5 Strange Facts About Cereal Products

When we were kids, cereal, Saturday mornings and cartoons were the holy trinity. However, there are some cool things about cereal that we may have never knew.  Did you ever wonder where some of the names of these cereals came from? Or some of the companies that fabricated them? Here are 5 strange facts about the stuff in the boxes that we grew up with.

1. Crunch Berries Go To Court - Crunch Berries is and or was a very popular cereal among kids. But did you ever really believe that there were real berries in them? One woman in California took the popular cereal to a court room in 2009 because she said she was duped into buying the cereal for four years because she thought the berries in the cereal were real fruit. So a Sacramento  judge named Morrison England dismissed the law suit when he wrote his opinion, "As far as this court has been made aware, there is no such fruit (Crunch Berries) growing in the wild or occurring naturally in any part of the world."
2. Pink Poop - Back in the early 70's, General Mills brought to life two popular monster themed cereals called Count Chocula and Franken Berry which was its strawberry partner. However, the pink dye in the cereal was not being absorbed well into the digestive system. Parents were very concerned when their kids stool was colored pink. Parents were rushing their kids to the ER as they thought there was internal bleeding going on. Doctors were calling this problem the "Franken Berry Stool." Today, the Boo Berry, Franken Berry and Count Chocula are only available around Halloween.
3. Dr. Kellogg Himself - When you hear Kellogg's you instantly think of cereal. Did you know that he was a vegetarian and a doctor. He promoted his vegetarian lifestyle due to his faithfulness to his church - Seventh Day Adventist and their beliefs. Concerning the good doctor giving enemas, he would treat them to a pint of yogurt. The patient would eat half of the yogurt and the other half would go right up the patients rectum, to restore good bacteria to the digestive tract. But we most remember Dr. Kellogg for his corn flakes. Frosted Flakes and Pop Tarts are other Kellogg Brand favorites.
4. Cereal Mascots - We remember Sugar Bear, Trix Rabbit and, of course, Tony the Tiger. Tony the Tiger was voiced for 5 decades using the voice of Thurl Ravenscroft. You might remember him in the Christmas Classic "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." He sang the song, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." Other mascots were the Lucky Charms Leprechaun, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird and Fred Flintstone.
5. Atomic Bomb Ring - Toys at the bottom of the cereal was a big excitement for boys and girls eating them. In 1947, Kix cereal capitalized on atomic technology. While other cereals were installing whistles and tops, Kix brought out the silver bullet Lone Ranger Ring. For 15 cents plus a box top, you could score one of these rings. The ring contained trace amounts of radioactive polonium, which glowed in the dark when it struck a screen made of zinc sulfide. Believe it or not, the ring was promoted as "PERFECTLY SAFE" - "We guarantee you can wear the KIX Atomic "Bomb" Ring with complete safety. The atomic materials inside the ring are harmless." Because the polonium inside the atomic ring had a short life span, none of them work today.