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MEMORIES:
surfer67 remembers...I remember my grandmother used to buy LIFE cereal and keep it in her pantry above the stove. I ate ... More »
Posted on 06/11/08
PHOTOS:
"He likes it! Hey Mikey!"
Few things could ever make some simple squares of whole grain oats come to life like the magic of television. Created in 1961, Life cereal was doing fairly well in the supermarkets. But only though the power of the airwaves would it grow into the icon it is today. All thanks to a little kid who hated to eat everything.
Prior to Mikey, Darrin from Bewitched was the mascot of the healthy toasted breakfast cereal, though few remember that trivia due to the eventual overshadowing by one of the biggest icons ever to sit in front of a cereal bowl: Mikey. When he first appeared in the classic early 1970s commercial. It managed to catapult the otherwise plain breakfast food into bona fide superstardom.
Mikey was the stereotypical picky eater that hated everything. His brothers proceeded to thrust this new and healthy-looking bowl of cereal at him – assuming that he wouldn’t like it – only to stare in amazement when Mikey chomps into the bowl with gusto. “He likes it!” they exclaimed. This commercial played for over a decade, and in the 80s, Quaker Oats (the makers of Life) began putting real kids on their cereal boxes and created a contest to find the “Next Mikey.” It seemed the public couldn’t get enough of the fussy devourer of toasted grains. Mikey was such an icon that he became the subject of one of the most well-circulated urban legends of the early 80s – the mythical Pop Rocks Death. The story went something like “yada yada, the kid who played Mikey died from eating Pop Rocks and drinking Coca-Cola at the same time, yada yada.” It wasn’t true, of course – Mikey was doing just dandy. However, the actor who originally portrayed him, John Gilchrist, never came back to prove it definitively. In 2000, Life cereal resurrected Mikey as an adult – though they used another actor to portray him this time around.
Life cereal has withstood the fads that have come and gone through the breakfast world, surviving as a true champion of the cereal aisle. In 1978, they added Cinnamon Life, and for a short while had Raisin Life. Today they have the Original, Cinnamon, Honey Graham, Vanilla Yogurt Crunch and Chocolate Oat Crunch, ready to satisfy even the most finicky of palates. And much of the cereal’s longevity owes itself to the apparent trust that millions of people around the country placed in a picky little kid’s opinion. The power of television, indeed.
