Well, of course I had to dig out my contest entry from storage, and do a little online research about the 1966 competition itself.
As it turns out, it was really more of a coloring contest. On the back of special Post Cereals boxes, a cartoon picture featuring one of the brand’s advertising mascots appeared, surrounded by copious amounts of white space. The idea was that kids would finish the drawing and color it all in.
Here’s the back of a Post Toasties box (courtesy of Ebay) with one of the pictures. This one features Billie Bird, one of the characters (voiced by Carl Reiner) on the Linus the Lionhearted TV show.
Anyway, my entry was from the back of a box of Alpha-Bits. Here’s what the front of a typical box (with Lovable Truly the Postman) looked like at that time.
Here’s my entry.
I have no idea why I made Lovable Truly’s hair blue, or gave him red shoes. I also strongly suspect that I was thinking of Lucky Charms when I drew the big bowl of cereal.
And here's the little note from Post telling me I was a Fourth Prize Winner.
As for my prize, I remember watching Dad fasten the V-RROOM engine to my bike. It was pretty noisy and I don’t think I used it very long.
And here's the little note from Post telling me I was a Fourth Prize Winner.
Here’s what it looked like (courtesy of the online Museum of Vintage V-rroom Collectible Mattel Toys).
And here’s a great vintage commercial for it.
The real winner of all this was actually Post. I’m still eating Alpha Bits (and Sugar Crisp, er, I mean Golden Crisp) more than fifty years later!
5 comments:
Just watched a Food Documentary which followed The Kellogg Bros and Post. It was brutal for cereal. C.W. Post committed suicide. His daughter was the brain trust, Marjorie Merriweather Post. Meanwhile Clarence Birdseye was freezing all kinds of food but had no way to keep to market, Market didnt have freezers when it got there and neither did consumers have a freezer. She came along and bought him mostly out. She had the means to get them to market intact and then provided freezers to the grocers! Genius.
Rae
Hi Rae! Yes, for such a fun and tasty product, the cereal world had a history of drama. It’s well known that the two Kellogg brothers couldn’t stand each other. The book "Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal” tells the whole story much like your documentary.
And who would have guessed that by the 2000s, so few people eat cereal for breakfast that the only way some of the cereal companies could survive is by buying other companies (like Kellogg’s buying Keebler), selling out (like Quaker sold out to Pepsi) or by spinning off as a separate company (like Post).
How Cool!!
I remember that contest, but I don't remember whether I entered or not. We (my brother Mike and I) had a bike, a Sting Ray, so a V-ROOM! engine would have been great.
I remember liking all the Post cereals, except for Post Toasties, as I wasn't really into cornflakes then.
To everyone, Dan, Rae, all of you, have a great day, and a wonderful weekend!
I too drew Lovable Truly falling on a skateboard....drew letters flying from his pouch, a curvy sidewalk that he was on and a lot of trees in the background...I was 10 yo at the time and won second place (a Mattel Powershop). Bet OSHA wouldn't allow that item to be sold nowadays.
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