The Sad Song of Skippy

The story of breakfast cereal is a lively and fascinating tale - the origins couldn't be farther away from the demon Boo Berry, and the endless post-war variations are a fine lesson in marketing and design. Isn't that enough? No. Digg teases the story thus:

HIJACKED BY CAPITALISM

How Cereal Transformed American Culture

Hijacked, eh? Diverted from its true course by (dah-dah-DUM) CAPITALISM? Meaning, someone saw an opportunity to profit, which ruined everything. The Mental Floss article has this summary:

No cereal ever promoted tooth decay, except in the sense used by Trident gum in the ads. Let's go to the article:

It's almost as if the author's smug modern stance makes you doubt the veracity of his characterizations, doesn't it? Then there's this, later in the piece - a discussion on the rise of mascot marketing.

Skippy wasn't a cereal character. Skippy was a creation of Percy Crosby, and he was popular before his use as a cereal mascot. Here the story gets interesting, although you wouldn't know it from the article. Skippy is the real story. From skippy.com's bio of Crosby:

What? Retaliation by people who wanted control of a cartoon character? Read on:

WHAT? This is like learning that Jif ordered a hit on Peter Pan. Well, that's what the page put up by the pro-Crosby camp say; it details the long-going legal battles. Let's go to Wikipedia:

Classic irrelevant pedantry, wiki-style. The Wikipedia entry on Crosby says the IRS did indeed come after him, and he thought it was because of his political writings. Then it got worse:

The man who created one of his era's most beloved child characters ever saw his children again. It's like the real Dennis the Menace story.

The biography says he was declared a paranoid schizophrenic in '49. He continued to write and draw, but nothing was ever published.

But we were talking about cereal. Turns out kids like sugar and cereal companies made money living up to the market's expectation for sweet crunchy things, and so the original intent of cereal was HIJACKED and America was "transformed" and there were ads on TV that appealed to kids. Horrors. Here's some more from the Mental Floss article:

In 1964, about three percent of US households had a color set. Here's a Tony ad from 1956:

Tony was created in 1951. So if someone at lunch today says "you know, Tony the Tiger was invented because they wanted a mascot for color TV," you'll know they've been reading highly-compressed histories.

If you're not properly horrified about the hijacking and the transforming, wander over to Mr. Breakfast and peruse the astonishing variety of cereal box art, and think back to your own childhood cereal experience. You thought you were enjoying that stuff. Hah! You were manipulated into thinking you were.

By the way, here's something you may not have known about the real-life Dennis the Menace:

Sigh.

DASH CAM FOLLIES They're calling him "Russia's Drunkest Driver," which is a category all by itself.