After grappling last week with the weighty issue of new USDA school food nutrition standards, let’s ease into our Monday with something a little fluffier, shall we?
Allow me to present The Great American Cereal Book, billed by Amazon as “the definitive compendium of breakfast cereal history and lore.” Co-written by Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis (more on him in a minute), this new book provides photos and short entries on hundreds of brands, from the long-enduring Cheerios to the deservedly short-lived Mr. T cereal, spanning the period between 1863 and 2010.
Here are a few photos from the book — depending on your age, they might jog a few memories:
(By the way, if you click on the picture of Quake you’ll see that the box actually describes its contents as “sugary cereal.” How hilarious is that? No manufacturer would ever be so honest today.)
Topher Ellis, it turns out, is “a cereal expert and editor of the cereal newsletter the Boxtop, the longest continuously running publication dedicated to breakfast cereal.” Now see? I just love that. Maybe it takes one obsessive mind (um, daily blogging?) to appreciate another, but where would we be without people like Ellis, so passionate about their idiosyncratic interests that they’re willing to take the time to catalogue and share them with the rest of us?
All of this retro cereal talk makes me want to get back in my PJ’s and curl up with a sugary bowl in front of Boris and Natasha or Josie and the Pussycats.
And if you’re too young to know what I’m talking about, kindly keep that fact to yourself.
[Ed Correction: An earlier version of this post erroneously attributed the editorship of the Boxtop to Mr. Gitlin, not Mr. Ellis.]
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