FREE INSIDE

16

THE FANZINE OFCONTEMPORARYCEREAL BOXCOLLECTING

DECEMBER, 2003

FREE INSIDE #16 The Fanzine ofContemporary Cereal Box Collecting © 2003 Michael VollmerP.O. Box 1131 Twentynine Palms, CA. 92277email: item@earthlink.netCompany logos and characters all © theirrespective creators. Review purposes. Norights implied. Cover painting by: MIKAL

WHY COLLECT CEREALBOXES?

“I'M ONLY IN IT FORTHE MONEY”

"Anyone that tells you a cereal box isworth $5000 probably has one to sellyou... if they can convince you tobelieve it." (FREE INSIDE #8, 1989)

I think that a cereal box is worth $250.Let me try to convince you.

A cereal box from the 50's, let's saySuperman or Space Patrol, somethingcool, sells for $250 fifty years later.(Current value of such a box, sellingon ebay). After ten years was it worth$50 in 1962? Probably not. Aftertwenty years was it worth $100 in1972? Probably not. After 30 years,it's reasonable to think that some hard-core collector might have paid $150 forit. Definately by 1991 it's reasonableto value the box at $200. And by2003, expect the box to sell for $250.

Given the same limited availability,$300 in 2013, and $350-$500 by 2023(70 years later!). Let's jump twentyyears: The Post Pink Panther Flakescereal box (1974) or the Kellogg'sFrosted Flakes Woody Woodpecker/Freddy Flute offer box (1970) mighthave been worth $50 in 1980.Definately $100 by 1990. easily $150by 2000 and if I don't yet have one in

my own collection by 2010, I'll give you$200 for yours (IF you'd sell).

Kellogg's C3POs (1984) was worth$50 in 1994. Dropped off by 2004 butcould easily be back up to $150 by2014. Fifty bucks a decade.

Are you with me so far?

Here's the big jump: Ralston'sBreakfast with Barbie (1987). $50 in1997? Doubtful. How about $100 in2007? $150 by 2017. That's 30 years.How about Ralston's Ghost Busters(1987) hologram box? Or the RalstonFreakies (1987) hologram box. Theywere worth $50 in 1997. It could sus-tain to $100 by 2007 and climb accord-ingly.

So does that make the Kellogg'sPowerpuff Girls Cereal (2000) a $150cereal box? By 2030, yes. By 2050will it we worth the equivalent of a$250 Space Patrol box. WE'LL all bedead by then, but that's not the point.Our kids, and our kids' kids are theones that will be collecting these.

In the 1980's, big-spender-collectorswere looking for cereal boxes featuringcharacters from the 30's and early40's. Radio Orphan Annie, BuckRogers!, The Shadow, Tom Mix, TheLone Ranger. In the 90's it was 50'sand early 60's boxes. Beenie & Cecil,Gabby Hayes, Hanna-Barbera. Now,the "big prices" are for late 60's & 70'scharacters. Quisp, H.R. Pufnstuf,Baron Von Redberry, the monster

cereals. Ten years from now collectorswill be paying big for Masters of theUniverse, Smurfs, Care Bears, RainbowBrite, and Ghost Busters.

Twenty Years from now they'll be paying"big" for Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles(1990), Animaniacs (1990), PowerRangers (1994) and Spider-man (1995).Thirty years from now (2033), the collec-tors will be nostalgic for Johnny Bravo(Cartoon Network) (2003), Post Cereal'sThe Hulk (2003), and Disney's BuzzLightyear Cereal (2002).

The reason it's so hard for we adult col-lectors to conceptualize the value of thismodern drivel, is that we have not prop-erly bonded with the merchandizer theway that kids are doing today. We hadour time. It was when we were tenyears old, before we could filter out thecontrivance of kid's programming.When it was real and exciting and wecould bond with it, see commercials andbecome filled with want, and sit in astate of hyper-attuned facination with thecharacters surrounding us, whether itwas Space Patrol, Yogi Bear, H.R.Pufnstuf, Ghost Busters, Mutant Turtles,or Powerpuff Girls...

