Free Is Fun

Free Is Fun

- jim Young

“I don’t care how much money you have, free stuff is always a good thing.” Queen Latifah

I am proud of my Scottish Heritage. And at the risk of perpetuating a myth let me just say “Free” is my second favourite four letter word.

It seems there was a lot more free stuff when I was young.

Post-war manufacturing growth and the new medium of television brought about inventive marketing strategies to combat fierce competition. This ultimately resulted in free giveaways and mail-in prizes to encourage brand loyalty.

The brand loyalty concept didn’t really work on me though. As a youngster during the 50s and 60s my only loyalties lay with whatever flashy give-away toy caught my eye as I followed my mother down the aisles of the grocery store.

And there were a lot of them to choose from. One of my favourites that comes to mind was the small plastic submarines that used to come in boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. After filling them with baking soda and dropping them into a sink full of water I delighted in watching the submarine sink, rise and repeat.

Then Post came out with those nifty 3-D slides. They weren’t much good without the “Stori-View” viewer which you had to send in 2 box tops and some cash to get. THAT was pure marketing genius. Give away a new slide in each box so you had to  purchase the viewer to go along with it. Talk about a captive market! And then of course you’ll also need the optional extra little storage box to keep the slides in too.

You could get almost anything from actual deeds to small sections of real estate to square cardboard records playable on most phonographs of the day. 

But as far as the cereal brand goes, I didn’t care if it was Post, Kellogg’s or General Mills. However I shied away from Nabisco even though they had that really cool space-age looking antennae on their box. Nabisco had a tendency to lean towards some pretty boring cereals like Shredded Wheat. Not even a Rin Tin Tin Cavalry Rifle Ball Point Pen was worth stuffing a bale of dry hay in my mouth for. Even the smaller bite-sized shreddies were only brought into our house for the purpose of mixing with some cheerios and pretzels to make some bits and bites at Christmas.

Cereal companies don’t offer prizes much anymore. You might find an occasional toy in a cereal box for  a limited time to promote a movie but even that will likely only be available in the larger size boxes. Free digital codes to unlock an online game might be found on some packaging but where’s the fun in that? Chances are your Mom’s not gonna let you have your phone or tablet at the breakfast table anyway any more than my mom would let me eat in front of the television.

In the proverbial good old days there weren’t very many boxes of cereal that didn’t come with a prize. The only problem was, like many families, the rule in our house was, the prize belonged to the child whose bowl it happened to fall into. Digging into the cereal wasn’t allowed. And those were the days before everybody had to be treated equally.

So “How come Lennie got one and I didn’t?” wasn’t a question we even bothered to ask. We just knew better. We would simply look at our sibling with envy and think, “I hope I get the next one.” Of course that never prevented us from asking, “Can I play with it too?” which usually resulted in a positive result if you hadn’t called your sibling names within the last 24 hours. It wasn’t a rule, but 24 hours was pretty much the standard time required to get a clean slate for past transgressions.

Oh we might get brave from time to time when our Gaga was babysitting and we would go searching in the cupboard for the toy in the cereal box when no one was around to squeal on us. But we usually left tell-tale signs when the box retained its bulge after our hand had been rooting around inside it. 

In spite of the physical phenomenon called the Brazil Law Effect which tells us that larger objects will tend to move towards the top of the box of cereal when shaken, inevitably the toy in our cereal boxes always seemed to be at the bottom. This in turn brought into effect another universal law which dictates that the amount of cereal eaten is directly proportional to the length of time it took to expose the toy.

“Can I have another bowl of cereal?” was commonly heard prior to the toy’s appearance in our bowl but seldom after. It was not unusual for the last half box of cereal to sit in the cupboard for weeks while Mom ignored our pleas to buy another. Eventually that last final scoop of cereal might “accidentally” get spilled into the dog’s dish before the cycle could begin again. 

Very early on prizes were dropped unprotected directly into boxes of cereal. Even the cereal itself was unbagged at one time. Due to sanitary concerns however cereal companies began to bag both the cereal and the toys dropped into the cereal. But that too was eventually declared unsanitary as it was discovered children would root through the cereal in search of the prize with their bare hands. Afterall, if they were undisciplined in the proper etiquette of waiting for the toy to drop into their bowl, you couldn’t really depend on them to have washed their hands before coming to the breakfast table, could you?

It wasn’t just cereal that had prizes though. Many products such as Sheriff and Hostess Potato Chips, Jell-o, and Salada Tea were famous for their hockey, car, airplane, and sports hero coins first made from metal and then plastic. Carousels to keep them in were offered as an optional accessory that you just had to have.

Red Rose was famous for their animal and bird cards that could be collected and glued into an optional booklet. Red Rose was also well known for their Wade Figurines or Whimsies. As much desired collectibles the elusive Gingerbread Man Wade figurine at one point could easily fetch upwards of $100.

Although most companies today have abandoned these give-aways, products such as Lucky Elephant Popcorn and Cracker Jacks still offer prizes in each box. Instead of prizes like whistles, secret decoder rings, plastic figurines and toy cars you’re more likely to find cheap stickers, temporary tattoos or the aforementioned digital codes to unlock online games.

Bazooka Joe Bubblegum too switched to digital codes and brain teasers although they still on occasion will include some of their traditional comics.

More recently on the scene Kinder Surprise Eggs offer a higher quality prize unlike most others. Inside the chocolate egg you’ll find surprises such as metal figures, spinning tops, magnifying glasses or snap together plastic cars, robots and animals. But, more and more even they are offering digital codes in place of fun traditional prizes. 

There have probably been more prizes given away in cereal than you’ll find single krispies in a box of Rice Krispies. What’s your childhood memory of your favourite prize? Please share yours with us in the comment section below.

Yes my friends… Those were the days! 

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