I’m sure Saturday mornings are still special to kids. There’s no school, after all. But they’re not the same as they were when I was grade-school age in the early seventies. We loved Saturday morning cartoons.
Kids still enjoy cartoons, but in a different way. Cable exploded nationwide about the time I was in college, and the most fun thing about cable was the existence of entire channels that only ran one kind of programming. CNN had nothing but news. MTV had nothing but music videos. ESPN had nothing but sports. And networks like Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and the Cartoon Network showed children’s programming all the time. You didn’t have to wait until Saturday for cartoons anymore. They were on all day every day.
But in the early seventies, Saturday morning was referred to as “cartoon day”. ABC, NBC and CBS competed for the attention of kids beginning at about six in the morning. That’s what time the cartoons came on in Twin Falls, Idaho. Other time zones probably had different start times, but in mountain time, there were solid cartoons from six until ten, when American Bandstand came on.
Every family has different rules, but in our household I was allowed to help myself to cereal on Saturday morning. Every other day my mom made eggs and bacon and toast and pancakes and waffles and oatmeal and things of that nature. But on Saturday, I got up at six, made myself a bowl of cereal and sat down in front of the TV. We occasionally had a brand-name cereal in the house, but mostly my mom purchased the store-brand versions of Corn Flakes, Shredded Wheat, Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Raisin Bran and Grape Nuts. And what do those cereals have in common? None of them are sweet. I didn’t worry about that, because we always had a bowl of sugar on the table and a large container of sugar on the counter next to the flour and other baking necessities. So I spooned on my own sugar. And in my case, “spooned on” isn’t really as accurate as the term “dumped”. I liked a lot of sugar. I don’t eat much cereal anymore, since dairy and my body are no longer good friends. But I still like sugar, and I’m not the only one.
A new survey asked 88,000 Americans to rank their favorite breakfast cereals of all time. And nine of the top ten had one thing in common: sugar. Lots of it. The only non-sweet cereal to make the top ten was Rice Krispies in tenth place. Cheerios were 15th, and Corn Flakes only came in 25th. Here are the top ten:
- Frosted Flakes
- Cinnamon Toast Crunch
- Lucky Charms
- Honey Nut Cheerios
- Froot Loops
- Cap’n Crunch
- Apple Jacks
- Fruity Pebbles
- Cap’n Crunch Crunchberries
- Rice Krispies.
There’s also a list of which cereals ranked number one in each of the fifty states. Idaho’s favorite is Lucky Charms. And every state had one of the top ten finishers as its favorite except Alaska, Mississippi , North Dakota and South Dakota. Alaska’s favorite was Life Cereal, Mississippi went for Corn Pops, North Dakotans like Peanut Butter Crunch and South Dakotans eat Frosted Mini Wheats.
Looking at the top ten list, there clearly are a lot of people who have the same taste in cereal that I do. I’m not crazy about chocolate-flavored cereals, and there aren’t any in the top ten. No Count Chocula, no Cocoa Puffs and no Cocoa Pebbles. There aren’t any bran cereals. There’s no granola. And there are no real fruits, nuts and berries, even though five of the top ten mention either fruits, nuts or berries directly in their product names. 137 brands made the survey in all, and dead last went to Farina.
If I had my own top ten, I’d include seven of the brands in this top ten and probably throw in Golden Grahams, Honey Bunches of Oats and Banana Nut Cheerios. I’d leave out Rice Krispies because of their lack of sugar. And even though they taste good, I wouldn’t include any form of Cap’n Crunch. If you don’t understand why, then the roof of your mouth must be a lot tougher than mine.
