Random thought driving home

[jwgh]

Today's college students probably don't realize that there was a time when you could get a prize that wasn't made out of paper in a box of Cracker Jacks.

Comments

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I realize it, I just never remember it. Even when I was a kid, all I could find was those faux-holograms where the picture changed at different angles. Though cereal boxes did have prizes inside.

What I'd like to know is, what were these prizes of which you speak?

And would it be really that much more expensive to pour cheap plastic into a mold?

[jwgh]

I don't really remember what the cheap plastic prizes were, just that they existed.

The cheapest prize in existence for at least a while was the lick-and-stick tattoo. My recollection is that the proportion of boxes that contained a plastic prize decreased over time and the proportion containing tattoos increased, until finally there were no more plastic prizes and like 90% of the prizes you got were lame tattoos of some kind.

Ah, the days before THE BOX

[vardissakheli.livejournal.com]

I remember having a big collection of tiny snap-together plastic trinkets (and probably the little bars they came attached to, the word for which I have shamefully forgotten). Tiny tops, jacks, miniscule boxes, things like that. But of course they would all fit in that little choke testing tube now! In fact, they'd probably all fit in it together.