Saturday Commercial Break #2: Nestle Quik and Atari

Continuing in my new weekly series, this Saturday's commercial features the Nestle Quik bunny and friends playing some Atari video games. This was uploaded to YouTube by retroist.

I think this would be from the early 1980s or maybe late 1970s. Mix up a tall glass of Nestle Quik and have a great Saturday!

As always, I'd love to hear your comments about this commercial and memories of Nestle Quik or Atari. See you again next Saturday.

Saturday Commercial Break #1: Cocoa Krispies

Hey blogfriends! I'm starting a new weekly series today called Saturday Commercial Break.

Each Saturday I will highlight a classic TV commercial, transporting us all back to Saturday mornings filled with bowls of Super Sugar Crisp cereal, Hong Kong Phooey cartoons and Incredible Hulk pajamas. [ Insert your own cereal, cartoon and pajama type for the full effect! ]

As always, I welcome your comments and memories you wish to share.

[ These commercials will all be embedded from YouTube and should display if you've got Flash installed in your browser. Click the play button and ZING, off you go! ]

On with the show... this is it!


Saturday Commercial Break #1: Cocoa Krispies

Here's a commercial from the late 1970s featuring Tusk Tusk the elephant, trumpeting the wholesome goodness of Kellogg's Cocoa Krispies cereal. This was uploaded to YouTube by lloydbentman.

Enjoy the commercial break, and please post a comment with your Cocoa Krispies memories or your opinion of this commercial. Stay tuned for next week!

McDonald's Valentines

Happy Valentine's Day!

To celebrate the day, I thought I'd share some old Valentines. McDonald's used to give these away over several years in the 1970s. Here are four Valentines from 1974 (or maybe 1973), making this the earliest set that I've found.

Here we have:

• Ronald McDonald
• Captain Crook
• Officer Big Mac
  
• Evil Grimace

In the early days of McDonaldLand, Captain Crook had green hair, as shown on this card. Shortly afterwards the green hair was cut to make him look more like an average pirate that you'd see on the street back then.

Also of note is the Evil Grimace. Our furry friend Grimace used to have four arms and was originally a bad guy called the "Evil Grimace". This is one of the last promotions that I've found with the four-armed version. After this, they dropped the "Evil" from his name, dropped two of the arms and made him into the more friendly-looking Grimace that most of us know.

Here are the cards. Enjoy!

The Whitman Kid

Kids from the '70s and '80s especially should recognize this logo from Whitman Publishing Company. Without knowing if this guy had a proper name, I'm just going to call him the Whitman Kid.

The Whitman Kid ruled over the kingdom of children's books, box puzzles, frame-tray puzzles and comic books produced by Whitman Publishing Company. He appeared prominently on those products from 1968 until approximately 1990. Their "Tell-A-Tale" book series was one of my personal favorites.

The Whitman Kid is a friendly looking kid, always with a big smile and that trademark W atop his head. What I enjoy about the design, besides the beauty of its simplicity, is the fact that the colors often changed. The Whitman Kid was a chameleon of sorts with the logo colors changing to match other colors in the book or puzzle cover.

Here's a custom logo that I put together for fun. I scanned in the logo from an old book and then cleaned up and colored it in Paintshop Pro.

Some historical information:

Hammerung-Whitman Publishing Company, as it was originally named, began in Chicago and was bought in 1915 by Western Publishing Company. "Whitman Publishing Company" then became a subsidiary of Western Publishing Company, which later also acquired the popular Little Golden Books line. The Whitman Publishing name was basically gone in the early 1990s in favor of the Golden Books brand name. More on the wacky company history can be found here: Western Publishing Company.

Now back to the good stuff!

Prior to the Whitman Kid's arrival circa 1968 (or possibly late 1967), Whitman puzzles, books and such had this simple logo.


The Whitman Kid is one of those cool character logos that probably many people find familiar, though placing him in context might not be easy for the average person. I think he's just one of those logos that we've all seen on products we enjoyed as kids. I'm just hoping in this blog post to give him a little more visibility and credit for being there for us kids in the '70s and '80s.

I don't know if he was used extensively in other promotions or premiums, but I was thrilled to come across this "Happy Helper" metal tab button in a box of assorted vintage toy "parts" I acquired last year.

YES! I want to be a Happy Helper, too!

As I mentioned, in my research I've found the Whitman Kid on products from 1968 through 1990. So far, I'd say he disappeared along with the Whitman name in the early 1990s. He had a good 20+ year run!

Well that's about it. This is my homage to the Whitman Kid. Please contact me if you have more information about him, including pictures, alternate logos and especially other premiums.

PS -- There is still a Whitman Publishing Company which focuses on Coin Collecting. It was indeed part of Western Publishing company too. Another group bought the coin division from Western and then assumed the Whitman name since the children's division was going with the Golden Books brand name. Confusing, eh?

Until next time, I'll leave you with a few more of my custom creations of our good friend. Let's all be Happy Helpers out there!

Commercials of Sir Grapefellow and Baron Von Redberry

I just love old commercials. There are so many "lost" commercials that I've been looking for for many years. Two such commercials have just come to light, courtesy of OldTimeSportsNet2 on YouTube.

Here are the first commercials of Sir Grapefellow and Baron Von Redberry cereals that I've seen in over 30 years!

Updated Waffle Whiffer

I just made a few design updates to the blog, most noticeably a new picture of Wallace the Waffle Whiffer.

The old picture was a screengrab from a commercial on a VHS tape. I enlarged it, then painted over it using PaintShop Pro, giving the Waffle Whiffer a fresh new look.

Here are the old and new pictures.

I also am displaying less previous blog posts on the main page to make it load faster. But you can always see previous posts in my blog archive.

You can read more about Wallace the Waffle Whiffer here in my blog archive.

Honeycomb Creeping Monsters

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven't posted anything new to the blog in a while. I've got plenty of ideas that I'm working on, and hope to have some more detailed posts again soon.

For now, here's a super cool Honeycomb cereal box with the Creeping Monsters promotion from late 1976 (expires August 1977). I have one of the two monsters, shown below.

Kellogg's Bike Stickers 1977

Here's a Sugar Smacks cereal box from 1977, featuring Dig'em the frog on the front and the Cartoon Bike Sticker premiums on back.

And here are half of the premiums from this set.

H.R. Pufnstuf Cereal Promo

Here's a Froot Loops cereal box back and side panel from 1970. It features Krofft's H.R. Pufnstuf and the free fun rings that came inside. The side panel has the mail-away offer for a Freddy the Flute instrument.

Too bad it's not a complete box, but I'm not really complaining...

Trix Cereal Bicentennial

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

Today we'll celebrate our Independence Day with a look back at our bicentennial year of 1976.

This is a Trix cereal box from General Mills from 1976 with that Silly Rabbit on front. In line with the celebration we were treated to the Revolutionary Hero Badge stickers. Collect all 4!

And here are two of the four stickers from the set.

Let's all be thankful today (and always) for the freedoms we have in this great country. God bless the U.S.A.