Every collector has the experience ofbeing 10 years old, and that experienceis what guarantees that the hobby ofcereal box collecting will deliver the highprices when the time is right.

Your objective, as a get-rich-quick col-lector, is to find in the crap of today, thecharacteristic that makes it similar to

your fondest memories of childhood.Was it the video games? Comic books?Television or movies? The action fig-ures? When you go into the cereal isle,it's all there. The future.

If you want to buy a $150 cereal box for$3, go to your local grocery store andbuy one. Sell it ten or twenty years fromnow for $50-$100 bucks and let the nextguy take it full maturity. They'll still dou-ble their money, so it'll be a bargain.You'll have made more than 10-timesyour original investment. If that's notenough to convince you, just try to find aFreddy Flute cereal box for less than$150...

Cereal box collecting: it's a fact. I hopethat you agree.

REPRISING THECONCEPT OF CEREALBOX COLLECTINGREALITY:

The Dust Jacket,Kenner's Alien Dolland the OriginalMailerThere are only so many ways to prove some-thing true. The truth that a cereal box is col-lectable has been the mission of Free Insidefrom the beginning (of the 'zine and thescene, respectively). Once it's proven, therest is elaboration. A cereal box is objective-ly collectable. It's a truth.

It's may appear that comparing cereal boxcollecting to other hobbies is like apples andoranges. Some basic principles of collectingapply, however, that make the comparisonmore of an application of criteria and less amatter of taste.

Take the example of the dust jacket in col-lecting first edition hardbacks. A first editionhardback of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, ingood condition, with a dust jacket in goodcondition, is worth $500. I bought my copyfor $15, in 1981, without a dustjacket. Lastyear I found a 9th printing with a first editiondustjacket in an old bookstore for $75. Ibought it. I put the first edition dustjacket onmy first edition hardback and now have a$500 book. The dustjacket increased thecollector's value of my book by $485.00.Could a dustjacket be sold without a book toa collector that had the book and not the

dustjacket? Absolutely. This establishes thatsome dustjackets, without books, have value,independently of the book it wraps.

The Kenner Alien Doll, designed by surrealistH.R. Gieger, was in stores for one season.The scarcity of the toy has collectors payingupward of $500 for the rare toy, mint-in-box.Some kids that Christmas, played with thetoy but threw away the box, despite toy col-lectors acknowledging that MIB was a validcondition to leave a toy in. Later, the kid triesto sell the toy but can only get $125 for it. If Ihad stored Christmas Lights in the emptybox, but long since broke and threw away thetoy, could I sell the empty box to a collectorso they can increase the value of their toy?Absolutely. An empty Kenner Alien box canbe expected to sell anywhere from $100 -$375 even though it's an empty box.

Cereal and radio premiums were sent to kidsthrough the mail. An small cardboard boxfrom Kellogg's arrives in the mail. The kidrips it open and there's his H.R. PufnstufFreddy Flute! with instructions. That mightbe a $300 premium to some collectors.Recently, I was offered over $1000 for myFreddy Flute if it were in the original mailer.The collector wanted a mint-in-mailer premi-um. Am I asking you to believe that anempty cardboard mailer from Kellogg's isworth $700? Is that what's being implied?

That same year, 1970, Kellogg's had Pufnstufrings FREE INSIDE their cereal. Some col-lectors feel that those rings are worth $50each. The Pufnstuf Ring. Atlas Shrugged.The Alien. The Flute mailer. The formulaapplied to these collectables, had their valuesincreased three to five times by the packag-ing. Does that mean that the cereal box thatthe ring came in is worth 3 to five times thevalue of the premium? That would mean anH.R. Pufnstuf ring in-pack cereal box wouldbe worth $150 to $250. It's just an emptycereal box.

Absolutely.

This example establishes the value of a cerealbox that has an accompanying in-pack or mail-in offer. Once the prescedent is establishedthat a cereal box has value, the rest is elabora-tion.

Cereal boxes have value. Collectors buy cere-al boxes. Cereal boxes have definable pricesbased on relative factors. This all adds up tothe reality of cereal box collecting.

