Page A4 / The Joan De Arc Crusader / Wednesday, December 24, 2025

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Sugar-frosted memories: the Top Ten breakfast cereals
on Joan De Arc Avenue

By J. Bueker

     The importance of breakfast cereal to my childhood would be exceedingly difficult to overstate. There was absolutely no variety of sustenance I enjoyed more and from an early age I developed, with the aid of the ubiquitous cereal advertising of the time, an encyclopedic knowledge of pretty much the entire breakfast cereal market.
     I retain a fond memory of the day my mother and I were shopping in the cereal aisle at A.J. Bayless and were approached by a woman who politely asked for my assistance in locating a breakfast cereal her son had requested she purchase. I dutifully and methodically strode down the aisle, expertly scanning the inventory, and at length concluded that the brand of cereal she sought was not available at this particular grocery store. She thanked me for my expertise and went on her way. Nobody knows breakfast cereal better than kids and I was very well schooled indeed.
     Each morning on Joan De Arc began with a visit to the kitchen cupboard located directly above the stove, where our family cereal cache was customarily stored. Typically we could locate at least two or three different cereal brands available at any given time thanks to the varying tastes of individual family members. The sheer variety of breakfast cereals consumed at 3219 over the years is breathtaking in retrospect and the following Top Ten list represents but a small fraction of the many brands the Bueker family sampled during our residence on the street.

10. Fortified Oat Flakes   My sister Sue developed an exceptional fondness for Post’s Fortified Oak Flakes and her insistence on having this cereal in the house led directly to my own infatuation with the brand. One of only two non-frosted cereals to make the Top Ten, Oat Flakes offered its own perfect little touch of sweetness that greatly enhanced the cereal’s uniquely delicious oaty flavor and texture. Advertised as a high-nutrition cereal “more nutritious than oatmeal,” Fortified Oat Flakes was just an excellent product in every respect and it’s puzzling indeed that Post inexplicably chose to end the cereal’s run in the 1980s. Arguably the yummiest non-sugar-coated cereal ever produced and one of the most luscious breakfast cereals of any kind. Ever.

9. Cocoa Puffs Chocolate flavoring was a natural inevitability for kid-centric cereals and several notable examples emerged over the years including Cocoa Krispies and later Count Chocula and Cocoa Pebbles. My supreme favorite though was always General Mills’ Cocoa Puffs, those delectable little chocolatey corn-puff orbs hawked endlessly on TV by the sublimely annoying Cuckoo bird mascot called Sonny. The cereal was promoted for many years as being flavored with genuine Hershey’s cocoa, a nice way of subliminally suggesting a bowl full of candy. Of course, one of the lovely bonuses of chocolate cereals like Cocoa Puffs is enjoying the residual chocolate milk left in the bottom of the bowl after the cereal has disappeared. I imagine we were all cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs at one time or another.

8. Quisp and Quake Quisp and Quake represent a true milestone in kids’ breakfast cereal history. Ingeniously conceived by Quaker as rival brands within the same company, the Quisp and Quake duo arrived in 1965 and I vividly recall the very day the Buekers first encountered the pair on the cereal shelf at Bayless. We were utterly gobsmacked by the marketing genius of it all: the boxes of Quisp were cleverly labelled as “The only cereal better than Quake,” while the converse message was conveyed on the Quake boxes. Sheer retailing virtuosity. The characters of Quisp and Quake were apparently intended to personify the two extremes of human spatial experience, with Quake the rugged miner dwelling underground while the puckish Quisp was a sprightly visitor from outer space. As for the actual quality of the products, both were delish corn-and-oat concoctions that were oddly indistinguishable in flavor. Despite this commonality, Quisp proved to have considerably more consumer appeal and Quake was sadly discontinued in 1973.

7. Alpha-Bits Post Alpha-Bits introduced a genuinely new dimension to the childhood morning meal. Rendering cereal shapes into letters of the alphabet was a marketing masterstroke that instantly transformed breakfast into something not only more fun and interesting but even beneficial to a kid’s cognitive development and language skills. The cereal hence became just as appealing to parents as to their sugar-addicted offspring. The product was pressed into letters and then exposed to a flash-cooking process known as "gun-puffing." The resulting “bits” had just the right degree of sweetness and were uniquely tasty for such a relatively basic oat and corn cereal. Alpha-Bits was also one of a handful of Post cereals with actual records on the boxes for kids to cut out and play on their dad’s hi-fi. What could be better than digging the Jackson 5 during your yummy morning munch? A-B-C-Delicious indeed.

