,
and you got one in each box, but you could
also buy them in four sets of twelve by mailing
in a box top and a quarter a whopping quarter.
(26:10):
And that was the only hitch to this was that
Alaska and Hawaii had not yet become states, so there
were actually only forty eight plates and all man So
do you think people were like pissed when those two
states got statehood a few years later and suddenly their
collections were incomplete? Well, actually, Post Serials did release a
set of the full fifty later on, but apparently wed
still gets letters about the original campaign to this day.
(26:33):
So maybe there's still a few determined fans out there
just pestering them about their missing plates or something. I
hope so. But one of the most unique prizes I
read about was this paper prize. It was a deed
to one inch of land in the Yukon, so like
a serial company was giving away land by the inch. Yeah,
it's a great idea, right, So Quaker Oaths sponsored a
(26:54):
show in the fifties called Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.
You remember Sergeant President of the Yukon, And this was
their way of linking the show to the product and
full disclosure, this was a mail in prize, but this
one was totally worth the weight. So for just a
single box top kids would receive a deed for one
square inch of the nineteen acres of Yukon territory that
Quaker purchased, and they actually purchased this from the Canadian
(27:16):
government for a thousand dollars. The promotion was this massive success,
and Quaker actually sent out more than twenty one million
deeds in just a few weeks away. Yeah, and then
lots of people would write the company or even the
Canadian government from time to time to check in on
their property, but sadly the reply was not good news.
Apparently none of the deed holders were actually landowners because
(27:37):
the individual deeds were never formally registered after the recipients
signed them, I know. And in the end, Canada repossessed
all the land in nineteen sixty five due to non
payment of get this, thirty seven dollars and twenty cents
in property taxes. You know. I mean. It also reminds
me of the time during the eighties when General Mills
started giving out actual one dollar bills as prizes and
(28:00):
boxes of cherios, which it just sounds kind of like lazy,
like let's let's just put a dollar in there, and
except in this case the prize was actually worth something. Yeah,
and it's way better than the promotion Cheerios offered in
the fifties when they gave away color reproductions of Confederate
money and an album to keep them in. Oh, that's
so strange. I actually I think I'd rather have the
phony d than But we sort of transition into these
(28:20):
more lackluster I don't know, dare I say, like crappy prizes,
but honestly, at least they're still prizes. And and much
like serial sales, serial premiums seemed to be on the
decline these days. Yeah, so I noticed last time I
was in cerealisles there seemed to be fewer boxes advertising
physical prizes, but there were a bunch of boxes offering
some kind of digital prize, like access to an online
(28:41):
video game. And I I guess serial premiums changed to
reflect the times and and most kids these days would
prefer some type of like instant online entertainment over a
plastic figure. But I also read a report from the
Center for Science and the Public Interest and it determined
that it was far cheaper to make an online and
then to produce a traditional plastic premium, and that definitely
(29:03):
figures into the decision to scale back the physical prizes. Yeah,
I think you're right. And not to mention that there
have been a few safety scares that lead to recalls
on millions and millions of these plastic prizes that were
deemed choking hazards, and that's actually the reason prizes were
moved from the inside of the Cereal bag itself to
between the bag and the box lining. This happened in
the early nineties. Is you know Sereal companies saw that
(29:24):
this was kind of a risk or a great risk
if kids accidentally started gobbling up these prizes. It's it's
funny because Crackerjack went through like a similar adjustment with
the prizes inside their boxes and concerns about safety and
rising cost of production next anything but paper prizes, whereas
they used to have really cool stuff in there, like
Dakota rings and tin soldiers mixed in. And and since
(29:46):
Crackerjack was the first food to actually offer box prizes
way back in, it kind of seems fitting that cereal
premiums would follow suit. Yeah, I mean that's true. But
but but all is not lost for these in the
box cereal prizes. I mean there's still some physical knickknacks
sprinkled in there, but most of these are just tie
in with usually like big media events or maybe movie releases.
(30:07):
You know, the new Star Wars movie had some of
these accompany that. And besides, there's another serial philosophy that
suggests it's what's on the outside of the box that matters,
not the inside. Okay, mango, So we've covered the actual
cereal as well as the cool prizes that you find
inside the bag or just outside it. So how about
we conclude our anatomical tour of the cereal box by
(30:27):
focusing on the box itself. Yeah, that sounds good, So
I'll start us off with a little cereal box psychology.
