“In 1949, Sugar Crisp had the distinction of being the first cereal to have an animated television commercial,” says Shurman. It featured three bears—Handy, Dandy and Candy—though years later, the cereal’s mascot would change to the affable Sugar Bear. It was also one of the first cereals to come substantially pre-sweetened, though Shurman explains that’s just because technology finally caught up to what everyone was already doing at home—dumping sugar on their grain flakes. With this new development, you didn’t even need milk. Sugar Crisp boasted “It’s fun to eat plain—right out of the package!” Even without their mascot, Sugar Crisp demonstrated how advertising was switching gears from focusing on parents to focusing on kids. “Ask your mom to get a package of our favorite cereal, Post Sugar Crisp,” says Roy Rogers in this ad at the end of his TV show. Original box designs, advertisements, and supplementary nutritional inserts were geared toward adult concerns like health, cost, and convenience—nobody saw the value of marketing to children. That changed in 1909, when Kellogg’s introduced the first-ever cereal box prize aimed at younger demographics.
