Super Sugar Crisp

#11 in an occasional series of repressed 70's memories that turn out to be true.

I could not get the video to embed. So I will have to redirect you. Apologies.

"Golden" Crisp, my eye. I was there, USDA. You changed the Food Pyramid to include FAT as a food group. I distinctly recall the picture of the butter pat. We were happy with our four food groups, then you decided that Fat and Sugar could be their own group together, and the cereal industry happily complied.

Now you want to pretend that didn’t happen and the “Super” Bear and his “Golden” Crisp are all about fighting the evils of the world. But dig the Sugar Bear here, all Dean Martin boozy, pushing the Sugar before the Crisp and super-sizing the whole affair.

Do you know why you can’t get enough of Super Sugar Crisp? Because you are addicted to it, you poor sap. The word sugar is used 15 times in 60 seconds. And I am certain that is Ruth Buzzy as the witch.

What do we read into the motif of trickster cereal spokescharacters and their schemes for taking and keeping all the delicious fortified goodness for themselves? Sugar, Lucky, Trix Rabbit, Toucan Sam, such clever junkies when it came to making the score. And we kids are to cheer for their team, because Hell NO, you ain’t getting’ your hands on my stash. [some other time on the Frito Bandito, but certainly we must discuss him in this space soon]

By the time it was Morning in America, we were all out to “eat healthy,” all the better to retain energy for doing lines at Studio 54. A simple global search & replace was able to substitute “golden,” “honey,” “cinnamon” for the word not to be spoken of with praise.
This site presents a nice before/after list, along with a comparison rant about what happened to those classic blends.

• Sugar Frosted Flakes lost their opener, as if we might forget what they were frosted with.
  “Honey, what’s the frosting on these flakes? They’re ggrrreat!”
  [Singsongy, from the other room] "Sugar, darling."


• Ditto Sugar Corn Pops, before they were repackaged as Kettle Korn


• Sugar Smacks became Golden Smacks, the Smacks, then eventually Crystal Meth, as we know it today.

Not quite what Kellogg had in mind. And no definitive answer on what flavor Apple Jacks are supposed to be.

Now a study is suggesting that this “part of a nutritious breakfast,” (which, if you recall, featured toast with cereal, again with the important butter pat) may help us in memory retention – like the memory of how much we love sugar. The preceding sentence is an example of how a person hopped up on sugar might form a sentence about being hopped up on sugar.

Here’s a fun tool you can use to name your own cereal, or your next software release.

I used this tool to make the below.