(An interesting mathematical side note: Usinga different formula (age), to establish the valueof a cereal box, comparing the 1970 Pufnstufbox to the 1950 Superman box, in "WhyCollect Cereal Boxes: I'm In It For The Money",the formula resulted in the same objective priceof $150+)

MY LIFE IN CEREAL BOXES

A Personal History

I began collecting cereal boxes in 1987.

There were a number of box collectors, most-ly of radio premiums, who were looking forcereal boxes from the 1940s and '50s, withpromotions that corresponded to rings andpins of their favorite radio serial heroes.

No one, that I knew of, was collecting thecereal boxes that were at the supermarketright then. I immediately began the fanzineFREE INSIDE. I photocopied 50 copiesofthe first issue. My friends at the comic bookshops in Spokane, Washington, let me offerthe copies for sale in their stores.

At that time a collector could buy hologramGhost Busters Cereal, the new Freakies

Cereal, and get in on the tail end of NerdsCereal. Cereal was $1.95 a box. It cost$1.25 on sale.I put up flyers at the local comic shops offer-ing to pay 25¢ each for empty cereal boxes.Kids brought them in and were paid by thestore owner out of a fund that I left. Theshop owners were game for it because thekids spent the money in the comic shop.Within months I had a great collection withhundreds of cereal boxes collapsed and pil-ing up.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, it was only a3-hour drive to a major Canadian city. Mygreat friend Don, from the comic book col-lecting hobby, and I made the drive a numberof times over those first years of cereal boxcollecting. We filled his baby-blueVolkswagon Bug with dozens of boxes ofcereal. We were stopped at the boardercoming back, every time, and asked to

explain ourselves. There is an entirely differ-ent assortment of highly collectable cerealboxes in Canada. American companies con-sider the Canadian product licencing as a"foreign" market. The Canadian breakfastcereal companies can feature Disney charac-ters, Indiana Jones and Star Wars for a frac-tion of what it costs to use them in America.Subsequently, there are Canadian Batman,Star Trek and Roger Rabbit cereal box fea-tures that were never available in the U.S.

One fateful dayin 1987, Duane Dimock (fromSan Diego) was driving through theNorthwest and stopped at a local comic shopwhere he found FREE INSIDE. He phonedme (from my number inside the 'zine) and webecame instant friends. By a strange coinci-dence, he and I had actually met asteenagers, when he was in college and hadstopped by the comic shop where I wasworking. We both had collected Conan TheBarbarian. Now we had comics and cerealboxes in common. We made dozens of longdistance trades over the years that followed.

In 1988, Jon Anderson phoned, having gotmy number from someone associated withBox Top Bonanza, the radio premium collec-tor's fanzine. He said something like: thishobby is going to be huge! He was into1970s cereal boxes that I'd never heard oflike Baron Von Redberry, and Moonstones.To hear him tell it now, I gave him Duane'snumber. The two of them went on to becomegreat friends also.

In early 1989, Scott Bruce phoned and saidhe was starting a magazine about old cerealboxes and asked if I'd be interested in writingan article about collecting the newer boxes.Scott, or Mr. Cereal, as he later liked to beknown, was a coffee table book writer whohad made quite a name for himself in thelunch pail collecting hobby, calling himself Mr.Lunch Pail and appearing on talk shows. Ideclined the flattering invititation, citing mycommitment to FREE INSIDE. He beganpublishing Flake, and did so for a decade,

writing two books about cereal boxes andappearing on talk shows as the world's con-tact person for everything "cereal".

I had decided that my future would be withthe Ralston Purina company marketingAmerican breakfast cereals in Japan. TheJapanese don't eat very much cold cereal.Their country has a small dairy industry somilk is very expensive. The Japanese wordfor breakfast means "rice". So there weresome cultural marketing hurdles to leap.Ralston didn't export breakfast cereal toJapan, but I thought it would be a good movefor them, so I applied for the job. I wasinformed that I needed a 4-year collegedegree and supermarket retail experience. Ileft my job as a movie theater manager andwent to work as a grunt for a supermarket. Ienrolled in Japanese language at the collegeand I was on the way to my future.Unfortunately, I didn't work well with thesupermarket public. Japanese language wasvery difficult and after a year of classes Icould count to one hundred and ask for moretea, please. Ocha o nomitai, kudasai. Onlysix of us graduated from year-one Japaneseso the college dropped year-two from theircatalog.