Back in two thousand fourteen, researchers from the Cornell Food
and Brand Lab study eighties six different cereal box mascots
and ten grocery stores throughout New York in Connecticut. And
from this whirlwind tour, they found that boxes are strategically
positioned to make eye contact with children. On average, the
(30:50):
kid targeted cereal boxes are placed on the lower shelves,
usually at a height of twenty three inches, while adult
and cereals tend to sit higher at forty eight inch shelves.
And uh to capital is on this ideal. Like the
mascots on the kids cereal boxes tend to feature mascots
with eyes pointing downward an average angle of nine point
six degrees, but the spokes characters on boxes of adult
(31:10):
cereal generally looks straight ahead. Wow, that's almost kind of creepy.
And so both the manufacturer and the retailer in on
this scheme, and and and they wanted to make eye
contact with their target markets. But so why is that?
I mean, I understand wanting your product as visible as
possible so it attracts more attention, but why is making
eye contact with the character or the spokesperson matter that much? Yeah, well,
(31:33):
that was the question behind a second study where researchers
looked into how much eye contact with Cereal box characters
influences people's feelings towards the brand, and they asked sixty
three participants from a private Northeastern university to examine a
box of Tricks Cereal and rate their feelings of trust
and connection to the brand. And the catch was that
some participants were given a box where the tricks rabbit
(31:54):
was looking straight ahead and others had this box where
the rabbit was looking away or down from the view.
And I'm guessing people preferred, you know, whichever rabbit was
looking their way or Yeah, but by a wide margin.
It's really incredible. So the finding showed that participants who
had eye contact with the rabbit felt more brand trust
Proba Shilly rabbit, and their feeling of connection to the
(32:16):
brand was twenty eight percent higher than participants who looked
at a box of tricks with the rabbit looking away
and not only that were participants who made eye contact
with rabbit actually said they enjoyed the serial more compared
with another cereal that lacked eye contact component. Way, I mean,
that's so creepy, like it's it's also notes that looking
at the picture of a cartoon rabbit in the eyes
(32:37):
can generate so much good will and actually cause us
to buy their party, and the fact that they chose
this crazy rabbit that it works is just baffling. Yeah,
but there's an upside to the research because now healthy
cereals that are well intentioned can actually make mascots that
do the same thing. Yeah, but you know, I don't
want to leave the subject of Tricks because actually I
found some interesting stuff during our research here. So for
(32:59):
as that, did you know that before he was an
animated character, the Tricks rabbit was this really like Jankee
looking hand puppets, and I guess General Mills it was.
You know, they were unsure early on of how to
sell the concept of a serial obsessed rabbit, because you know,
the original slogan for the cereal was I'm a rabbit,
and rabbits are supposed to like carrots, but I hate carrots.
I like tricks. That really rolls off the tongue. Yeah,
(33:22):
and it also makes the whole silly Rabbit Tricks Are
for Kids campaign sound like poetry. Yeah. But that campaign
had problems of its own. I mean, for one thing,
it made General Mills worry that they were sending a
bad message, you know, by having this rabbit continually failed
to achieve his goal. You know, but where Charles Schultz
concluded that Charlie Brown missing the football was what made
the whole thing work. General Mills took the more democratic
(33:44):
round in nineteen seventy six. They put this question to
a vote, should the tricks rabbit finally get to eat
the cereal? He craves and kids also turned out to
be more merciful than Schultza, so almost a hundred percent
of the votes were in favor of giving the rabbit
his long away bowl. And that same verdict came again
during a campaign I think it was in nineteen eighty,
(34:05):
which was the last time the rabbit got his own
bowl of tricks. That's been a long time. I mean,
you can tell why he's jones in for a bowl,
No kidding, I mean, so these sereal mascots tend to
break down into two camps. So there's the more laid back, confident,
relaxed characters like Tony the Tiger or the Golden Crisp Bear,
and they mostly sell cereal on the basis of their
(34:26):
friendly demeanor and cool look. I mean, how cool is
Tony know, bandana jacket awesome? You know. And then that's
these unhinged cereal junkies who looked like they just, I
don't know, like busted out of the looney bin. So
these are your tricks Rabbits and Sonny the Cuckoo Bird
and like all of these crazy characters. Yeah, those guys
(34:47):
are pretty terrifying and and most of their designs have
only gotten more over the top as time's gone by.
