7 Memorable Cereal Box Prizes From The '80s

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Many of us have memories of begging our parents for our favorite childhood cereal. Depending on the decade, there might have been more on the line than just a bowl of Cap'n Crunch or Fruity Pebbles. We're talking about the free prizes buried deep inside the box, just waiting to be fished out and ripped open. To the kids of the 1980s, these tiny toys and doohickeys may have seemed sweeter than the sugar-laden breakfast treats themselves.

Toys were first added to cereal boxes in the 1930s, when General Mills put trinkets like trading cards and miniature airplanes inside its breakfast boxes. The practice expanded across countless American cereal brands starting in the 1950s, but the kid-centric pop culture of the '80s was particularly suited to the concept, with the explosive popularity of children's toy lines, TV shows, and TV shows based on toy lines.

If you've forgotten about the prizes you used to covet, here are some of the most iconic cereal freebies of the decade. From figurines to bike reflectors to super-sticky octopus squishies, all of these were well worth digging around for (and risking a scolding for all the stray Froot Loops on the kitchen floor).

Few franchises scream "'80s" quite like Transformers, and Kellogg tried to capitalize on a similar concept with Starbots, small plastic figurines that transform from spacecrafts into stand-up robots. You could find these in boxes of Froot Loops, Honey Smacks, Apple Jacks, and more. The little bionic dudes weren't quite as detailed as Optimus Prime or Megatron, but for a free cereal toy, the level of interactivity was pretty impressive.

Given that the famous Cap'n Crunch is a master of the seven seas, it only makes sense that his cereal came with toys meant for the bath or pool. Cap'n Crunch Surfers were plastic mini figures that could float on top of water using their tiny little surfboards. One of three characters could be hiding in your box: the Cap'n himself, his nemesis Jean LaFoote, or Smedley the elephant.

A highly popular prize during its time, Wacky WallWalkers were rubbery octopus toys distributed in many of the same Kellogg cereals as Starbots. You could stick one on a vertical surface and watch it "walk" downward on its legs through some kind of inexplicable magic (aka gravity). Many have pointed out that WallWalkers were magnets for lint and hair and left tacky residue on windows, but hey, that was your parents' problem.

Fruity Pebbles have carried many freebies, from "build your own dinosaur fossil" kits to a replica of the Flintstone family's car, but the Flying Disc got its own over-enthusiastic TV commercial. You could get a purple disk emblazoned with Fred Flintstone, an orange disc with Barney Rubble, or a white one with Dino the dinosaur. Then you might just toss it back and forth with a friend or sibling until your morning sugar rush wore off.

If you used to bike to your best friend's house every day, your ride might have been tricked out with a bike reflector from a Kellogg cereal box. One beloved '80s staple was the Garfield reflector, featuring the lasagna-loving cat's face with reflective paneling over his eyes. There were 16 designs to collect at one point, with multiple expressions available in different colors like blue, yellow, orange, and purple.

Perhaps one of the most technologically advanced cereal prizes was the plastic digital watch that Post Honeycomb used to carry. The device could actually tell time and was available in neon hues like pink, blue, red, and orange. It did well enough to expand into edgier colors like black and dark purple. Sounds like a way better promo idea than The Craver, one of the worst food brand mascots to exist.

Oh Gizmo, where have you gone? Much like C-3PO's and other discontinued cereals from the '80s we still mourn, the official "Gremlins" cereal was a tie-in to remember. Every box came with a free sticker. Better yet, you could order a Gizmo plush by filling out a form on the side of the box and mailing it in with $9.95 in cash, plus two proofs of purchase for the cereal.