6. Cheerios There are solid reasons to regard Cheerios as the definitive kids cereal of the 1960s. While non-sugar-coated, General Mills’ famous brand was heavily marketed to youngsters throughout the decade and decisively established itself as an omnipresent fixture on American breakfast tables. In uncountable advertising spots featuring a parade of popular cartoon characters of the day, Cheerios was tirelessly pitched to us young’uns as a virtually supernatural source of seemingly infinite energy. Rocky and Bullwinkle, Tennessee Tuxedo, the Cheerios Kid and many others methodically drilled the slogan “Big ‘G,’ little ‘o’ … go with Cheerios!” into our impressionable little brains. Ultimately though the staying power of this cereal is attributable to its innovative manufacturing process and superbly flavorful oat taste, and thus Cheerios continues effortlessly to reign as a staple American foodstuff.

5. Sugar Sparkled Rice Krinkles I was never a huge Rice Krispies fan despite its status as one of the most familiar breakfast cereals in the history of the universe. Of course, I would happily enjoy a bowl of the snap, crackle and pop if that’s what was available, but the sugar-laden versions of crispy rice cereal are what I truly loved and Post’s Sugar Sparkled Rice Krinkles was the masterpiece of the genre. This cereal was made with a unique sugary glaze that conferred a subtle toasty vanilla flavor and perfectly complemented the crisped grains of rice. The Krinkles boxes were adorned for years with one of those delightful ethnic characters that eventually fell from favor as being politically incorrect, and thus So-Hi the charming little Chinese boy would join Injun Orange and Frito Bandito on the sidelines as an obsolete product mascot of the mid-1960s. Apparently some parents also voiced concerns that the name “So-Hi” was a covert reference to illicit drugs. I’m just cynical enough to suspect it was.

4. Sugar Frosted Flakes Yes, Kellogg’s Sugar Frosted Flakes are nothing more than their famous Corn Flakes with an added sugary coating, but there is something inherently magical in this combination. Tony the Tiger’s jarring “They're Gr-r-reat!!” slogan lives on as one of the most memorable and effective advertising pitches in history, but the simple fact is this cereal when drenched in milk is eternally delicious. As kid cereal brands became increasingly sophisticated and gimmicky throughout the ‘60s and into the ‘70s, the relatively humdrum Frosted Flakes continued to retain its place of enduring eminence. Frosted Flakes will always be a popular cereal; they are timeless.

3. Trix Trix was one of my favorite cereals from a very early age and I felt genuinely traumatized in 1969 when General Mills abruptly introduced “New Trix.” The cereal’s original formula with its traditional flavors of raspberry red, lemon yellow, and orange orange was retained, but for some reason the company opted to change the cereal’s shape from the fruity little corn-puff balls we all knew and loved into an outlandish sort of football-shaped button. This bizarre change was heralded with a cool new box design, but I was deeply dismayed that the powers-that-be could just randomly change one of the supreme breakfast cereals of all time in such a reckless manner simply as a cheap marketing ploy. Happily, the new version of Trix was not well received by the cereal-eating public and General Mills quietly restored the cereal’s original shape soon thereafter. Silly rabbits.

2. Cap’n Crunch Legend has it that Quaker had already decided to create both a cereal and an animated character named Cap’n Crunch long before they ever bothered to decide what the cereal would be like, besides being crunchy of course. “Stays crunchy even in milk” became the product’s indelible tag line, although the common observation was that the stuff tended to turn to mush fairly rapidly. However, I quickly fell in love with the brown-sugary-caramel-like flavor of those little pillow-shaped pieces of sweetened corn and oats, and with my propensity for rapid food consumption, the Cap’n rarely had time to lose his crunch. The later addition of Crunchberries initiated an interesting new flavor combination, but the original Cap’n was always this boy’s preference.

1. Froot Loops And so we come to Kellogg’s famous Froot Loops, which reign supreme as my all-time fave bowl of sugary goodness. Opening a fresh box of the Loops on a Joan De Arc Saturday morning is one of my most exquisite of breakfast memories, that incomparable fruity aroma quickly permeating the family room and activating my salivary glands in anticipation of their peerless fruity crunch. Froot Loops was conceived as a replacement for an underperforming Cheerios knock-off called OKs and first appeared on grocery shelves in 1963, the very year the Buekers arrived on Joan De Arc. I was a bit disillusioned some years later to learn that the “cherry, lemon and orange flavors” of the cereal are but a clever ruse – the different colored Loops in fact all share the same exact flavor. In any event I was certainly not alone in my love for Froot Loops, as they were no less than Archie Bunker's favorite cereal on "All in the Family." If you somehow disagree with me and Arch then I might suggest you stifle yourself dingbat.

