Ahh, Saturday: essentially the sacred day of cereal, its mornings are culturally cemented as temporal offerings to both cereal and cartoons, while its late nights are perfect for some midnight snacking.

So what better day than cereal’s soulbound Saturday to kick off another attempt at extracurricular site content?

Long backstory short, my friend, cereal box collector, and frequent Cerealously ally Gabe Fonseca sent me some old boxes he had doubles of. This was some two years ago, but after misplacing and rediscovering the boxes in storage (sorry Gabe!), I finally feel ready to give these long expired gems a fresh look.

So welcome to Cereal Throwbox, a period flashback to more colorful, and oftentimes more creative, cereal eras gone by. At least for now, these are chosen with no rhyme or reason other than “I like/remember/want to imagine growing up and watching anime with this one.”

Let’s dive into some mind’s-eyed munchies!

Ice Cream Cones Cereal (2003)

This box of Ice Cream Cones, a cereal family with several sprinkled-specked puff and sugar cone flavors, may be pretty recent, but IC³ dates back much further. It originally debuted and died the same year, 1987, but was enough of a Rocky Horrific cult classic to warrant an equally brief post-YSK revival to celebrate the ice cream cone’s 100th anniversary, albeit one that fired its most iconic serviceman—and probably a lot of sugar, too.

I like to imagine how I’d review this “Sweetened Cereal with Chocolatey Chip Sprinkles” (a phrase that has never been genuinely written in cursive) today. I’d doubtlessly comment on the Doritolistic shape of the sugar cone pieces, whilst making anachronistic comparisons to its distant descendant, 2013’s part-Reese’s Puffs, part-Cookie Crisp Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme Cereal.

The back of this box is a 98% shameless, 2% milk advertisement for Nestle’s ice cream novelty line. This commercial ouroboros isn’t particularly inspired, with its typical “massive scene with several mini games” approach to box-backing, but there is one interesting paradox: the appearance of Post & Pebbles-aligned Fred Flintstone on a General Mills product.

Or perhaps he’s a double agent, leaving the back door into the box open so some Oreo O’s creme mascots can sneak in later to vandalize the logo. Clever ol’ Frederick.

Marshmallow Froot Loops with NEW FAR-OUT Marshmallows (2004)

This. This is what 201X marshmallow technology needs. An out-of-this-world martian marbit to show the complacent white spheres of today that cereal marshmallows can be more than undercover chiclets. Even back in 2004—just two years before the transformative Lucky Charms key marshmallow enraptured generation—Froot Loops was designing an entire multi-part epic around this Far-Out Froot Loops variety’s Toucan Sam and Alien Fruit Monster-shaped marshmallows. So even though the shapes weren’t the most creative we’ve ever seen, the mythos around them was far grander than the briefer fare we see today.

The back of the box doesn’t quite uphold the commercials’ hype. The “back of the box board game” is perhaps the lowest cardboard denominator when it comes to exciting content. Even in 2004, portable games were extremely prevalent, so it’s kind of hard to justify balancing a sticky Froot Loop on a bulging box when Doodle Jump is just a back pocket away.

Though I do give the fill-in-the-blank props for both not giving away the answer glaringly obvious and upside-down just centimeters from the puzzle, as well as for revealing that the Alien Fruit Monster’s true objective is “THE ULTIMATE FRUIT TASTE,” a cryptic label that seems to imply Froot Loops carry some sort of intergalactically sought-after power.

Could the Froot Loops Infinity War be closer than we think?

Crispy Critters Cereal (1987)

Already the clearly oldest of the bunch, this edition of Crispy Critter is like Ice Cream Cones in that it’s another revival attempt. This low-sugar, animal-cracker-inspired kids’ cereal were originally around from 1963-1969. Post tried re-crisping it in the late ’80s, but it was more microwaved than oven-browned, as newly debuted Crispy, the Crispy Critters puppet, failed to stack up to his magical and cuckoo competitors.

Frankly I’m a bit upset I never got to try this cereal. It’s well–publicized that I love animal cracker-flavored cereals (Crispy Critters were even frosted under its previous prideful manager), so I’d love to pair the flavor with the actual mouthfeel of a golden crisped camel hump.

Please don’t well-publicize that sentence.

The back of the box continues this article’s trend of exponentially decreasing fun factor. Not that gifting young kids precious developmental reading materials is a bad thing, but if my zoologically starved self saw this box-back during late-elementary to early-high school, I’d’ve pencile-sharpener-ed it into the garbage disposal in an embarrassed panic. Me? Cute and fuzzy? In this junior high economy?

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All in all, this bunch of boxes made my hunger for cereal innovation return with a mighty rumble. Rather than another old cereal reboot, I’d love to see the likes of General Mills, Kellogg’s, and Post (Cap’n Crunch is doing his best) try to redefine the game once more with more new flavors, marshmallow geometry, and dedication to worldwide literacy.

Think we could fit the text of War & Peace into the contents of an Alpha-Bits box?