In the blizzard winter of '89, I called Duaneand said: this sucks. I hate winter in EasternWashington. Can I come stay with you insunny Southern California for a month orso...? And to make a long, long beautifulstory, really short, lived there, with Duane fornearly two years.

Living in California, I immediately joined theSan Diego Comic Con Committee, andbegan selling comic bookss, toys and cerealboxes at antique shows. Duane got me ajob, taught me more than I can rememberabout collectors and collectables and is tothis day a great friend. At the San DiegoComic Con in 1990 I participated in a panelabout collecting. I introduced 400 attendeesthere to the concept of cereal box collecting.

Over the next 5 years I would make similarpresentations at comic book conventions inOakland, Kansas City, Chicago, Atlanta,Dallas, and Los Angeles.

In 1994 Kevin Meisner phoned me. He wasstarting a fanzine about collecting TheFreakies (1970) cereal characters andplanned to call his "want ad" section FREEINSIDE... Duane had suggested that he callme because I was publishing a cereal 'zineby that name. Kevin hadn't read FREEINSIDE but assured me that he had no inter-est whatsoever in contemporary cerealboxes. He asked if I would be interested inwriting an article about the new boxes for hismagazine. Kevin sounded like a nice guyand didn't aspire to conquor the hobby forhimself, so I was honored to accept. Wewere thrilled when he came to visit us inCalifornia, in 1999. He’s been a great friend!I wrote "The Gnarly New" for The FreakieMagnet from 1994-2000.

In 1995 I was interviewed for a SanFrancisco radio program about the conceptof cereal box collecting. The feature was sopopular that it was re-aired two months later.

In 1996 my fience and I moved to the desertwith her 6-year old daughter Kyla. We weremarried in Vegas and rented a 1-bedroomapartment with cash I had from selling comicbooks. In a few months we were pregnantwith our daughter Karly, due in November.We had no jobs and no money. We didn'thave any food, gasoline, or money for nextmonth's rent.

We weren't qualified for public assistancebecause San Diego County had misplacedthe proof of our existence... Kevin boughtone of our Freakies Cereal boxes from us forone month's rent. He sent the money byFed-Ex. He and his friends sent us hundredsof dollars more for cereal boxes during thosefinancilly-challenged times. Thank goodness.The cereal boxes that I had bought in the

80's and early 90's had been there for us whenwe needed them most, selling for $5, $10 and$20 each.

In 1998 I submitted copies of The FreakieMagnet and FREE INSIDE #15 along with a"collectable cereal box" to our local newspaper,The Desert Trail, and offered to be featured intheir Community section. Kyla had told me thatshe wanted to be quoted in a newspaper arti-cle, like a friend of hers had. The reportercame over, interviewd me, took some picturesand asked Kyla what she thought about thehobby. That's how Kyla got her quote in thepaper. The article was a full page, with photos,called “Breakfast at Mikals.”

Using my obsession with cereal packaging andmarketing, a decade of writing commentary onpromotions, and a dozens of college creditsaspiring to be a cereal company marketing rep-resentative, I had applied to be a MarketingSpecialist for the Marine Corps Base. I got thejob and began working in the Marketing depart-ment the same day "Breakfast at Mikals" hit thestreet in town. I've been with the company forfive years now.

The librarian from our County library read thenewspaper article and asked if I'd set up a dis-play of cereal boxes, for a month, in the locallibrary. Of my 1000 cereal boxes, I selected250 of my best boxes to choose the 24 I couldfit in the display case. During the set-up, Ifound that space only allowed for 18 of them.In 1999, with 16 Freakies figures and magnetsand a Kellogg's H.R. Pufnstuf Freddy Flute toy(with instructions) in the foreground, the desertcommunity of Twentynine Palms, California,saw cereal box collecting for the first time.

