The Great American Cereal Book: How Breakfast Got Its Crunch [Hardcover]

Martin Gitlin (Author), Topher Ellis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2012

Americans love their breakfast cereal, which is second only to milk and soda in supermarket spending. Cereals and their cartoon spokescharacters are some of the most enduring pop-culture icons of the 20th century. The Great American Cereal Book is the definitive compendium of breakfast cereal history and lore, celebrating the most recognizable brands and packaging, such as Cheerios, Cocoa Puffs, Frosted Flakes, Grape-Nuts, and Trix. Award-winning writer Marty Gitlin and co-author Topher Ellis provide behind-the-scenes stories about the creation of these iconic kitchen-table companions, with 350 images of cereal boxes, vintage ads, and rare memorabilia.

Praise for The Great American Cereal Book:

 "Instantly evokes feelings of childhood--watching Saturday-morning cartoons and being bombarded with commercials for sweet cereals with colorful mascots like Toucan Sam and Tony the Tiger." --TMagazine.Blogs.NYTimes.com

"While many of us have ditched the cereals of our youths (in all their freeze-dried marshmallowy glory) in favor of flax seed (boring!), the eye-popping colors and kooky designs on the cereal boxes of our childhoods still have a pull, which is why we're loving The Great American Cereal Book. -- Oprah.com
If you're a cereal lover, you'll enjoy poring through Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis' The Great American Cereal Book: How Breakfast Got Its Crunch (Abrams Image). Full of factoids and countless cereal boxes from days of yore, Gitlin and Ellis trace the history of this most iconic of American breakfast dishes. It's a lot of fun to look at how cereal packaging has changed over the decades, and for anyone a little bit nostalgic, it's the perfect venue for a walk down memory lane. -- epicurious.com
"A crisply colorful history of a favorite kids' food that became a pop culture icon." --Tampa Bay Times

"Whether you're a food history buff, package-design geek, or just an enthusiastic consumer of the country's favorite morning bowl, these pages provide enough--ahem--snap, crackle, and pop to keep everyone happy." --Real Eats magazine

Editorial Reviews

From the Author

My passion for cereal inspired me to launch this project, but you don't have to be a cereal lover to enjoy The Great American Cereal Book. I was thrilled to find a publisher that shared my vision.

Cereal is fun. Eating cereal is fun. Reading cereal boxes is fun. Cereal spokescharacters are fun. Not too many morose thoughts run through one's mind when Sonny the Cuckoo Bird is proclaiming, "I'm Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!" I tried to express that sense of fun on every page and Harry Abrams followed suit. The 350 images of cereal boxes, ads and memorabilia that pepper the pages of this book make it colorful and, of course, fun.

But if not for co-author Topher Ellis and heaps of information provided by the cereal companies, this book would never have become a reality. Thanks to everyone!

And to everyone out there ... enjoy!

Marty

About the Author

Marty Gitlin is a freelance writer and the author of more than 40 books. He has won many awards for his writing, including first place for General Excellence in Journalism from the Associated Press. Gitlin lives with his wife and three children in Cleveland, Ohio. Topher Ellis is a cereal expert and editor of the cereal newsletter the Boxtop, the longest continuously running publication dedicated to breakfast cereal. He lives in Matthews, North Carolina.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Abrams Image (February 1, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810997991
• ISBN-13: 978-0810997998
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #13 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Antiques & Collectibles > Americana
  • #27 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Meals > Breakfast

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The PERFECT coffee table book! January 16, 2012

By David Dworkin

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Wow, what a great book! Informative, colorful and loads of fun. Lots of guests have commented on it. It is amazing how cereal is such a big part of our culture. We've always had it and taken it for granted. This book gives you the history of all of them, from the very beginning with the small entrepreneurs to the big corporate productions of today. So many times, I'd see a cereal and say, "I remember that!" (I'm 56 years old). This book can be the definition of a coffee table book: Light and fun and a real browser. Great job.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Magically Delicious February 3, 2012

By Scofflaw

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I believe there are three levels of coffee table books.

On the first level is the book you put out to look like a cultured fancy pants. You really don't like the book, and the people who come to your home really don't like it either, but they go through the motions of leafing through it, as a social custom more than anything. This is the level in which you find your Frank Lloyd Wright retrospectives and your selected Georgia O'Keefe female parts flowers.

On the second level is the book that anyone will have a passing interest in. The book caught your eye in the bookstore; you flipped a few pages, found it interesting enough, and brought it home. Anyone who comes over can browse it contentedly. This level is where we find the brightly colored rainforests photography collections and various other natural phenomena.
But on the third and highest level is the book that is so great, not only will people gravitate toward it excitedly as soon as they put butt to cushion, but will shriek with joy more than once throughout your chitchatty dinner party preamble. This is the kind of book that people will connect with on a personal level. Firmly situated on level three is where you will find The Great American Cereal Book.

This tome of the most American of breakfast products charts the rise, and occasional falls, of the American cereal industry from its humble beginnings at a sanitarium in New York in the late 1800s. It is the passion product of authors Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis, 15 years in the making.

