When we were younger, my sisters (there are three of them) and I used to engage in war-like behaviors every morning– hair would be pulled, names would be called, tears would flow. It was a terrible scene of carnage and breakfast cereal.

Yes, we would fight over cereal (well, we’d fight over most anything but cereal was a big favorite).

Not only did we duke it out over who got the prize inside, we’d fight over who got to read the back of the box. Yes, we’d actually call (and we all know that calling something is the be all, end all of getting your way) back of the box as we dug out our spoons and bowls.

Back of the box means that while you slurped up your fruity pebbles, you got to read the back of the box. The back of the box often contained the best stuff. Puzzles, mazes and all sorts of wonderful morning activities could be found on the back of the cereal box.

Back of the box was of course the choice side of the box. She who cried the hardest would get the side of the box that didn’t contain the nutrition information. Sometimes fun stuff was located there– but it was no back of the box. The loser ended up looking at the front of the box while the one who didn’t whine enough got stuck with the nutrition information. Four sisters, four sides. . . get it?

All this talk of cereal makes me long for the days of good cartoon spokescharacters. Seems they don’t have the same magic they had when I was a kid.

I am still a fan of lucky from lucky charms. Though, you really couldn’t pay me enough to eat that crap (I am afraid of chocolate cereals and cereals with marshmallows). I do have a lucky complaint though. How many damn marshmallows are there in that cereal? I bet you couldn’t even name them all anymore. I remember the good old days when it was red hearts, yellow stars, green clovers and blue diamonds. When I was in college a friend of mine wrote this hilarious column about breakfast cereal. In doing research for the story, we actually called a local grocery store to get the exact color break down and number of the charms in lucky charms. We were wacky.

The Trix rabbit just doesn’t really do it for me. I just can’t stand behind a spokescharacter that can only outwit those crazy kids twice in like 30 years.

Toucan Sam. . . Last time I saw a commercial it looked like he had to follow the noses of his three toucan nephews to find the froot loops. Color me unimpressed.

Tony the tiger is the undisputed king of spokescharacters, that I cannot deny. But frosted flakes are so wretched that I can’t jump on the Tony the tiger bandwagon. Sorry to disappoint you.

Then there was sugarbear whom they totally emasculated by changing the name of the cereal form super sugar crisp to golden crisp. Who are they trying to kid?

I think booberry and count chocula fell of the face of the breakfast table. There was fruity frankenstien guy too and maybe a mummy. But all those cereals had those grody marshmallows, so I generally avoided them.

The honey-nut cheerios bee is just annoying and I think snap, crackle and pop are MIA along with cap’n crunch. Of course, it has been awhile since I?ve seen a commercial for children’s cereal. I might have to get up early some Saturday morning to see what they are offering up to kids today.

I weep for the children of the future. They will have no good cereal spokescharacters to look up to. But they will always have the back of the box.