Page 48 - OSG Presents Classic Gamer Magazine #4

n the 1980’s, your cereals was a cou-
morning breakfast pon for a free Parker
I cereal often served Brothers Atari car-
up more than processed tridge. By mailing in
enriched flour, pounds the coupon, proofs-
of sugar, and colors not of-purchase from four
normally found in na- Parker Brothers
ture. Sometimes, if you carts, and $5 ship-
were lucky or if you ping, you had your
were willing to do a little choice of a free Frog-
collecting, your morning ger, Star Wars: Em-
bowl of Sugar-Frosted pire Strikes Back,
ChocoBrix could also Spiderman, or
get you an Atari car- Q*Bert. I remember
tridge. Heck, back then, visiting friends and
Fido's bowl of dog chow asking for the proofs
could get you an Atari from their PB cart
cart. instructions so I
During Atari’s hey- could get a free
day, it seemed like game. (In fact, most
every company was fighting to get a pastes. As I hear it, “Lost Luggage” by instructions for PB carts that you'll find
piece of the video game market. Every- Apollo was originally designed to ap- nowadays are missing that corner
body had an offer or contest where you peal to business travelers who were proof-of-purchase for this very reason.)
could buy, win, or save up for a game away a lot. (I don't doubt that an airline And, it goes without saying that, if
for your VCS. Saving up coupons, en- may have tried offering it as a bonus we're talking about cereal companies
tering contests, and filling out mail-in for frequent flier miles.) with Atari game connections, Quaker
offers were great ways to expand your The most notorious of these pre- Oats and U.S. Games went hand-in-
game collection. (Hey, $40 per game mium classic video game offers is hand for many years.
was a lot of money when you were 10 Chase the Chuckwagon, available only Even today, cereal companies are
years old.) as a mail-in offer from Ralston Purina's offering videogame premiums, with
One company that got into the video Chuck Wagon dog food. Now, the CDs being shrink-wrapped to every
game premium frenzy during the '80s game is a highly-sought collectible be- other box out there. Classic games like
was Kool Aid. The Kool Aid Man game cause so few folks sent away for it. It Activision's Greatest Hits and Asteroids
was originally only offered through Kool makes sense. How many kids read the have been turning up strapped to ce-
Aid Wacky Warehouse offers. By sav- side of a 10-pound bag of kibble look- real boxes, and Cap'n Crunch recently
ing up the proofs-of-purchases found ing for video game offers? offered "Cap'n Crunch" video game
on the empty packets, you could send However, if a company wanted a with proofs-of-purchase. I'd race out
away for the game. Later though, Kool direct pipeline into the kid conscious- and buy several copies if I were you.
Aid Man was available in retail stores. ness, the best place to do it was on the Today's cheesy video game premium
Even companies that weren't imme- side of a cereal box. It wasn't unusual may be tomorrow's
diately connected with children got into to see Atari cart premiums offered on Chase the Chuckwagon.
the Atari game premium business. the side of your early morning repast.
Johnson & Johnson offered “Tooth Pro- Most video game commercials aired on
tectors” as a premium with their tooth- Saturday mornings - when kids were
planted in front of their TVs for the
early morning cartoons. And what are
those kids spooning down by the truck-
load?
One contest that was offered was
found on boxes of Cap'n Crunch ce-
real. The "toy prize inside" was a little
wallet (made of some cheap card-
boardish material, as I recall) that a
child could carry money, baseball
cards, or whatever in. However, in
5,000 of those wallets was a certificate
good for a complete Atari set-up. I'm
not certain how successful a contest it
was, but I can vouch that I ate nothing
but Cap'n Crunch for an entire sum-
mer.
Another cereal company that got
into the Atari cart offer business was
General Mills. General Mills owned
Parker Brothers, which was churning
out some great Atari video games in
the '80s. So, it was only natural that the
two divisions combine.
Found on boxes of General Mills

Classic Gamer Magazine Summer 2000 48