I sold hundreds of cereal boxes between 1997and 2002. I bought hundreds of cereal boxesat the store and on ebay during that same peri-od.

(Continued next page)

On Saturday, July 19, 2003, at the San DiegoComic Con, Duane Dimock, Jon Anderson andmyself, stood together, side by side as friends,fifteen years after the beginning of contemporarycereal box collecting.

The reunion was unplanned and none of usthought to take a picture. We had set out in thelate 80's to collect cereal boxes and often talkedabout the future: ten or fifteen years from then.At one point we have each owned the same PinkPanther Cereal (1974) 5-in-1 Spy Kit box. (It'scurrently in my collection). Now, we are sur-rounded by our future.

I vividly remember having had the 5-in-1 spy kitas a child. I had got it free, inside a box of cere-al when I was eleven years old. It, like theFreddy Flute, was one of my favorite cereal toys.I had stalked that cereal box memory through myearly years of collecting, to aquire that box. Ivividly remember, the first time I saw BarbieCereal (1988), as an adult, working in a super-market. Glow-in-the-Dark Ghostbusters (1989)was the greatest box I'd ever seen. I quicklywrote a letter to comic book creator TrinaRobbins and suggested that she make a comicbook with a glow-in-the-dark cover, now that thetechnology existed. She declined and it wouldbe years before Marvel and DC comics eachreleased comic books with glow-in-the-dark cov-ers. X-Men Honey Puffs (1995, England) arrivedfrom my new British friend Darren, when I livedin San Diego. I was with my wife, Jessica, andthe kids in Palm Springs, when I got Kellogg'sPowerpuff Girls Cereal (2001). Many cereal boxcollectors have told me that they vividly remem-ber certain childhood experiences at the break-fast table. My adult memories from the cerealtable are equally exciting.

In 15 years I have made great friends, made penpals, and traded with friends in Japan, England,Australia and Spain. I've bought cereal boxes inCanada, Mexico, and across the United States.Because I collect contemporary product packag-ing, I can recount the circumstances of my lifefrom childhood through adulthood, by the offerson cereal boxes.

This hobby has come to define me. My friends,my history, and my interests are intertwined withcereal box collecting. During the jobs, differentcities, comic convention tours, and boardercrossings, my constant experience has been thesupermarket cereal aisle. I've the cereal aisle ofevery city I've been in since 1987. Hundreds ofcereal aisles in dozens of cities in three coun-tries resulted in thousands of cereal boxes mov-ing through my collection.

There may still be a future in my future. With agood career, a happy family, and a nice house inthe desert, I've got many, many more cerealboxes to collect. Afterall, Kellogg's recentlysigned a fifteen-year contract with Disney....

At the end of my life, with my family and oldfriends from the hobby standing around happilyeuligizing over my role in cereal box history, mytombstone will be forever carved: "HEY KIDS:Mikal Vollmer is INSIDE this box!"

PRODUCT PACKAGING

A product is enhanced by its packaging.Not just because I'm a graphic designerby trade or a product packaging collectorby hobby. Millions of dollars are spenteach year on logo and package design.Books are written. Courses are taught.Type fonts are created and machinestooled for creating special effects. As col-lectables, the product is made whole bythe packaging.

Many Star Trek model kits were issued byAMT through out the 70's, 80's and 90's.The only variation were the box graphics.As collectables, they're great boxes.

Can anyone imagine collecting a first edi-tion hardback without the dust jacket? ADVD without the case? Record albumswithout their covers or inserts? View-masters without the cover, sleeve andcatalog insert? It's like model kits or toys

that are missing instructions. Gum cardsets without the display box. A set ofcereal premiums MUST have the cerealbox. Sometimes the collectable is therecord sleeve itself. Like art, the collectorwouldn't need a turntable to find value ina 60's Kiddie-A-Go-Go LP or stack ofPartridge Family albums. The music ison CD. The collectable is the recordjacket. For cereal box collectors, some-times there is no premium. The offer onthe box is the pop-culture hook. Theproduct package itself is the collectable.

