Cereals- They don't make them like they used to. (The flavor is still good though.)

I was shopping for Groceries back in early June 2023 when all of a sudden, I stumbled upon this:

 

This was at my local London Drugs store in 41st and Victoria Street in Vancouver and I could not believe my eyes on what I was seeing. 

The reason I nearly flipped my shit over this is because I read this other blog made by this former animator on how according to his view, cereal box art doesn't look interesting anymore.

His problem was that cereal box arts care more about edge, airbrush colors, and filling up so much negative space to the point that it makes no sense.

To me, Cereal is just cereal. It doesn't matter the box art. What matters is the taste... and the activities.

If you thought this animator was complaining all the time that 1970s cereal ruined fun for everyone, think again. In my opinion, the fun was ruined by the turn of the millennium.

This box of Cocoa Puffs from 1991 demonstrates this according to tweeterman287 who uploading this video about said cereal back in May 2009. He demonstrates that they don't make cereal as interesting as is anymore since they eschew interesting concepts. What made this early 90's cereal better than today is the fact that this box of cocoa puffs had a fold-in-factory to drop your cereal in a bowl via a chute.

Pretty cool huh but wait, there's more. Cap'n Crunch had another.... at least in the 1970s.

This photo was pulled from a Youtube video from "The 8-Bit Guy" in which he demonstrates how a certain boatswain's pipe toy whistle distributed in Cap'n Crunch cereals screwed around with telephones and let you have long distance phone calls without paying those astronomical bills. All you needed to do was blow this whistle and it sounded a loud 2600hz tone. This apparently was discovered by John Draper.

I guess the executives felt that the concept of fun should be regulated to their own terms and that's why prizes, cardboard factories, or 2600hz phone signal hacking whistles aren't distributed in cereal boxes anymore. Instead, we have things like writing, website links, sweepstakes, movie ticket codes, etc.

So maybe instead of those listed above, we should petition for Kellogg's, General Mills, etc to bring back fun things like Cardboard Factories, Ultra Rare Pokémon Cards, and phone phreaking whistles.

Anyway, back to the Rice Crispies box from earlier. I was flabbergasted. This return to Golden Books era illustration was quite a sight. Yes I know it's a digital recreation but it's rather well done. 

But wait, what's this?

Ok. So as it turns out, this is just a retro edition to their line of products so they can entice those older breakfast munchers or John Krisfalusi back into the realm of cereal as not to compete with their main line of cereals as shown below.

This airbrushness is a bit too gaudily pretentious for my taste.

(Totally not a food pun.) 

It's soft of like when Pepsi brings in their cans of Throwback Pepsi which is just a rebranding of their regular flavored soft drink but with the 1973 to 1987 Logos applied.

So in truth, it's just another bout of corporate mandated limited edition stuff that won't be a permanent fixture in stores and more or less try to entice those who prefer the retro.

Also, the retro looking box isn't that accurate. I saw this photo on Facebook and according to the photo, this is what most cereal boxes actually looked like back in the day:

And of course some things never change. Especially the Corn Flakes rooster over here. 

Sure, modern takes on the Corn Flakes Rooster straighten him up but his design has remained the same, not taking into count the modifications to his color palette.

I've got more to talk about in a future post. It may not be about cereal but trust me, there's more to see than what meets the eye.