Still Coo Coo For Cocoa Puffs

Cruising the store aisles to complete a grocery list is no problem for me but don’t ask me to pick out a box of cereal.

The cereal aisle of any grocery store has the power to stop me in my tracks. I know what peanut butter we buy and which tea is my wife’s favorite but I just can’t seem to make a decision in the cereal aisle.

I know I’m not alone because I often find myself working around others who suffer the same affliction.

Should I buy the Captain Crunch that’s on sale even though it has almost no nutritional value or should I pay double for some “adult” cereal that is supposedly better for me? Just this week I bought a box of Raisin Bran and Cocoa Puffs because they were on sale. I just couldn’t help myself but I was proud that I walked by the Frosted Flakes display without incident.
It has been years since we had Cocoa Puffs in the house but the box was almost half empty the next morning. The Raisin Bran remained fresh and unopened. Looks like the Carrolls are still coo coo for Cocoa Puffs.

I have a lot of practice cruising the cereal aisle. As a small kid in the A&P grocery store, my mother would turn me loose and say “go pick out a few boxes of cereal.” Mom didn’t allow those “sugar cereals” into our house so my choices were limited to products like Cheerios and Chex and Special K. I still jumped at the chance just so my mother wouldn’t buy Puffed Rice – the most tasteless cereal ever invented. It took two full tablespoons of sugar to bring a bowl of Puffed Rice to life.

I loved sleeping over at my friend’s houses because their parents bought those sugar cereals that I constantly saw advertised on television like Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms and many I no longer could name.

Searching the Internet for discontinued cereals this week, I was surprised how many I did remember – at least from the advertising.

Do you remember Quisp and Quake, Kaboom, Sugar Jets, Puffa Puffa Rice, Stars, Freakies, Fruit Brutes and Quickaroos for starters. How about Twinkles, the cereal with the book attached to the box?

Almost as memorable as the cereals were the characters who pitched them. There was Tony The Tiger (Frosted Flakes), Sugar Bear (Sugar Crisp), Linus the Lionhearted (Crispy Critters), Dig-Em Fog (Sugar Smacks), Snap, Crackle and Pop (Rice Crispies) and many others.
Cereals may come and go but three big companies still compete for shelf space: General Mills, Kelloggs, and Post. A 2008 survey showed that General Mills’ Cheerios is the most popular cereal in America with Kellogg’s Special K and Post’s Honey Bunches of Oats running in second and third place. The all-time favorites list shows Life, Cap ‘n Crunch and Frosted Flakes in the top three spots. Rounding out the top five were Apple Jacks and Honey Bunches of Oats.
Donkey Kong cereal does not appear on either list. Neither does Banana Frosted Flakes, Fruity Marshmallow Crispies, Mr. T’s, Strawberry Shortcakes or Urkle-O’s. Can you imagine what an unopened box of Urkle-O’s would be worth today? Neither can I.

Eating cereal became such a bedtime routine in my house that the only motivation I needed to take a bath as a kid was a bowl of Cheerios, A bowl of cereal with ice cold milk is still a late night treat in the Carroll household.

Come to think of it, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs sounds like fun if there if the box isn’t empty.