DVD packaging, TwinPeaks DVD & book,Topps card display boxes,Yu-Gi-Oh! Cereal box.

First Edition AtlasShrugged book with FirstEdition dust jacket, AMTRomulan model kit box.

SAVING THE CEREAL AS A HOBBY

"Too bad it doesn't have the cereal in the box…"

"Why is that," I asked him.

"…Because then it would be in mint condition."

Some collectors save cereal. Like Coca-Colabottle collectors, they feel that the product pack-aging is "complete" because the product is stillinside. If you define the hobby as "product"-col-lecting then the cereal would be necessary foryour collectable to be in mint condition. Taking itto that level, then the box would need to besealed. It would occupy three-dimensionalspace. Boxes of cereal would be collected instorage cartons of eight to ten boxes. After afew years, stacked to the ceiling of your home orstorage facility.

When I told another friend about the idea of sav-ing the cereal in the box, she made the com-

ment that "you might as well start your bug col-lection at the same time." Insect repellent wouldbe a very necessary component of a cereal col-lection. I've observed a forty-foot procession ofants moving in and out of a full box of Kellogg'sC3POs (1984), back in 1991. The entry holesthat the bugs ate in the side panel destroyed thecollectable value of the box.

For me, the hobby is "cereal box collecting".The product packaging, the premium and myexperience in the context of acquiring the piececan trigger my trip down memory lane. I don'tneed for the cereal to still be inside my PinkPanther Flakes Box. I recall the cereal. If I wantto recreate the experience of the cereal at anytime I can ad Nestle Strawberry milk to CornFlakes and dine like it's 1974. If the cereal werestill sealed inside, I'd be deprived of seeing themint-in-pack premium. The premium is worth$30. The box is worth $150. How much wouldthe bag of cereal be worth if it were sold sepa-rately? Could it be sold? If someone were sell-ing a bag (no box) of ET Cereal, StrawberryShortcake Cereal, or Pac Man Cereal, from the80's, how much value would it give to a box andpremium? In most other product packaging col-lecting hobbies, the content-product has inde-pendent value. Exceptions might be bubble gumcards, mint-in-package, with the original gum.

Unlike wine collecting, cereal box collecting isabout the box, not the cereal. Cereal does notage and increase in value the way that winedoes. Having a 1987 Freakies cereal box withthe original marshmallow cereal might be aninteresting novelty to some collectors but wouldrequire special handling throughout its posses-sion and display. 1971 boxes of Vanilly Crunchor Cinnamon Crunch would have required simi-lar care. And to what point? Where does a col-lector draw the line? Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes,and Life Cereal haven't changed their cereals indecades. Would only the unique cereals like CatIn The Hat be saved? What about every newmarshmallow in Lucky Charms or new color inFruity Pebbles?

(continued after next page)

After fifteen years of collecting cereal boxes, fullof cereal, and moving them from state to state,I'd need a two-story house just to store and dis-play the collection. It would "smell" weird. Andmy home would have a perimeter of insectrepellant. Flypaper would twitch from all cornersof the rooms.

Friends could come over and say, "Look at allthe boxes of "mint" cereal. Let's have a bowl."

"Oh no. We can't eat it. It's collectable…"

For me, it's best to have a nice shelf display ofempty cereal boxes, their premiums, and a fewnicely matted and framed ads on constant rota-tion. The hobby can be explained to friendswithout too much contrivance. The boxes canbe sold and shipped without fear of beingcrushed. I can store hundreds of cereal boxes,flat in my living room closet without dreading aninfestation of hungry bugs. When I buy a collec-tion in which a collector has saved the cereal, aRalston Batman bank-box, for instance, I askthem to extract it before shipping. It ruins theshrink-wrap. The glued edges are compro-mised. Ephemeral food product is wasted. I'mnot a "cereal" collector so I believe that the cere-al box can be described as being in perfect con-dition. I'm happy.

