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Pouring out a bowl of Cheerios for my wee girl this morning, and was suddenly struck with the thought that there seem to be no cereals on the market today that give away free toys like they used to in 'the olden days'. There's been a bit of pot smoked since I were but a nipper, thus I've lost the fond memories of what my favoured and prized toys were at the time. Surely some of the more clean living amongst you could nominate your own memories to jog mine. Please? Also, why is this concept no longer realised? If anything, it must be Health and Safety, or cost reduction.
In the late 50's/early 60's I remember 'deep sea divers' in cereal packets. They were blue tadpoley things with a hole in the centre. Place some bicarbonate of soda (an everyday household item at the time!)in the hole, drop into a screw top bottle filled with water. Unsrewing/screwing the bottle top made the diver rise and fall. Hours of amusement! As a 4yr old, it seemed it was obviously due to pressure differentials. To my teenage uncles,it was magic! 🙄
H&S = choke hazard = no more. Sad.
They have them in France.
I'm sad to say but, for the kids, the highlight of our skiing holidays is having cereal with toys in.
They still have them in Spain, too.
More than H&S I suspect it's cost cutting, the law on children's toys is probably EU based; the toys my kids find in the packs are certainly big enough not to be a choking hazard.
Shrinky-dinks(sp) in Shreddies in the early 80's!
It was a piece of clear plastic with a picture on it that you had to colour in using the supplied crayons then bake it in the oven and it shrank lol
I remember getting a plastic oil rig kit from collect Kellogs Frosties tokens I think. Times moved on since an oil rig was considered an appropriate gift for a child 🙂
Frosties used to give away tony the tiger bicycle reflectors to fit on your spokes
I have fond memories of plastic jungle animals in my cornflakes.
Incidentally in The Good Life, before they went self sufficient, Tom Good's job was as a draftsman designing the plastic toys for cereal packets.
I seem to remember holograms in shredies, me thinks.? And I remember the oil rig.
I recently has to throw away a Kellogs Frosties radio I saved vouchers for as a kid.
Is anyone here old enough to remember them?
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btw, if anyone has a working one they don't want, please give me a shout - ta
The fishing rods though they did I think lasted me a year if that 😉
I saved tokens from Frosties & got sent a toy 'tony the tiger' car. It was a proper die-cast car; black with orange stripes.
Trampus - the diving things you mentione with bicarb of soda - Kellogs did submarines & little boats of them as well, late 80's, I think. The submarine initially sunk, but collected bubbles from the bicarb until it flotaed to the surface. Once on the surface the bubbles burst and it sank again.
The boat had channels that guided bubbles out of the back & pushed the boat along. Great!
And can anyone remember 'tuppences' in Christmas Puddings? Hell they even put one in the puddings at the school I went to! Somehow I doubt anyone anywhere does that now....
I remember a deep sea diver with a length of plastic tube attached that you had to blow into - it was crap, as I recall.
"And can anyone remember 'tuppences' in Christmas Puddings? Hell they even put one in the puddings at the school I went to! Somehow I doubt anyone anywhere does that now...."
Due to the fact that 'tuppence' means a ladies front bottom where I live, I am currently s****ing like a nine year old schoolboy.
yes and i bet my sisters still got them all and never plays with them
Antigee - Tuppences? 😯
I got an Airfix model oil rig by saving vouchers from cereal packets.
and a harrier jump jet as well, I think, another time.
It helped having a brother and 2 sisters to force feed cornflakes to whilst the tokens were being included on the packets...
not being quite so old....................
oldest one I can remember was a rice krispies radio, I remember it because my parents told me I was going into hospital for a little while, next thing I knew the ned of my little fella was missing, very confusing for a 6yr old, and frikin painfull if i remember!
once got about 40 power rangers figures in one box of frosties 🙂
and a car that you pulled back, and it went, but when it hit a wall it reversed, turned, hit the wall backwards, then went off again 😀
I thought it was to stop rubbish cereal being advertised to kids? In which case why is the "happy meal" still going?
Oh yes. And small packets of salt in blue greaseproof paper inside packets of crisps...
I had a modest collection of tiny plastic commercial aircraft kits out of cornflakes, and bicarb divers.
