Sugar Smacks + Spock

On the Vintage Ads LJ, one of history's great Sugar Smacks boxes.

Kellogg's)))

• [John Hudgens]

  re:#11 – here’s a much better scan of the Heineken Spock billboard: http://www.zteamproductions.com/beerspock2.jpg

• [Ted8305]

  Just wait till LJ ontd_startrek sees this.

• [Anonymous]

  My one-off mini-zine “Cheerio Wisdom” featured this and other cereal box images:
  http://goatee.net/cheerio/index.html

• [benher]

  Spock is daring kids to mock mascara.

• [eagleapex]

  this makes Spock cry. http://www.cryingspock.com/

• [semiotix]

  I remember Mission #271. Kirk is kidnapped during a routine away mission, and the only way Spock can raise the ransom money is to win a drag queen contest. The judges were slightly underwhelmed by his makeup, but charmed by the tone-perfect appliqué “SPOCK” that he jazzed up his uniform with.

• [Anonymous]

  He seems to be holding a circa 2003 hand-held digital camcorder. The blue eyeshadow is unfashionably 80′s retro, though.

• [Anonymous]

  It’s a good thing it says “Spock” on his shirt. I thought it was Scotty.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  I just hope that Spock is shooting this Sugar Smacks box. And that his phaser is set on kill.

• [Pinary]

  Oh, space energy comes from Sugar Smacks? That’s where I’ve been going wrong- I kept trying to use Antimatter Crispies!

• [lesbessant]

  I remember boxes like that. Unless I’m really imagining things, they used to have cut-out masks on the back of the box, which had a similar quality to the Spock picture.

  But what *really* sticks in my mind is that there was a picture of what was probably meant to be Sulu, only they didn’t actually check his name, and just called him “Helmsman”.

  Nearly as much fun as the unauthorised Star Wars magazines that decided that TIE (as in “fighter”) stood for “The Imperial Empire”…

  Funny how I can remember stuff like that, but forgot to do something I was meant to do last weekend.

• [sam1148]

  Spock also has devil horns on the box.

• [Josh Larios]

  Mike Jittlov has one of these; there’s a larger scan of it on his site.

• [adorhino]

  So this is what Vulcans eat!

• [RadioGuy]

  It’s been a while since I’ve seen the original series, but isn’t his Starfleet insignia on the wrong side of his uniform? I suppose they had to move it to make room for his “Hello My Name Is” name badge….

• [planettom]

  Did these come out when the show was still in production (1966-1969), or later?

  I wonder why they chose “271″ as the mission.

• [spokanarama]

  Not just old cereal boxes, but the cereal (and prizes) are still in them:

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/73964283@N00/sets/1418054/

  http://spokanarama.blogspot.com/2005/11/my-cereal-collection.html

• [_OM_]

  …I remember when these boxes came out. I never bought any of them, because one of the cereals I have literally *DESPISED* all my life is Sugar Smacks.

  • [Phikus]

    What’s not to like? It’s got sugar and smack in it!

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      It’s got sugar and smack in it!

      Great taste! Less filling!

• [3lbFlax]

  In colour! Which is great, because I’ve only seen it in black and white before, and that was because I convinced my local comic shop owner 20 years ago to order a copy of something called ‘Flake’, a magazine dedicated to cereal box collecting with the odd aside on lunchboxes. How it got into the solicitation list I’ve no idea – this was a small shop in the UK – but I wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. And when it arrived, Spock here was on the cover.

  It was prime mutant material – I knew nothing about this murky world, but the articles were well written and interesting, and the galleries fascinating and glorious; freak flags at full mast.

  It was never solicited again, but its gonzo pride made it a highlight of that period, a time when I was also starting to discover the odd copy of in-print Boing Boing.

  Can’t seem to find an online archive, but I did find a claim that Jerry Seinfeld was a subscriber, and I think this is a book on the same subject by the editor:

  http://www.amazon.com/Cereal-Boxes-Prizes-1960s-Tribute/dp/0966212304

• [Andrew Katz]

  I prefer this one:

  http://www.coolscifi.com/gallery/files/1/spock_heineken.jpg

  IIRC, Nimoy relates in one of his autobigraphies that on the drive from LHR into London he spotted this poster, and embarks on a rather extreme hissy fit. He was incensed that he hadn’t been asked for permission (in other words, didn’t get any money for it).

  • [Halloween Jack]

    Well, it wasn’t just that. Gene Roddenberry was notorious for trying to make a buck off the Star Trek franchise any way that he could (in The Making of Star Trek, he admits that one of the reasons they brought tricorders onto the show was as a potential merchandising tie-in), and Nimoy had previously been irritated by the introduction of IDIC into an original series episode purely (so he thought, anyway) so that Roddenberry and his wife Majel Barrett could sell a pin of it through Lincoln Enterprises, their mail-order business (and for years, the only decent place to get Star Trek merch). The rift was serious enough so that Nimoy almost didn’t return for the first movie.

• [spocko]

  Want.

  Note my name.

• [jackie31337]

  Ah Sugar Smacks, back when they were still called Sugar Smacks. At some point they decided that Honey Smacks sounded healthier, and then eventually they ditched all references to sweeteners and changed the name to just Smacks.

  The few memories I have of my great grandmother are of visiting her, eating Sugar Smacks, and making her cuckoo clock go off.

  • [Anonymous]

    they’re definitely still called honey smacks, i’m elbow deep in a box of them right now.

• [John Coulthart]

  Re: the free badges, I still have my Spock badge somewhere. I remember there being a Kirk badge and also one with the insignia, which I also owned but lost. I expect there were a couple more in the set. These appeared in the UK when the TV series was running but that might have been slightly later than in the US. 1970 maybe?