Volume 1, Number 1

November 1999

Welcome to "The Boxtop", your cereal netletter. Grab your favorite box of cereal and pour yourself a bowl. Entire page will load in 32 seconds on a 28.8 connection. Select a topic from among the links on the Side Panel or jump right into one of our feature articles. Just add milk and enjoy! We'd like to offer you a Free Subscription to get e-mail notices of each new issue. Your comments and suggestions are encouraged.

Side Panel Monthly Ingredients (Links to Current Issue) Cereal Review Feature Articles Reader's Poll Reader's Poll Results What's New in Cereal? Perpetually Updated Cereal Ratings Cereal Ideas Letters to the Editor Meet the Staff Topher Ellis, Editor Back Issues Complete Index Links Favorite Cereal Links Subscribe Free Subscription Stuck in a Frame? Click to Break Free Privacy Policy And Ethics Code Disclaimers And Other Legal Stuff Reader's Poll Which Major Company Do You Feel Makes The Best Cereal? General Mills Kellogg's Post Quaker Oats Other Results Were Posted In December 1999 Issue Back To The Top

November 1999 Features Inventor's Corner - Cereal Bowls: Unique new cereal bowls which keep your cereal crunchy. Milk, Hot Water, And Cardboard: History on 1962 Post and Jello Baseball Cards Cereal Review - General Mills Millenios What's New in Cereal? Inventor's Corner - Cereal Bowls Which Save Milk and Keep Your Cereal Crunchy by Topher There you are, enjoying your bowl of cereal and suddenly you find your cereal has gotten soggy, or you finish your cereal and have some leftover milk in the bottom of your bowl which you don't care to drink. What are you to do? Never fear, fair citizen! For we have located not one, but two bowls on the net which keep your cereal crunchy and save milk! There have been many attempts in the past to create the perfect cereal bowl, and many have patents. The latest designs come from NewAngle and Cyber-Krunch. New Angle is a one-compartment bowl with a slanted bottom. Simply pour milk into the deep end and then pour your cereal into the shallow end. Cereal will gravity feed into the milk as needed. Available in solid red, white or blue colors. Priced at $6.95* each or all three for $16.95*. Cyber-Krunch is a four-compartment bowl. Cereal is poured into the large sloped upper compartment. Milk is poured into the small deep compartment in the bottom (filling that compartment and the two sloped connecting side chambers). The side chambers move milk by gravity feed into the deep compartment. Scoop fresh cereal into the deep compartment as needed. Available in white, or with your logo imprints. 2-pack $19.95* or 4-pack $29.95*. (Imprinting extra). All of the bowls do a good job of keeping your cereal crunchy, but do they really save you milk? That answer partly depends on whether you usually dump your leftover cereal-infused milk or usually drink it. I've got a family of heavy milk drinkers (we're practically a poster-family for the American Dairy Council). I am in the "drink the milk" camp. My daughter dumps it ("Ick... it doesn't taste good"). It is for her that these bowls were especially intended! I usually pour cereal into my regular non-patented all-purpose bowl and then fill the bowl with 1 2/3 cups of milk. (No, I don't always measure my milk. I only did it for this article). New Angle holds 2 1/2 cups, but filling the bowl defeats the purpose. They recommend about 1 1/4 cups (fill halfway). Cyber-Krunch holds 1 cup. Clearly a savings is achieved --- even if you do drink the leftover milk. One additional benefit is that both my son (age 12) and daughter (age 8) physically enjoy using these bowls and therefore get a more complete breakfast before going off to school. Bottom line: the bowls are as fun to use as they are useful. All the bowls are dishwasher-safe, and stackable. We have been informed that the pricing is for orders placed via the internet only, and pricing has been guaranteed through year-end. Pricing excludes shipping and handling in most cases. Quantity discount are available. Visit the individual sites for more complete details on how the bowls work and for ordering instructions. *Special Offers! The Boxtop has arranged for our readers to receive a special holiday discount. The nice folks at New Angle and Cyber-Krunch are willing to offer you the special discount for a limited time to encourage your order and help them to track visitors from our site. [No one at The Boxtop receives any compensation for the referral. We are happy to be able to offer this benefit to our readers]. New Angle will give a discount of 50 cents off any order on any one bowl, or $2.00 off the three bowl special price. To get the discount, you must include the word "Boxtop" in the space on the order blank where it asks for the country. Back To The Top Milk, Hot Water, And Cardboard by Dan W. Mabey Okay, sports card fans. The year is 1962. The Yankees are World Series Champs, having disposed of the Reds in five games in the Fall of 1961. The 1961 football season is over, with the Green Bay Packers having come out on top in the NFL, while our friends to the north have seen the Winnipeg Blue Bombers seize the CFL's Grey Cup. You have anxiously awaited arrival of Spring, the start of baseball, and your first glimpse of the 1962 trading cards. Now, fast forward to 1999 and answer the following questions: What major