To understand how the cereal biz morphed from a handful of 19th-century health nuts into a multi billion dollar breakfast cereal industry, read the critically acclaimed book Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal. You'll never sniff a corn flake the same way again!
So what happened to the B-52 loads of day-glo packets and toy whatchamacallits that, along with the TV commercials, bombed us into the involuntary cereal savants we are today? You know, all the cool collectible stuff that once had us firmly by the bowls?
Flung into dumpsters by vengeful stock boys, store displays were the first to disappear. Cereal packages were burned in backyard blazes on top of dad's Playboys. Plastic gizmos, dug out of the box or mailed away for, were heaved after little Joey choked on an Archie car wheel, Batman Rubber Stamp, or Seadog bo'sun whistle. Hoover-wielding Moms fed whatever escaped these purges to the holocaust of Spring Cleaning.
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