A blog about television by TIME’s TV critic James Poniewozik.

Adverstalgia: Taste Thou the Fruit of the Freakies Tree

Yesterday's discussion about sugared cereal, commercials and Gen X nostalgia for our dangerous youth got me wondering about my favorite breakfast treat from when I was five or six years old. Behold, proof that everything is indeed on YouTube:

Fun facts:

* Freakies' flavor = Quisp = awesome

* Despite the art, the commercials' animation and the brand name, Freakies did not to my knowledge contain a hallucinogen. But I'll bet it had more than 12 grams of sugar per serving. (It was "toasty and sugary and golden with vitamins!")

* If I were to give my children a cereal like this today, my neighbors would probably call Child Protective Services on me.

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  • 1

    I, in all my twenty four years of eating, have never developed a taste for sugary cereals. I credit (blame?) my mother who would only allow me Frosted Flakes or Kaboom (points to anyone who remembers that, it was like Lucky Charms but with a clown instead of a leprechaun and no sugar coating on the wheat bits) on special occasions, maybe twice a year. In high school I'd try Captain Crunch or Trix at sleep overs and I thought it was going to give me diabetes.

    I think a bigger concern in modern youth nutrition is the advent of bottled water. We drank from the hose and liked it. Just wait till the water isn't red then drink in that warm, metallic goodness!

  • 2

    Creepy, creepy, creepy James. This was the weirdest thing that I have seen in a while! We did not have this cereal (to my knowledge) in Flint, Michigan during my formative years (by deduction I think that I am near your age). idigress jr. watched this ad for me and she said that she thought that they were "too cute to eat"!

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