Chock-full of facty goodness, there is something delightful on every page. Hundreds of cereals are broken down and catalogued meticulously.... Included in the cereal bios are facts about the manufacturers, debut and discontinuation dates, advertising mascots, and any other interesting marbits the compilers could dig up.

The artistry of cereal box design is pushed to the forefront as well, with fantastic full page photos of boxes old and new. Ok so maybe with WWF Superstars cereal, artistry might not be the exact word. But you know what I mean.
Peppered throughout the book are asides which explore topics more in-depth such as Cap'n Crunch's life story (It's way more detailed then you might think) or the origin of the aforementioned "marbit," those delightfully dry marshmallows originally found in Lucky Charms.

All of the classics are here (Cheerios, Kaboom, Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies) as well as the strike-while-the iron-is-hot ephemera of pop culture (C-3PO's, Bill and Ted's Excellent Cereal, Urkel-O's, Nintendo Cereal System). Indeed, something for everybody.
I cannot recommend The Great American Cereal Book highly enough. It is an epically researched and wonderfully fun collection that every leftover-milk-slurping American should own.

Plunk it on your coffee table, sit back, and enjoy the squeals of delight and nostalgic conversing that is sure to follow. You might also want to stock up on some Frankenberry just in case. Read more ›

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Breakfast book of champions January 14, 2012

By Robin Benson

Format:Hardcover

Pop culture fans will love this. A chunky book telling you all you need to know about a few simple agri products that must have generated billions of dollars over the decades. The two authors have devised a neat fun format for the four hundred entries: eleven categories from 'Brought to you by: manufacturer'; 'First poured: cereal launch year' to 'Crunch on this: facts about the cereal'. Historically it covers cereals from 1863 to 2010.

What I liked about the book were the pack shots presented as cutouts, frequently page size. Several pages feature lists and printed ephemera from past decades. It's worth saying that only cereals made by General Mills, Kellogg's, Nabisco, Nestle, Post, Quaker Oats and Ralston are included but this surely must be most of the market.

Cereals must be a hard market to crack considering the number of failed brands. What chance would anyone give these of succeeding: Ooobopperoos (Nabisco 1972) Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs (Ralston 1975) Spider-Man (Ralston 1995) Spider-Man (Kellogg's 202) Spider-Man 3 (General Mills 2007) well, they disappeared in no time. The chapter dealing with 1981 to 2010 reveals that the companies will clutch at anything, especially entertainment and celebrities to launch a new brand. Page 290 has a pack shot of HULK Limited Edition Cereal from 2003 to tie in with the Universal movie. Despite the gone in a flash brands others just keep on pouring. A hundred years or older are Nabisco Shredded Wheat, Grape-nuts, Puffed Wheat and Corn Flakes. Eighty years or older are All-bran, Post 40% Bran Flakes, Wheaties and Rice Krispies. Even Trix and Special K have been here for over fifty years.

Overall a fun read in a very nicely presented book, especially the dozens of pack shots.... A very minor criticism is that the paper is rather thick preventing the book from being opened flat

>>>LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Sitting in front of the TV on Saturday morning... February 3, 2012

By Dennis M. Roy

Format:Hardcover

A wonderful book that took me back to one of my earliest childhood memories, in the very early 1960s, of carefully cutting out the pictures of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters from the boxes of Kellogg's cereals (it seemed like each Kellogg's cereal had its very own H-B spokestoon).

The thing that struck me the most about the book is how the entire breakfast cereal industry has been polarized since at least the late 1950s or so, with its roots from the late 1890s as a healthful ready-to-eat packaged meal on one end of the spectrum (Granola and Bran Flakes) and the sugar/grain/artificial-flavor-and-coloring based kid's cartoon character cereals (Fruity Pebbles, Cap'n Crunch) on the other end of the spectrum. This is readily apparent even when you walk down the cereal aisle in the supermarket today.

Ultimately though, it's the packaging and the cartoon character spokesmen who capture my heart, not the taste of the products themselves. Alas, gone are the days when Linus the Lionhearted, Sugar Bear, and Lovable Truly, the Alpha-Bits Postman could star in their own Saturday morning television series. Except for a few old standbys like Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, Lucky the Leprechaun and the Trix Rabbit, one rarely even sees cartoon character cereal stars in commercials today.

For a more in-depth look at the history and development of the cereal industry and its advertising and iconic character salesmen, I highly recommend the sadly out-of-print Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal by Scott Bruce as a companion to this volume. But this book certainly has the edge in design, fun, and colorful pictures.... I do have a couple of minor nits to pick. One - the small page size and the thickness of the book itself and the thickness of the pages makes this book a workout. Both hands and a little effort are required to pry the pages open to an optimal viewing angle, or you can hold it in one hand from the bottom, using your thumb as a bookmark while you turn the book from side to side to read one page at a time. The other minor nit is the placement of the photos. Rather than being on the same page or page facing the text describing a particular cereal, the pictures are often on the previous or following page. Seems to me that could have been easily corrected with a little thought prior to laying out the book design, since the frequency of the images is actually pretty consistent.

It almost makes me wish there was a pure photo collection coffee table book featuring nothing but pictures of the cereal boxes and cartoon characters used to sell them. Well, maybe in a few years. Read more ›