Occasionally, we’re suckers for licensed cereal toys.
You know what I mean – either the little plastic cheap things they include in the box, or the slightly more elaborate items you have to mail-away for. Some examples include the following:
The item on the left is an Indiana Jones light-up spoon (of course it is). Free inside boxes of cereal available in stores right now. We got it from Cocoa Krispies (see middle photo). The image on right shows three plastic skulls hanging from our attic ladder. There is a motion activated red LED inside that makes each skull flicker eerily when hit. These were Pirates Of The Caribbean licensed items that were obtained from (if I recall correctly) Krispix. There were apparently three colours available – we only ever got red. We’ve had them for years now, and the batteries still work.
The more elaborate items require you to cut out tokens from the packaging and send a certain number in with a small cheque for S&H. Examples include:
The leftmost item is an alarm clock that projects the time up on to the ceiling. As you can see, it hasn’t even been opened (more on this item later). It required quite a few tokens if I recall correctly, but since the cereal was Raisin Bran (my favourite) we didn’t have to make sacrifices to earn them. The item on right is a send-in from Goldfish cookies; obviously some sort of easter rabbit-fish. We’ve had this one for maybe ten years, and I forget the details of the promotion. In addition to these two items I have a significant amount of Star Wars licensed send-away items socked away somewhere – lots of bowls and lenticular plates and some lightsabery things obviously made at the same factory that now makes the spoon shown above.
Here’s an example of a current promotion we’re going to send away for:
I love one of the disclaimers: “Actual item may vary” Happily, this wonderful adventure light only needs one token so a single box of toaster sticks (which KLS will eat) and $3.99 gets you the torch.
One of the good things about getting this crap stuff is the wait. You collect your tokens, fill out a simple form and send off some small cheque and then wait months and months (or in the case of the Pirates alarm clock, almost a year) and then one day it just arrives out of the blue. Fun!
Next I’ll share the pride of my collection: a lovely R2-D2 serving bowl:
< Sail Barge R2, anyone?
This beauty is about 30cm wide and as you can see comes with a base that can be used to hold the bowl. But there is more to this item than you may think, for the base has a pressure sensor and a sound chip in it so when you lightly push down (for instance, when someone removes something from the bowl) a cacophany of R2-D2 sound samples explodes from the speaker in the base. It is simultaneous delightful and annoying. I’ll always remember the day this beauty arrived for the box it was sent in was much, much bigger than the bowl itself. I probably had long forgotten about even sending away for it, so it must have felt like Christmas opening the package and removing this treasure.
“Have I ever used it?” I imagine you asking? Silly – of course not! Such items must remain pristine to preserve their value 🙂
As for the Pirates alarm clock. As you saw, it is unopened. In fact we still have the box, instructions and even the batteries that came with it. And it’s free for the taking! The best comment to this post gets it for Christmas this year, so feel free to share your own stories/opinions of the joys of mail-away cereal redemptions at the end 🙂
(As an addendum, could this be the most otaku post ever on this blog?)
personally i’m a little shocked that you haven’t opened or used your snazzy Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End projection alarm clock, seeing as you’re an avid player/fanboy of Pirates of the Caribbean Online – the smash MMORPG hit that’s taking the world by storm.
side note: O M G. GIB R2D2 BOWL! that is like.. 10x more ridiculous and yet 100x more useful than my Jar Jar Binks Flying Bucket Top… amazing!
Do such items have any value? 🙂
I’ll be waiting for my alarm clock…
Florence – I am familiar with that Jar Jar item, since I have the Battle Droid version 🙂
Bernard – you can do better than that. Florence is winning the clock so far. How about some memories about cereal toys we used to get as kids?
My strongest memory of this sorta thing is collecting cards from packets of Weet-Bix. Specifically, sticking my washed-for-the-occasion hand down the side of a newly opened cereal box to bring forth the buried treasure.
You could send away for a poster to stick them on and even return your doubles in exchange for numbers you were missing. I always waited until the offer had almost expired to do this, so as to maximise my swappage.
The card set I recall most fondly (from the ’70s) depicted rally cars. My favourite was the Lancia Stratos. It had six headlights and looked like The Future. I wonder how much a secondhand model would set me back…
PS. No interest in the alarm clock, my friend. I’ll wake up when I’m good and ready 🙂
I remember getting cards from them. I seem to recall you collecting some sort of animal card set from Weet-Bix™.
Also I remember masks and paper airplanes featuring on the back of the cereal box that we’d cut out for five minutes of fun.
There was some sort of plastic toy that would come in many pieces in (I think) Rice Bubbles™. You’d get one or two pieces per box and eventually have enough to build something, but I can’t remember what it was specifically.