Honorable Mention

Super Orange Crisp We certainly enjoyed our fair share of Sugar Crisp (later Super Sugar Crisp) on Joan De Arc, but in 1973 Post rolled out an extraordinarily weird spin-off version of the brand that I absolutely loved: Super Orange Crisp. Relatively short-lived but most unforgettable, Super Orange Crisp was nothing more than your standard Sugar Crisp with some peculiar orange-flavored cereal rings added to the mix. The resulting product was advertised as containing more Vitamin C than a glass of orange juice, but in any case the flavor combination was categorically unique. Surviving examples of the Super Orange Crisp box are unbelievably valuable and difficult to obtain, and are generally considered the holy grail for vintage cereal box collectors.

Puffa Puffa Rice A pleasingly palatable puffed-rice cereal, Kellogg’s Puffa Puffa Rice featured an exceptionally smooth texture and a syrupy brown-sugar sweetener that produced a genuinely singular flavor. There was really no other cereal quite like Puffa and it rapidly rose to prominence as one of the more popular cereal brands at 3219 in the early 1970s. Puffa Puffa Rice was originally marketed with a Polynesian theme that featured volcanoes, ocean scenes and palm fronds on the box that was later replaced by a train motif with puffs of smoke emanating from the engine as a play on the word “puffa.” Apparently the cereal wasn’t quite as popular with the rest of the country as it was at our house and Puffa Puffa Rice suddenly disappeared from store shelves without a trace in 1975.

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Carl Bueker’s Famous Burned-butter Popcorn recipe

By J. Bueker

     My father was nothing if not thrifty and the man’s fabled financial restraint was nowhere on better display than in the Bueker kitchen.
     The Sunday morning Carl decided to make potato pancakes from an instant mashed potato mix immediately and thenceforth became joined with Joan De Arc legend. He was quite sure this idea would work and I watched with quiet fascination as the man spent about 45 minutes trying to get the resulting goopy batter to achieve adequate cohesion to form a recognizable pancake before finally abandoning the effort with a few choice curse words mumbled under his breath. Carl Bueker did not find it acceptable to waste any food that he thought might still be marginally edible and that brings us to our lovely Joan De Arc recipe for this issue: Carl Bueker’s Famous Burned-butter Popcorn.
     ‘Twas a Sunday evening at 3219 in the early 1970s and dear old Dad was keen to enjoy a big bowl of hot buttered popcorn with his television fare that night, as was often his custom. Unfortunately, Carl’s attention to the butter melting in the saucepan on the stove wavered at a critical juncture and the resulting liquid turned out to be, shall we say, a bit overdone, taking on a decidedly umber hue.
     Father had the option of course to simply dispose of the burned butter and melt a fresh chunk for the popcorn, but his instinct to avoid wasting food proved overwhelming in this instance. With a simple shrug of his shoulders Carl Bueker poured the murky brown goop onto the freshly popped corn and thus was Bueker family history made.
     The memory of that bowl of blackened greasy kernels haunts me still. Did I sample the tainted popcorn myself that night? I honestly can’t remember now, but I’m thinking I probably did. My instinct to eat any available snack food was too an overwhelming one.

Carl Bueker’s Famous Burned-butter Popcorn 1/2 Cup Popcorn kernels 2-3 tablespoons oil 4 Tablespoons butter (or margarine, which is probably more historically accurate) 1 Tablespoon Salt (adjust to taste)

Pop the popcorn in a suitably sized pan. In saucepan carefully overcook the butter/margarine using medium-high heat until a rich dark brown, but take care not to burn too severely. Profuse black smoke emanating from the sauce pan is probably a sign that the butter has been burning for an inadvisably excessive length of time. Add burned butter to freshly popped corn, salt, and serve with a glass of cold Tip Top lemonade. Enjoy.

Nutrition Facts (1 cup):

Carbs 5g, Protein 1g, Fat 2.7g, Saturated Fat 3g, Oxidized Fat 0.5g, Cholesterol 5mg, Dietary Fiber 1g, Calories 100.

____________________________________________________________________________________________ JDA

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