manufacturer produced the largest number of different baseball and football card sets and separate card numbers in 1962? For the U.S. market? For the Canadian market? For certain, it's got to be Topps. Nope! Then Fleer? You're not even close! Gee, how about O-Pee-Chee? Three strikes and you're out! Would you believe the folks at General Foods (GF)? Well, it's true. Those purveyors of breakfast flakes and wobbly blocks of sugared gelatin pulled out all the stops in 1962, with a promotion campaign that permeated the upper two-thirds of the North American continent. Plastering baseball and football cards on the back of U.S. and Canadian cereal boxes, Post was out to prove their slogan that they were "a little bit better", while a less flambouyant Jell-O promotional campaign was launched to affirm that the "light dessert" was the right dessert! In all, collectors in the States and Canada saw the marketing troops at GF oversee issuance of 5 separate sets and 998 different numbers, with scores of card text, photograph cropping, and tint variations. You could say that Post milked its product for all it was worth, while Jell-O ran into a little hot water. The 1962 GF promotion created the following classic card sets: - 1962 U.S. Post cereal baseball (200 cards, not including variations); - 1962 U.S. Post cereal football (200 cards, not including variations); - 1962 U.S. Jell-O baseball (197 cards); - 1962 Canadian Post baseball (200 cards, not including variations); and - 1962 Canadian Post football (200 cards). Not a bad one year sports card output from the White Plains, New York and Battle Creek, Michigan conglomerate. And in 1963, they'd do it all over again with the exception of scrubbing the Canadian Post baseball card set. For complete set, team set, and individual player hobbyists, the GF cards offer a challenging and rewarding addition to their collections. First, let's take a look at the 1962 baseball cards. As a departure point, all three sets of baseball cards virtually mirror each other, sharing almost identical numbers, photographs, and basic text. The U.S. and Canadian Post cards depict the same players in the same order, with the photographs in the maple leaf issue shrunk to give a wider view perspective. Most interesting is the fact that the Canadian cards contain both English and French text, which account for shortened narratives and generation of some language and grammatical errors. Both sets appeared on the back of cereal boxes in panels of four to seven cards (and in panels of three on the bottom of U.S. Post Tens). The promotions were nation-wide, with a television, newsprint, and in-store campaign that featured Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford encouraging kids "to collect all 200 cards". The 1962 Jell-O promotion and card distribution was far less boistrous than its cereal munching and crunching counterpart. In fact, a complete set of 1962 Jell-O baseball cards - in any condition - is very rare. Although never confirmed by GF insiders, many advanced collectors believe that the set was a test promotion centered in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois regions of the U.S. Baseball hobbyists enjoy a good mystery, and the 1962 Jell-O cards read like a classic "whodunnit". While sharing the same photographs (with cropping alterations) and parallel text as the Post cards, the Jell-O set is absent Brooks Robinson (#29), Ted Kluszewski (#82), and Smoky Burgess (#176). To complicate the plot, one of the premier players of the game - Rocky Colavito of the Tigers - was omitted in deference to Cleveland's Ken Aspromonte! Hobby lore places Apple Jell-O at the scene of the crime in explaining the disappearance of Roby, Klu and Smoky. Veteran collectors allege that the Apple flavor was pulled from the grocery store shelves after the first shipment, denying the trio their rightful spot in the set. Why Aspromonte would have been substituted for Colavito is anybody's guess, since the statistics and player popularity are hardly comparable, and insertion of a well-travelled, banjo-hitting Indian in the midst of Tigers demonstrates questionable judgment. Considering that each of the Post and Jell-O sets were one-third the size of the Topps 1962 baseball offering, the GF execs and marketing folks did a superlative job in representing the top players in the major leagues. Mantle, Maris, Berra, Ford, Cash, Colavito (except Jell-O), Kaline, Bunning, Gentile, Brooks Roby (except Jell-O), Wilhelm, Fox, Aparicio, Minoso, Wynn, Yastrzemski, Jensen, Woodling, Klu (except Jell-O), Killebrew, Hodges, Maury Wills, Koufax, Drysdale, Snider, Pinson, Frank Robinson, McCovey, Kuenn, Cepeda, Marichal, Mays, Mathews, Aaron, Burdette, Ken Boyer, Flood, Mazeroski, Groat, Clemente, Santo, Ashburn, Banks, Robin Roberts -- they're all there! While some stars and players with distinguished 1961 seasons were missed - notably Spahn, Musial, Billy Williams, Frank Howard, Steve Barber, Wally Moon, Ken McBride, Bill Monbouquette, and Jimmy Piersall - photographer Art Shay and art director Bill Betts created sets that were extremely ambitious and attractive, particularly for the early '60s. Today, the Post and Jell-O cards are a must for individual player enthusiasts who desire challenging, distinctive, and (generally) affordable cards of their diamond heroes. For team