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Exclusive
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Nelson Thibodeaux
March 20, 2010
Crispy-Fried
Gruel
Say what you will about
some of the good things on television today, nothing has ever
quite recaptured the flavor of the early radio days. The radio
dramas, the comedies, they captured people’s attention and let
them use their imaginations to fill in the blanks the way TV
will never do. If you can remember the whole family gathering
around the radio back in the days, you can probably also
remember having a special fondness for the adventures of “Jack
Armstrong, All-American Boy”. After all, Jack Armstrong was
probably the first radio show today’s grandparents had all to
themselves.
You see, radio didn’t start out aiming its programs at the
kiddie audience. At least, not until some marketing executives
realized what every parent these days knows only too well, that
kid’s show are a wonderful way of getting an advertiser’s
message across.
Back in the 1930’s, it was a cereal company that put two and two
together and came out with the bright idea to create a kid’s
show to showcase their product. The General Mills breakfast
staple that started it all had actually been introduced way back
in 1924, after an early dabbler in health food dropped a
spoonful of cruel on a hot stove and liked the crispy result.
Delicious though that may sound, the new product didn’t catch on
worth a hoot, till its producer hit on the idea to create a
kiddie show.
Sales of the cooked gruel cereal skyrocketed and when the
company expanded on a good thing and started sponsoring box-top
contests as an additional incentive to buy, well, it’s safe to
say they could hardly keep the product on the shelves.
About the same time, General Mills began the long and lucrative
association between their product and the popular sports figures
of the time. A few of you may remember seeing Johnny Weismuller,
Jack Dempsey and, of course, who could forget Maria Rasputin,
Barnum and Bailey’s exotic lion tamer? Sports and adventure
idols fit in naturally with the cereal they called “The
Breakfast of Champions”.
That’s right, the crispy-cooked gruel that spawned today’s
Saturday morning advertising marathons is none other than
Wheaties. I’ll bet many of the kids who first tuned into radio’s
early kiddie shows are still eating Wheaties today.
But what about those contests that drew such a big response from
kids all over America? Well, sometimes all those box tops can
really pay off, just like you told mom they would. Like for a
young sportscaster from Des Moines who won a Wheaties contest
back in 1937 and received as his prize a trip to Hollywood and a
screen test. He did all right, got himself a movie career out of
it. And when he was done with that, he went on to triumph again.
I guess you could say the “Breakfast of Champions’ had something
to do with it. It’s a Little Known Fact that the young man
Wheaties sent to Hollywood went on to become our fortieth
president, Ronald Reagan.
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