Think back to your childhood...those carefree days of show 'n tell, kickball, and braces. What kind of breakfast cereal did you eat? Lone Ranger Cheerios? Rice Honeys with the little plastic spoonmen? Pink Panther Flakes, which left that revolting 
liquid in the bottom of your cereal bowl? Perhaps you craved Quisp or Freakies or Kellogg's OJ's? Or did your mother boycott the sugarcoated stuff in favor of ... (gulp) ... CREAM OF WHEAT? No matter what you ate, you'll wish you'd had saved those weird packages and toy what-cha-ma-call-its from not-so-long ago.
The Cereal Box is back. Once thought of as a sure sign of mental deficency like eating chalk or watching Oprah, collecting cardboard relics of breakfasts past is now an exploding hobby celebrated by Newsweek, New York Times, and CBS Morning News. Movie actor Mark Hamill collects cereal boxes. Cereal-loving Jerry Seinfeld told USA Today that he "subscribes to Flake," the breakfast nostalgia magazine, and how he hopes that "somebody in the future will discover some Seinfeld Low-Fat Granola in some warehouse. That would be really exciting."
Why is cereal suddenly so cool? It's simple. The stressed-out nineties have discovered the breakfast table is the mother lode of our collective memories. Name one American who hasn't hit a home run on a belly full of Babe Ruth's Wheaties? Or didn't send a boxtop away to Sgt. Preston for a deed to a square inch of Klondike land? Or who didn't yell "I want my Maypo" until Mom reached for the rolling pin? Or go to school buzzed on Quisp "The Quazy energy cereal?" From All Bran to Breakfast with Barbie, Cocoa Krispies to Urkelos, Corn Flakes to Quangaroos, the cereal aisle is a true and accurate reflection of America's cultural psyche.
More on collecting Old Cereal Boxes
