Prize in cereal

[fried1765]

OK junior. 84 in 2 months. There has to be at least one member here in the 90s or better.

Daxx........At 78 I'm feelin like a teenager (with aches & pains) now!

 

[fried1765]

I grew up with 3 sisters. To keep things fair, our mother would put all the prizes into a "prize bag". On rainy days, or whenever she needed to control us, she'd let us pick from the prize bag. Pretty ingenious if you ask me!

I also remember saving box tops and sending away for premiums. My favorite was a plastic model of the Boeing 747 at the time of its original launch (and now I'm dating myself).

"MY favorite was a plastic model of the Boeing 747 at the time of it's original launch".

Dating yourself?

I was too old for 747 plastic models on that February 9, 1969 launch date.

I started flying on it (as a flt. engineer) 5 years later.

 

[Fuddy1952]

Cracker Jacks had really good prizes, we still have a few.
The cereal I really liked Kellogs discontinued around 1970 or so was Krumbles. It was like brown grass.

 

[kc5dlo]

I remember the prizes and they did sway the choices of my brother and I. I also remember saving the box tops from several boxes of cereal. I saw a big 'ol submarine once and saved up my box tops and anxiously awaited the mail. After seemingly forever, a package arrived in the mail and it was my submarine. It was about the size of my index finger! That was quite a disappointment. You stuck an aspirin in a tiny compartment and set it in a tub of water. It actually worked pretty good. It would sit on the bottom for a minute or two then a bubble would form on the aspirin and the sub would go to the surface, lay over and let the bubble out then sink to the bottom to repeat the process a few more times.
That was the end of my box top saving.

 

[DrRod]

I had one of those subs too. I did work if a bit fitfully.

I sent away for the plastic soldiers on the back dover of comics. It was like a dollar for 102 soldiers -- always an unusual number. I got two sets of knights and later a box of civil war soldiers. I was surprised when they arrived because they were very thin, virtually flat. Sort of weird but they had a good base and stood up well. And you had a lot of them for next to nothing.

 

[two_bit_score]

I also had a submarine like that. The soldiers we got were American Revolutionary War soldiers from the back page of a comic book. Waited forever, it seemed like, for them to arrive. They were small and dinky. Not at all like pictured on that back cover. I was very disappointed.

I remember my Dad sat me down and we had a talk about things not always being like you thought they would be.

I've been cynical and jaded ever since. Not really, but it was a good talk with my Dad.



TBS

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I recall sending of for a PT boat. You put some vinegar and baking soda in it and it made bubbles and putted around in the bath tub. As I recall, it was rather small, about 4" long, and it was a real pain to set it up...at least for a little kid. I think I used it maybe twice.

 

[bunyip]

Another one I remember was a diver complete with big helmet, just a piece of grey plastic about an inch long that you dropped in a bottle and screwed the top on, a bubble formed in where the face should have been and it rose up and down as you screwed or unscrewed the top.
Great source of entertainment for about quarter of an hour.
If you lost the bubble it sank and you had to empty the bottle to retrieve.

 

[Industrial Toys]

It's neat because you can often go on E-Bay and see the various toys we had as children. Memory is a very poor recording mechanism, and it's sometimes weird to see these things in real life, not exactly as I remembered them in my minds eye.

 

[bunyip]

What was worse was the highly detailed large illustration on the box versus the little blob of plastic that arrived in the mail.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

My favourite was sending away box tops for the Captain Crunch Pirate Chest. I still have the secret treasure map it came with.

I never really did get over never having gotten the X-Ray glasses at the back of comic books and that my sea monkeys never materialized. I loved monkeys and my mother refused to get me one, so that was my only choice, and the monkeys dipicted always looked so happy and playful..

Remember both of those, and more. They were both scams, of course. Here is a list of those scams, and more.

11 Shameless Comic Book Ads That Cost Us Our Allowance Money | Mental Floss

I remember the Charles Atlas ads; even sent of for one, but put another classmate's name on the order. Don't know if he ever got it; he never said...and his muscles didn't improve, so he probably didn't. Remember "dynamic tension"?

 

[bunyip]

Also ads for army surplus, jeeps for $1, how i envied you living in America

 

[Industrial Toys]

And don't forget about getting plans to build your own bulldozer at the back of PM.

 

[Fuddy1952]

Sea monkeys! (Brine shrimp I think they were...Mexican jumping beans! (Seed with a worm in it).
I became disillusioned at about 5 years old, watching this poor old guy downtown playing the accordion, he had a tin cup, wore big sunglasses and a "I'm blind" sign around his neck.
The disillusionment came at about 5pm one day as I watched him throw his stuff in back of a new Cadillac and drive off.