7 Old-School Cereals You’ve Probably Forgotten About

  • maskobus
  • Aug 18, 2025

Timeless classics are not simply found in dusty stacks of old, forgotten record albums, but also in the recollections of the kitchen tables of times gone by, fond remembrances of our past. Breakfast cereals, lost to bygone eras, still exist in our memories, if not in the aisles of our local grocery store. Looking back, we find these cereals, and many more, remind us of a simpler, and occasionally stranger times in which the veil between the pitch and the product was often dictated by a TV cartoon character. 

Indeed, these included here are but a handful of breakfast cereals that may have once graced our mornings, only to have faded ever so slowly from our lives and daily routines until they were gone forever. Whether they were paired with Saturday morning cartoons or part of a complete breakfast of the past, these cereals might be gone but not forgotten.

Read more: 5 Discontinued ’90s Sodas That We’re Happy To Leave In The Past

Buzz Blasts

Banking on the wild success of the Disney-Pixar Animation Studios’ movie “Toy Story 2” and the assorted spinoffs that permeated the culture throughout the turn of the millennium, Kellogg’s introduced Buzz Blasts cereal in 2002. Featuring the handsome Buzz Lightyear, the astronaut action figure star of the movie, complete with spacesuit and catch phrase, adorned the packaging with his likeness and those of three-eyed aliens, while offering a short adventure story on the back of the box. This cereal itself was shaped like flying saucers, blending green and purple into “blasts” of whole grain. 

Breakfasters were sadly only able to go “to infinity and beyond” until 2005 when Buzz Blasts were discontinued. Kellogg’s did briefly introduce a special edition cereal called “Lightyear” featuring Buzz in 2022 to correspond with the release of the movie of the same name, but for many cereal fans who grew up with Buzz Blasts, it just was not the same.

Product 19

Introduced in 1967, Product 19 cereal was Kellogg’s entry into a breakfast marketplace that saw health-conscious consumers flocking to competitor General Mills introduction of Total cereal and the notion that they could find 100% of their recommended daily amounts of ten essential vitamins and minerals in their cereal bowl. The cereal quickly acquired a devoted following, in part due to heavy advertising that touted the benefits of staying on top of one’s health by doing something you already like doing, specifically eating cereal for breakfast. 

While people have speculated about the name for decades, Kellogg’s maintains that it was nothing more than the 19th version that they had created. Now sorely missed by diehard fans, Product 19 faded from shelves after a strong run of nearly 50 years in 2016, while its General Mills competitor Total maintains its presence on cereal aisle shelves in grocery stores throughout the United States.

Mr. T

It is hard to fully express to those who didn’t live through the early 1980s the place that Mr. T occupied in our collective consciousness. With his trademark Mohawk and profusion of gold jewelry, Mr. T parlayed starring roles in the movie “Rocky III” and a recurring performance as B.A. Baracus on the television show “The A Team” into a Quaker cereal made in his image with cereal bits shaped like the letter “T.” Outside, he was a tough guy with initials that stood for “Bad Attitude”, but inside he had a heart of gold to rival the necklaces he was known for. 

To that end, NBC created a Saturday morning cartoon featuring Mr. T as a gymnastics coach who travels the world solving mysteries and providing a positive role model for kids who are, presumably, eating Mr. T cereal while they watch cartoons on Saturday morning. In fact, TV ads for Mr. T cereal made it plain when the jingle included the line, “One bite and you’re going to be eating with the team that is teaming up with Mr. T.” While the cartoon only aired for three seasons, Mr. T cereal stayed on shelves until 1994 when Mr. T then, sadly, pityed the fool who missed their opportunity to try some.

Cap’n Crunch’s Punch Crunch

Historians will likely speculate for years to come why fruit punch flavored cereals went the way of avocado colored refrigerators, but among Quaker’s many Cap’n Crunch varieties stands Punch Crunch, a fruit punch-flavored offering introduced by the company in the early 1970s. Television advertising of the day explained the appeal of Punch Crunch in ship deck vignettes where the beloved Cap’n is joined by a dancing hippopotamus dressed in sailor whites named Harry S. Hippo, who dances over to the cereal the Cap’n then defines as “Little pink rings with a big pink flavor, just like fruit punch.” 

The Cap’n adds what we would expect — the cereal is “a dandy part of a nutritious breakfast.” Quaker maintained the Punch Crunch brand until it was discontinued in 1979 in favor of other Cap’n Crunch options, and with it ended the decade of the ’70s and the era of fruit punch-flavored cereals favored by semi-aquatic cartoon characters dressed as dancing, dandy sailors.

Baron Von Redberry

Time was when America’s kids apparently just couldn’t get enough of WWI stuff. The year 1972 brought to cereal shelves not one but two options for Great War aviation aficionados looking for part of a complete breakfast. The first, a General Mills cereal featuring a pickelhaube-sporting pilot named Baron von Redberry flying a tri-wing propeller plane and proclaiming, “Baron von Redberry iz der berry goodest.” His rival, in a purple bi-plane, British pilot and cereal, Sir Grapefellow, to whom Baron von Redberry referred as a “dummkopf.” 

Both cereals contained marshmallow “starbits” of berry or grape, respectively, and both were advertised as rivals, claiming that their cereals, not necessarily their imperial ambitions, were superior. High points definitely included the prizes that came in the box, which included iron-on patches, bath toys, and wooden planes. Alas, the cereals didn’t last as long as the war, and both were discontinued in 1975. Achtung!

Crispy Critters

In 1963, calls for cereals in animal shapes came to a head when Post introduced Crispy Critters, an oat cereal that resembled puffy animal crackers, which held as its pitch-character Linus the Lionhearted, a cartoon king of the jungle whose TV cartoon had him running the jungle from a barber shop. Marketed as “the one and only cereal that comes in the shape of animals,” Crispy Critters found success for Post until the early Seventies, when flagging sales led to its discontinuation. 

Inexplicably, in 1986, the company brought back Crispy Critters for a short stint, featuring TV ads with happy, parading cartoon animals in the shape of puffed cereal, an alien-like muppet that sounded like Jimmy Durante and cute kids who said “indubitably” over and over again throughout the ad. While the Crispy Critters cereal reboot was short-lived, it did revive interest in both the late Jimmy Durante and animal crackers.

Candy Corn Pops

What happens when a mad scientist with a penchant for Halloween gets hold of a Kellogg’s cereal mainstay? Evidently, we get Candy Corn Pops, but sadly, only for one year. That year was 2001 and the short-lived variation on traditional Corn Pops livened up the cereal aisle with a day-glow colored box featuring a mad scientist-looking character, complete with requisite white lab coat and crazed expression, holding a bowl of Candy Corn Pops, presumably his creation. The pops themselves lacked the characteristic tri-color pattern and the triangular shape commonly associated with candy corn, but the box claims that they do have a special candy corn flavor. 

The back of the box included suggestions for Halloween games and fun, including having an eating contest where you see how many pops you can eat in 60 seconds. What fun! No doubt, a game likely more popular with the Kellogg’s sales department than with parents. It’s hard to say why Kellogg’s only issued this Candy Corn Pops for one Halloween season, but for the lucky ones who tried this long-gone cereal, it surely won’t be easily forgotten.

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