If someone tells you that a cereal box is more"mint" because it has the cereal inside, that's hisor her prerogative. If you agree and pay it, it'syours - and everything that comes with it.

HOT FLASHES

At least one reader may be seeing these ideasfor the first time, as I once did. When I firstlearned of cereal box collecting as a hobby, Idrove all over town to the little dive-supermar-kets, looking for old boxes still on the shelves,deep in the back, ignored by lazy stock clerks.That's how I got Nerds Cereal and one of thelast boxes of Smurfberry Crunch.

If a collector, new to the hobby, went out search-ing today, they might still find these gems on thesupermarket shelf. Fifteen years from now theycould say: "look what I bought when it wasNEW!..."

1. Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Boo Berrygate-fold nodder boxes. The best thing sinceglow-in-the-dark & flicker-eyes. Monster cerealsare iconic to the hobby. Some of the boxes overthe years have really stood out against othercereals by featuring GREAT gimmicks! Foilpackaging, plastic eyes stuck to the characterson the front of the box. A glow-in-the-dark backon Count Chocula. This new series where thebox opens to reveal beautiful portraits of thecereal characters, varying from box to box, makethis the hottest thing in a decade from CountChocula. Limited distribution and high demandwill make these incredible must-own pieces tocollectors getting into the hobby late… say, ayear from now… A decade from now this type ofcollectable will be as-hot as a Fruity YummyMummy Cereal, which was on the shelves whenI began collecting and recently sold for over ahundred dollars on ebay… Do the math. Thiscould practically be a $500 set of three boxes intwenty years.

2. The Cat In The Hat Cereal. The moviemay fade into obscurity fast but Dr. Seuss willsustain. To their credit, all of the graphics arevintage Seuss, not movie stills, so it makes agreat component to the Kellogg's Dr. SeussReading boxes of the 90's.

(Continued after second page)

3. Looney Tunes Cereal. Like 1990's TinyToons Cereal, this character-based movie tie-inbox will resonate with generations to come.Ironically, the cereal is old, round "Trix" and fea-tures Bugs Bunny instead of the Trix Rabbit. Iguess rabbits and fruit cereal go together. Gofigure.

4. Cap'n Crunch, Crunch Berries & PeanutButter Crunch Disney's Brother Bear. (See:Cap'n Crunch Disney's Aladin.) What more canbe said? Cap'n Crunch rocks! Disney's latest"classic" etc. Win-win.

5. Cocoa Krispies Cat In The Hat Thing-1,Thing-2 beanie in-pack. Before the film, peoplereally enjoyed the book "The Cat In The Hat"and they will forget the movie and resume theirenjoyment of literature in the (near) future. Thefree inside toy is cute and will display quite nice-ly in the years to come. The characters can bebest enjoyed as book tie-ins instead of movietie-ins. Also available in Froot Loops, FrostedFlakes and other Kellogg's cereals. The boxeslook cool with vintage Seuss graphics.

6. Cap'n Crunch Go Wild Berries. Are peo-ple still collecting Cap'n Crunch variation boxes?Punch Crunch, Volcano Crunch, GalacticCrunch, Choco Donuts Crunch, Oops All Berries,Deep See Crunch, Home Run Crunch, annualChristmas Crunch boxes… ? If they are, thenit's component-valid and no collection will becomplete without it. That's the shoe-in. TheRugrats TV cartoon and movie tie-in (especiallysince Rugrats Go Wild is an entertaining movie,)is all crossover plus-stuff. Great, colorful char-acter box.

If a collector bought just these ten boxes, they'dhave a SOLID foundation. Every collectionstarts with "one"… Any one of these cerealboxes would be a good start. To the establishedcollector, it's redundant. It's the same cool stuffthat's been coming out for 30 years and proba-bly the next 30… Buy it all.

NEXT ISSUE: FREE INSIDE #17

CAP’N CRUNCH

STAYING CURRENTWITH THE NEW BOXES

HOW eBAY IMPACTSCEREAL BOX COLLECTING

COLLECTING FLINTSTONESPEBBLES CEREAL

MUCH MORE!...

MIKAL Vollmer760.362.4817