Driven by breakthroughs in food technology and a few zillion bucks in televised fast talk, an explosion of flake-based creativity rattled the psychedelic '60s. Weird sugary shapes, irresistible ‘Free Inside’ bait,and a parade of animated ‘grain gods’ from Cap'n Crunch to Lucky the Leprechaun transformed 80 million tots into cereal-sucking zombies. We chanted ‘I Want My Maypo!,’ ‘A Bowl A Day Keeps the Bullies Away!,’ and ‘They're GR-R-R-REAT!’ until breakfast flew off our spoons ... and out of our nostrils.
Cerealebrities crowded the decade's advertising landscape in every guise, from baseball players and rocks stars to a small-town sheriff and his bumbling deputy. Even Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and Rocky and Bullwinkle were hired to shovel flakes into our tiny, upturned mouths. One grain-god ghetto commanded such weekly devotion from boomers that some church and school officials cried foul. "You might say we invented Saturday Morning," boasted one Battle Creek mogul to Fortune magazine.
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