What do you mean by that? So too can Sam
used to have the proportions of an actual bird, but
you know his body, shave, wings and feet have slowly
more human like, and and the colors too, like they're
all super exaggerated and brighter and bolder, and it's crazy.
And actually, have you seen Captain Crunch's latest look? Like
(35:09):
he used to be this old, weary sea captain but
now he has these huge popping eyes and wide grin
and even his eyebrows have gotten more excited, like their
way up over his hat. Now his hat has eyebrows.
That's very impressive. Well, I mean there's always been something
suspect about that guy anyway, if we're being honest that
did you hear the controversy a few years back somebody
(35:30):
had noticed that the sleeves of his uniform only had
three yellow stripes instead of four. I love that people
are paying this close attention to it, but apparently that
pegs him as a commander in the Navy, not a captain.
So to his credit, when fans called him out, Crunch
took to Twitter to plead his case. And so here's
what he said, all hearsay and misunderstandings. I captain the
SS Guppy with my crew, which makes an official captain
(35:53):
in my book. Besides, it's the Crunch, not the clothes
that make a man. It almost gives me goose behind.
It's a great speech. But it's always been my belief
that the facts make the man. So I think it's
time for a little fact off. All right, let's do it.
(36:17):
I'll go first here. So all right, so, speaking of
Captain Crunch, did did you know that in two thousand
nine a woman in California filed a class action suit
against the maker of Captain Crunch's crunch Berries. And she
did this because she said, for four long years she
had been eating these crunch berries and thinking they were
real furuit. I mean, you know, you've got strawberries and blueberries,
(36:38):
raspberries and of course crunch berries. But of course the
judge and Sacramento did not see it her way and
quickly dismissed the suit. So, according to one study commissioned
by Kellogg, more than ten percent of Americans had tried
eating cereal with orange juice or coffee instead of milk.
I mean, is that true, Like, have you ever done that?
I have never done that before. That would ruin a ball. No,
(36:58):
absolutely not all. Well, according to a different study, women
who regularly ate cereal before conception are slightly more likely
to have boys. There's something about having a high energy
intake before conceiving that leads to these greater odds, And
the food that seemed to increase the odds the most
was cereal. That's crazy. So you're an oatmeal leader, right, well,
I mean sometimes yeah, yeah, Well do you know that
(37:20):
the quote strawberries and peaches and quicker instant oatmeal are
actually dehydrated apples. I didn't know, and the blueberries are
dehydrated figs. And for a quicker sake, I hope that
the crunch Ferry Lady doesn't find out. But at least
the real fruits, that's true. They're real fruits, yeah, unlike
the crunchberries. So well, as kids, we always heard that
we should eat a good breakfast anytime we need to
(37:40):
do anything important that day, and studies do back that up,
often showing that breakfast eaters will perform about ten percent
better on memory tests than those who skipped. But it
also appears that eating not just breakfast, but specifically cereal
leads to a better mood. So according to research from
Bristol University, there are long term effects of eating cereal
for breakfast, and their findings quote, people feel better, serials
(38:05):
boosted their mood. So I mean, that's just the kind
of support we needed as serial leaders. And what a
happy way to end this episode. I'm gonna let you
take home the trophy this week, and listeners, if there
are any great seial facts we forgot, please let us know.
You can always write us at Part Time Genius at
How Stuff Works dot com or call us on our
seven fact hotline one eight for four pt Genius. You
(38:26):
know we love hearing from you well, and don't forget
to join us again next week when we publish episodes
asking the questions how big is the US military and
what are the worst jobs in the world, including a
peek into the important world of Wales not collecting. That's
gonna be pretty interesting. Are you sure that's right? Yeah,
that's right. All right. Well that's it for today's episode.
Thanks for listening, Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius
(39:02):
is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be
possible without several brilliant people who do the important things
we couldn't even again to understand. Tristan McNeil does the
editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does
the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the exact
producer thing. Gabluesier is our lead researcher, with support from
the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown and Lucas
Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets the show to your ears.
(39:24):
Good job, Eves. If you like what you heard, we
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