and set collectors, acquiring well-cut and well-preserved specimens requires patience, luck, and deep pockets or strong trading fodder for the "toughies" appearing on less popular cereal and Jell-O varieties and box sizes. And to add to the fun, the photograph cropping and color/tint variations seem virtually endless. In the next issue of The Boxtop I will discuss the 1962 Canadian Post baseball card short prints, and text, photograph cropping, and color variations of Hall of Famers and minor stars. Until next time, keep your scissors sharp and cut straight along the lines... Subscribers are invited to contact Dan Mabey regarding Post and Jell-O issues, c/o keepmeposted@msn.com or KEEP ME POSTED, 21375 Sparrow Place, Potomac Falls, Virginia 20165-7630 U.S.A. FAX correspondence may be sent to 703-450-5317. Back To The Top Cereal Review by Donnie Neiswinger General Mills Millenios I suppose October isn't too early for companies to start their inevitable giant Y2K marketing campaigns. Soon we will be bludgeoned and pounced upon by Millenium Sales and Millenium Financing and all sorts of Special Year 2000 Deals offered "for a limited time only" by everyone from appliance stores to clothing shoppes to flea markets. And yes... even breakfast cereal manufacturers. General Mills has the lead right now, it seems, with Millenios cereal. I bought a box today, October 6, 1999, for three bucks at my local Farmer Jack supermarket (in Michigan). The packaging looks pretty cool. Most of the box is metallic purple in color, and the cereal grains pictured (enlarged to show texture, of course) look very tasty in the spoon splash of milk with their airbrushed white halos against the purple background. They are also raised a little, so you can feel them if you run your hand over the box. The word "Millenios", also in raised lettering, is white against a picture of the Earth's western hemisphere. Of course, it wouldn't be the same without a catchy slogan like "Once in a Lifetime" and the gold "Limited Edition" seal up in the corner. The back is labeled for using the box as a personal Time-Capsule, and a side panel is dedicated to your fill-in-the-blank predictions for the coming thousand years. Here's one I found amusing: "Scientists will find human life on another planet by the year [blank]" As for the cereal, it's pretty good. There isn't much smell, though, which bothers me for some reason, but the taste is OK. It tastes more or less like Apple Cinnamon Cheerios or Frosted Cheerios, even though it's listed as Brown Sugar Sweetened and some of the grains are corn instead of oat. Maybe the closest taste is Team Cheerios, if you've had a chance to try that. The corn grains, I surmise, are the 2's. The oat grains are the 0's. The 0's are just glazed Cheerios, and the 2's are various stretched-out, bent corn pieces, any one of which could be mistaken on sight for an Alpha Bits 5 or Z or S. The net weight of the box is only 10.75 ounces, and if you pull the bag out of the box (which I always do), it appears that some "settling" has occurred during shipping. I guess by using 10.75 instead of 11 ounces, they can squeeze an extra box out of every 40 boxes or so. My conclusions and recommendations: Buy a box, eat and enjoy it, use it as a "Time Capsule", and then get yourself a great big box of regular Cheerios and a box of granulated sugar. Back To The Top What's New In Cereal? Post introduced Reptar Crunch for "a limited time only". Reptar Crunch Cereal is a sweetened puffed rice cereal shapped like dark pink rocks and cool green Reptars. (It tastes a lot like frosted Rice Krispies). Rugrats regulars Angelica Pickles (girl, age 3.25), Chuckie "What are we going to do?" Finster (boy, age 2 with red hair and glasses), Tommy "We're supposed to get in trouble. That's our job!" Pickles (boy, age 1), and Dylan "Dil" Pickles (baby boy, age 0.25) are featured on the box along with Reptar, their favorite toy dinosaur. Back To The Top Reader's Poll Results November Results are posted in the December 1999 issue. E-Mail the Editor We appreciate any comments you may have. © 1999 Topher All rights reserved. Disclaimers and Other Legal Stuff The Boxtop is a non-commercial publication. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any cereal or company. All of the names, characters, brands, and icons included here are trademarks of their respective parent companies and cannot be used for commercial purposes. Enjoy breakfast and support your favorite characters! Opinions expressed are those of the writer, which like most things having to do with cereal may not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Editor, anyone else on the staff, or the world at large. A good sense of humor is appreciated. Material in this publication may not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the Editor. All information contained herein was obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. "The Boxtop", "Crunchy Nuggets for the Cerealist", "Cerealist", "Cereal Netletter", "Topher's Castle", "Topher's Castle - A Great Site for Everyone", "Topher's Breakfast Cereal Character Guide", "Breakfast Cereal Character Guide", and "Cereal Character Guide" and our masthead graphics are all trademarks of Topher. Back To The Top Return to Current Issue of "The Boxtop"

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