Our family wasn't alone in committing these "crimes of nutritional shame." Though almost all are no longer available, they were popular with us kids of that era and have an uber-devoted fandom on the interwebs to this day.
These aren't presented chronologically, I'm throwing them together kinda at random.
Freakies was one of those cereals we clamored for not so much for the taste, but for the collectable toy "freakies" inside.
This cereal had a big marketing campaign and though I don't think they had an associated cartoon, like many other brands, they had built up the lore of these slightly-ugly, weird and colorful little monster characters. Remember, this was the same era of irreverently tongue-in-cheek humorous joke items that us kids loved like Wacky Packs (I could do a whole SCRAPBOOK post on nostalgic shit like this alone):
Super Sugar Crisp
Another sugar-bomb cereal sold primarily on marketing and "prize inside" tactics. Notice this box above cashing in on the popularity of the Jackson 5ive! RIGHT ON! For those unfamiliar, in the case of included records, the record was actually part of the cardboard box and, as you can see above, you'd take a pair of scissors and cut along the dotted line, put the disk on your record player and enjoy the sweet toons of little Michael and his bros while you're gettin' high on all thet sweet, sweet sugar, baby!
Klondike Pete's Crunchy Nuggets
Until researching for this post today, I'd totally forgotten about this one. It was pretty much an exact copy of Super Sugar Crisp...sugar coasted puffed rice. I do think their shtick was that the sugar coating was a little golden colored to simulate gold nuggets? I may be wrong. I may have hallucinated it. Not hard to do when you're gobbling down that much sugar.
EDIT: Nah, it was another cereal also featuring a cartoon prospector character called Golden Nuggets.
Pink Panther Flakes
While we're on pink boxes though, let's look at a big fav of mine, Pink Panther Flakes. This shit would instantly turn the milk hot pink! And I loved the Pink Panther cartoons every Saturday morning so it went hand in hand. You'd think someone planned it that way or something?
Team Flakes
I don't think Mom bought this for us but the reason I lovingly remember it is because in the very early 70s I would be woken up earlier than usual for school each day in order to walk down there and, before school started, me and my neighborhood school friends would partake of the government-sponsored free breakfast program offered for pupils from homes that qualified for the assistance, in other words, us project kids. They didn't have the fancy super-sugary cartoon-tied cereals on hand, but they had this, a simple sugarless bran flake...and all the packets of sugar you want. And no one was monitoring the fact that I ripped open at least six or eight packets per bowl! I'm ready for school now, bitch!!!
Quisp
The think I remember most about this one was the texture. The cereal was either corn, wheat, rice or all, I don't fucking know, you think I was reading Nutrition Facts as a kid? I didn't care. It was pretty much obvious it was mashed into a paste, and shaped into little "flying saucers." The trick was to let the milk soak into the stuff just enough so when you stuffed a spoonful into your mouth, you'd get a little bit of a surface crunch with a gush of cool, juicy milk gushing out as you bit down on the clump of congealing saucers. Cool!
Boo Berry
My jam was Boo Berry, my sister got Franken Berry and my brother got Count Chocula. This was like it was written in stone. And never shall either of us transgress the Treaty of the Monster Cereals and eat out of the others dedicated box. Who knows what would have happened if that sacred bond had been broken. (Later, as an adult, I tried the other varieties and I think I got the better of the three if you ask me.) BTW, I don't even remember Frute Brute. Is this a Mandella Effect?
Cookie Crisp Vanilla Wafer
Yes, it had to be the Vanilla Waver variety. If memory serves right though, I think this was one of the last of the great sugary cereals of my youth. I was growing up. The early seventies was phasing into the late seventies and I was becoming a teenager. I pretty much lost my taste for these cereals by the time I'd hit puberty, I'm sure. I remember having a new, and hard core loyalty to Kellogg's Raisin Bran (never Post). And not Raisin Bran Crunch when it later became available. Just Raisin Bran. No added sugar, it was sweet enough. Then, I developed an even "healthier" palette near the turn of the decade into the eighties with what would be many years of appreciation of this next brand...
Quaker 100% Natural Cereal
Just simple granola. In fact, Quaker still makes it, and I just bought a box this week and had a small bowl for breakfast this morning, and they now call it "Simply Granola."
But I include the above box image with "Running Tips from Jim Fixx" on the back of the box. I guess this was part of the marketing back then trying to tie this cereal with "eating right and exercise" for a healthy lifestyle. Thing is, Jim Fixx, despite his "healthy lifestyle" died of congestive heart failure while jogging in his early fifties.
So yes, eat right, exercise, and you should live better and longer. But there's never any guarantees. Just like feeding your kids super sugary cereals every morning doesn't necessarily make you a bad mom. All things in moderation may take a few years of correction, and a healthy dose of forgiveness.