Dear Kellogg’s,
Why? When did someone decide to take the joy out of cereal?
Who thought we were buying cereal for the taste? Or for sustenance? Come on.
We were in it for the toy. The prize. The secret hidden deep within. Sure, we ate the cereal – but only because that’s how we got to the reward. The reward was the real prize. THAT’s what made cereal our breakfast of choice.
And that’s what made it magical.
It wasn’t just the prize, though. Oh no. It was the story. The back of the box was our treasure map. It wasn’t just cardboard with colorful pictures – it was an adventure. It brought the toy to life. Without the story, the toy was just a thing. But with it? It was a character. A piece of something bigger, something more important. The prize was better when it came with a history.
And let’s be honest – the type of cereal was completely irrelevant. A good prize could sell any box of cereal to a kid. Even the blandest, driest flakes suddenly felt like a treasure chest when you knew there was a little prize waiting for you at the end.
In the end, it didn’t even matter what the toy was. It could be a cheap plastic figure or some cheap-ass whistle, but it was the act of getting a toy that made it all worth it. A surprise that didn’t belong – a buried treasure hidden inside a box of crunch.
You know how we worked that box, right? Trying to get the prize to rise to the top. Shoveling spoonful after spoonful into our mouths, eating more than we could hold, just to get to that toy. Every meal became a ritual. Breakfast. Snack. Hell, sometimes we ate cereal for dinner – whatever it took to get to the prize.
And then there were the times we were left alone with the box, way too impatient to wait. We had two options. Option one: pour all the cereal out until the toy fell out, then scoop the cereal back into the box, hoping no one would notice. Or option two: open the box from the bottom and apologize later. We were sneaky little treasure hunters, weren’t we?
And maybe it’s our imagination, but we’re pretty sure the cereal stopped tasting as good after the death of those bottom-of-the-box ingredients. The prize was always better than the flakes anyway, so who could blame us?
Rest in peace, Cereal Box Toy. We’ll never stop opening our cereal boxes from the bottom.
In loving memory,
~ The Radical Left
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What’s your best cereal box toy memory? Did you ever get caught sneaking the prize out? Drop it in the comments, and let’s reminisce.