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MEMORIES:
eclecticfan remembers...Ah, how I loved this cereal! This is just another thing that reminds me of Saturday morning and cartoons. I ... More »
Posted on 06/17/08
CATCH PHRASE:
As the Alphabet Soup of the cereal world, Alpha-Bits Cereal, along with its counterpart Marshmallow Alpha-Bits, was the sugary cornerstone to many a kid’s nutritious breakfast. Both were introduced by Post in 1958, and kids quickly came to love their “sugar-sparkled” ABCs.
The corn cereal bits are formed in the shape of all 26 letters in the alphabet, and in Marshmallow Alpha-Bits, vowels are the letters of choice for the colorful marshmallow bits: pink A’s, yellow E’s, purple I’s, orange O’s, and green U’s. Some years later, Post added blue Y’s to the vowel set, making it easier for generations of kids to accept that sometimes Y really is a vowel.
Over the years, Alpha-Bits has had a variety of characters, from the Alpha-Bits Kid of the late 50s to the Alpha Bits Sailor Boy who started to show up in the early 60s. It was a good thing we had our Alpha-Bits. As the many commercials reminded us, there was an adventure in every bowl!
Boy: Once when I was eating my Alpha Bits, Dracula tried to get me!
Girl: Oh no! What’d ya do?
(cut to scene of the boy eating the word Dracula)
Boy: I ate him.
Two more notable characters are the Alpha-Bits Wizard who magically showed up in kitchens to help out kids looking for something to eat, and Alphie, the dog that seems to be sworn to protect kids from having their cereal stolen by hooligans. One such nemesis was Nasty McEvil, who regularly showed up trying to steal the Alpha-Bits from Alphie’s friends. He was thwarted, of course, by trusty Alphie.
In recent years, along with a decline in television advertisements, Alpha-Bits have become harder to find in grocery stores. In an effort to recognize both poor sales and the low-carb sugar-free health movement, Alpha-Bits have been reformulated and have lost their sugary shine. So, while we may have a harder time finding boxes for our breakfast tables, memories of gobbled up adventures haven’t been hard to find at all.