I think maybe kids just have much, much higher expectations today and the prospect of getting something so fundamentally naff just isn't much of an inducement to buy a particular brand of cereal now. 20-odd years back it was genuinely exciting to have a new toy, even a really pathetic one. 🙂
earliest i can remember was an iron on transfer of kevin Keegan chesting a ball in Liverpool kit. They ended up on my pyjammas. Also had native american plastic busts and small palstic hot rod cars.
and PG Tips used to give away card series to collect in a little annual. Had one on planes and dinosaurs.
Yeah they used to be inside with the cereal which was best, then they started putting them at the bottom of the box outside of the cereal, then they disappeared altogether!
Errr... spokey dokeys of course!
Slightly (massively) OT, but does anyone remember the furore a few Xmases ago when some joker at a cracker factoryreplaced the jokes with messages readind, "you are a fat c***"? And other suchlike sentiments.
I know it's childish but I fell about laughing....
they've only stopped in the last few years - I certainly remember my kids gettting the occasional cereal packet toy and my eldest is 10
I think it stopped when they stopped advertising kids cereals on TV - as mentioned above I'm not sure how happy meals are able to keep doing it
i remember the various spokey dokeys/ reflectors etc from cereals, i was gutted to find that when i got my first bike (a raleigh bmx) that it had plastic wheels, ergo i couldnt fit the spokey dokeys. crap times 🙁
I particularly liked the toy soldiers with crappy plastic parachutes.
(a raleigh bmx)
I believe you mean a Raleigh Mag Burner...
I dimly remember cut-out-and-assemble Star Trek ships (and a bridge scene) on the back of Weetabix (I think) when I was very small, plus the standard plastic tat and things from a variety of other cereal packets. I certainly remember the colour in and shrink in the oven things - I had one of VINcent, from The Black Hole.
Camping in Wales in 2004 I got a Puss In Boots (from Shrek) plastic thing out of a box of Sugar Puffs.
Frosties used to give away tony the tiger bicycle reflectors to fit on your spokes
I have a cornflakes chicken reflector in my front wheel! It's rad to the max
arouind the same time as the bike reflectors there were rad bike stickers and spokey dokeys!
why so much bike stuff - was it around 92 (boardman barcelona)?
Those rubber diaphram looking things that you inverted and placed on the floor, then they jumped up.
its all bloomin cd's these days, thats all you will get.
bloomin t'internet, it will never catch on!
"Luminous Spooks - glow in the dark" !!!
Innocent childhood days!
"Luminous Spooks - glow in the dark" !!!
Innocent childhood days!
Star Wars (or maybe Empire Strikes Back?) transfers inside Shreddies (I think), with a scene on the back of the pack for you to complete. Caused major fights in my house... 🙂
EDIT: Should have realised there'd be a site out there: [url= http://theswca.com/index.php?action=disp_item&item_id=41653 ]Star Wars transfers[/url]
When Kinder eggs first came out they had really cool toys. Little cars and bikes with friction engines that you had to assemble. Brilliant so they were.
user-removed - MemberSlightly (massively) OT, but does anyone remember the furore a few Xmases ago when some joker at a cracker factoryreplaced the jokes with messages readind, "you are a fat c***"? And other suchlike sentiments.
I hadn't heard that, but it IS funny.
Thanks for the chuckle... 😛
who recalls toy in cereal? I guess that would either be the manufacturer or trading standards but I don't think many were that dangerous.
Oh yes.
Shrinky-Dinks, the plastic native-American busts, iron-on patches, and the holographic/2-D pictures are all sounding familiar.
Thanks, you guys, for reminding me.
If I'm right, some brands may also have offered plastic soccer figurines, frozen in an 'action' pose, e.g. a striker unleashing a powerful shot on goal, the ball just attached to his toecap and no more.
That aside, there's been some funny stuff written here, causing me to LOL and giggle heartily in a cafe. The 'tuppence' stuff - that's priceless.
A 'rad to the max' Cornflakes chicken - daftness and genius combined.
Wombat's info about Tom Good's career before becoming self-sufficient - I never knew that, and I'm rather impressed to learn it.
Thanks one and all.
FFS It wasn't "tuppence" in the Xmas pud - there was no such coin!
It was "sixpence" or, more likely, a "sixpenny bit" or a "sixpenny piece"
Who now remembers a "thru'penny bit"? (A coin worth three pennies)
Or a "ha'penny" (pronounced hay-penny) for a coin worth half a penny.
Or a florin?
Or a guinea?
Or a half-crown?
Or a shilling?
Or a ten-bob note?
Or the bloody farthing?
We've dumbed down the currency and the litle darlings still can't add up properly