What Happened to Prizes in the Cereal Boxes?

Cereals used to have great prizes in the boxes.  They don’t anymore.  Today’s cereal either does not have prizes or they have really cheap prizes.

Growing up, I remember I used to have to fight my sister for the prize out of the cereal box.  I remember that I would have to wake up early just to open the new box of cereal to get the prize before my sister did.   But what I really remember about cereal prizes has to do with my father.

It was about 15 years ago and my family and a few friends were on vacation in Chincoteague Virginia.  During the Month of July they have Pony Penning and carnival.  Like all carnivals they have games that you can play and you can win cheesey little toys.  My sister and her friends won several of these little toys.  My friends and I, up extremely late for teenage boys thought it would be very funny to play a joke on my father by putting these toys in his cereal. 

My father was a cereal eater.  He loved to eat cereal.  We always had cereal in the house, especially Kix.  Kix was his favorite.  Vacation was no exception.  So this particular morning he wakes up and wanders to the kitchen of the house we were renting and gets out his bowl, the milk and the cereal and sits at the table.  By this time me and my friends had sneaked down to the room adjacent to the kitchen just to hear his response. 

As he poured out his cereal out comes a little toy.  We could see the confused look on his face as he examined his box of Kix looking for anything that would indicate that there would be a prize in his favorite cereal.  Not finding anything about it on the box, my father puts the prize aside and finishes his bowl of cereal.  My father then pours a second bowl of cereal and out falls a second prize.  Stunned, he pulls the toy out of his cereal bowl and again examines the box for anything that would indicate there were toy prized in his favorite cereal. 

At this point in time me and my friends are doing all we can to keep from laughing so loud that my father would hear us.  Looking in the kitchen we found my father with his arm in the cereal box looking for more toys.  Each time after finding a prize  my father would return to the box of cereal digging deeper in search for more.  In all my father found five toys hidden in his cereal box.  He had made a mess of the box of cereal.  There was little Kix cereals all over the table and floor that had fallen out of the box during his digging. 

My mom had come down to the kitchen for her morning coffee to find cereal all over the place, toys on the table and my father confused.  She asked what had happened and my father started to explain.  His best line was that he thought the cereal company had made a few mistakes because Kix was not supposed to have toys in the box and that not only did it have a prize but it had five in the box. 

My friends and I could not contain ourselves at that point and just roared with laughter.  After discovering that we were the culprits that put the toys in the box he found it very humorous. 

It is a shame that today’s cereal does not have prizes.  Today’s children will not know the joys that come with cereal toys.