1950s: Free Gift Inside

April 18, 2022

By AHNZ

The decline of civilisation can be traced back to when they stopped putting toys in cereal boxes. If a society decides to carry a large underclass of low-IQ people then it requires breakfast cereals to match. Part of that product, from the 1950s to 2000, included the Free-Gift-Inside and Collect-The-Whole-Set! toy of the moment. From the 1950s the Boomer and Gen X New Zealand kid was treated to a vast range of cereal box toys. This petered out for the late Gen X so that, as in my case, these little plastic molded toys were still around but the origin was unknown. It turns out that the little Weetbix boomerang along with the little plastic molded Maori, crocodile, farm animals, upright gorillas, battleships etc. belonged to the era of older cousins I was too young to really know but old aunts and grandparents had kept them for the 80s kids who knew nothing of their prior intrinsic value.

As the carrying capacity of our country starts to stagger and buckle under the weight of a growing underclass of low-IQ kids we can’t have inedible objects inside food boxes. The multiplying Ralph Wiggums (Ref. The Simpsons) dictate what everyone else cannot have because they’re dumb enough to eat the toy. New Zealand is still fortunate enough to be enough of a European colony rather than Anglo-American to retain Kinder Surprise eggs with toys inside whereas the USA and its cultural colonies have abolished them least some idiot child choke trying to eat his toy.

Our contemporary culture has flipped well away from being smart enough to tell toys from food. Some years ago we reached the point of warning consumers that: “Due to the process method, traced of other nuts and seeds may be present in some packs” (Ref. warning label attached to a packet of roasted peanuts. Modern era.) This happened long enough ago that the low-IQ kids have grown up and now we share the meme: “If you think you are smarter than the previous generation…50 years ago the owners manual of a car showed you how to adjust the valves. Today it warns you not to drink the contents of the battery.”

“Cereal toys are one of the few childhood items that held a place in almost every New Zealand household over the last five decades. After a trip to the local dairy or supermarket, cereal packets bearing the tempting wording “Free gift inside!” or “Collect the whole set!” were brought home to young eyes that widened with excitement and anticipation over what was hiding within… While the cereal toys of today are better crafted, their predecessors of the 1950s through to the 1970s come from an age when toys were not as easily available. For many children of that time, real toys were often still expensive and only obtained on special occasions, therefore give-away toys in cereal packets were one way o make a significant contribution to the toy box…” – New Zealand Cereal Toys 1950-2000, Stephen Summers & Peter Fisher (2006)

“My favourite was the little plastic boomerangs. Had heaps of those from my Weetbix and they actually worked.” – Noel O’Riley, Facebook (2017)

Our Idiocracy is not the only axis for explaining the demise of the cereal box toy. As Summers and Fisher point out, and as explored in AHNZ’s Pizza Hut post, quality in the toy market boomed in the 1980s. Who needs a bit of unicolour plastic molding for a toy when you can have a life-like fully articulated spring-loaded He-Man or Mr. Miyagi? Fortress New Zealand held things like that back until Labour 4.0 opened us up the the world market, and world toy market. Prior to this we could only gaze in wonder at toy catalogs from Australia and wish we could shop there. Then came the Toy Warehouse with “17 Giant Stores” including the one at Wairakei Road, Christchurch, with walls full of toy after toy and isle after isle of such walls. The toy supply services of Sanitarium and Kellogs were no longer required.

The highly intelligent and informative ‘Weetbix Cards’ also given away in cereal boxes could also have their absence explained away by a more open world market. They too came to an end in c.2000 so it’s easy to say that the growing internet sent the cards the same way as the dodo and the cereal box toy. There is also something to be said for that other cause though which is that Kiwis had become too dumb to appreciate intelligent information cards along with their breakfast. Ref. 1941: Intelligent Cereal Boxes

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Image ref. Collectable Toys, Facebook (2019)

Image ref. The Toy Warehouse, advert; New Zealand 1980s memories and 1990s Memories, Facebook (2021)

Ref. Cereal Toy (1964) Weet-Bix Boomerang, Ebay

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