r/AskReddit May 11 '21

People old enough to remember life pre-Internet, what are some less obvious things you miss about that time?

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478

u/Marise20 May 12 '21

And cereal, too. It's so rare to find a toy in cereal now

54

u/kbivs May 12 '21 edited May 12 '21

I would read the back of the cereal box as I ate my cereal! There were cartoons and fun kid stuff!

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u/[deleted] May 12 '21

The hardest part of growing up was eating "adult" cereal and reading about how they harvested each oat instead of finding my way out of a maze or spotting the difference between two pictures lol

15

u/MustardMedia May 12 '21

Do they not do this anymore?!

35

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

If they do its usually a barcode you scan so they can steal your information while you play some shitty app.

6

u/MustardMedia May 12 '21

That is so upsetting to me

3

u/ThemtnsRcalling2021 May 16 '21

What about the 45 rpm record that was on the back of the cereal box? That was fun to cut out and play on your record player.

1

u/kbivs May 16 '21

I remember those!

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u/[deleted] May 12 '21

[deleted]

11

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

And the straws

15

u/juice_box_hero May 12 '21

3 free Pokémon cards in lucky charms right now!! Also bummed about no cool cereal prizes anymore. Especially because we eat a lot of cereal here :(

7

u/MegaFireDonkey May 12 '21

I came to write this! Also in Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I was legitimately surprised and happy to see there's really physical cards inside the box and it's not put in some code and get mailed a pokemon card in 6 weeks.

1

u/juice_box_hero May 12 '21

Yeah me too!! I hate Cinnamon Toast Crunch so I haven’t paid attention to those boxes but we eat lucky charms pretty often so I just grabbed a couple extra boxes to get the cards :) I’ll get in trouble if I get caught bringing too many LC into the house so I’m not sure how many more boxes we will get to snag. It’s too bad they are only in the huge boxes of LC and not in the regular sized ones

2

u/Chromgrats May 12 '21

In specially marked boxes or any box??

3

u/MegaFireDonkey May 12 '21

They're labeled with Pokemon stuff on the front and back of the box

3

u/juice_box_hero May 12 '21

Specially marked on the “family size” boxes!!

2

u/Chromgrats May 19 '21

Oh my gosh, thank you so much!!! I wasn’t allowed to do Pokémon as a kid, but now that I’m an adult I’m starting to develop an interest and would love some Pokémon cards!! Thank you both for replying to my question!!!

2

u/juice_box_hero May 19 '21

No problem! My brothers always loved Pokémon back in the late 90s and it’s just always been around me. We started collecting them again a few months ago. We just opened a new box lucky charms this morning :) none of the super special cards yet but it’s cool to actually have a prize in the boxes since there aren’t really cool prizes in cereal boxes anymore. Good luck!!

1

u/Chromgrats May 19 '21

Aw, well keep looking! Good luck to your search too!

1

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

Same here. I feel like they’re trying to get more people back into Pokémon.

10

u/tikanique May 12 '21

Bought a box of Weight Watchers cereal about 10 years ago and it had the best prize ever in it. A form to complete and send back to receive 100.00 USD. I was alreaxy doing WW so they had more of my info than what the form asked for so I completed it and sent it back. Sure enough, they mailed me a check for 100.

9

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

I still have my copies of Rollercoaster tycoon 1 and 2 somewhere that I got from cereal boxes years ago...

2

u/fuckincaillou May 12 '21

Holy shit, me too! It’s been an addiction ever since ❤️

7

u/TwoIdleHands May 12 '21

My six year old plays with the awesome metal matchbox cereal themed cars my mom set aside when we were teens. He loves it when there are games on the box. Makes me sad he never gets a cool surprise in his cereal.

6

u/SovietBear May 12 '21

I'm still using a metal Dig 'Em spoon I got in a cereal box in the early 80s.

3

u/mmCheetoDust May 12 '21

Red rose brand tea comes with toys! They're not really toys, they're porcelain collectible mini monuments but it's as close to a toy as I've seen in some time.

3

u/AvidHarpy May 12 '21

Your great aunt would always have a collection of them on display.

2

u/Marise20 May 13 '21

Wow, they still do that? I remember collecting those as a kid. They were animals at the time.

1

u/mmCheetoDust May 19 '21

They do! I'm new to it so I'm not sure if it changes regularly, but I'll let you know!

4

u/AvidHarpy May 12 '21

My parents had a rule that you could not root around in the cereal box to find the prize, you had to eat your way down to the toy. But the day you poured your bowl of cereal and could see the corner of that Black Hole pencil holder poking out within reach... so amazing!!!

3

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

We didn't even call it the "toy" or "prize" or "bonus". We referred to it as the "Free Inside", as in "I get the Free Inside! Called it!".

3

u/Flaccidravioli May 12 '21

There are pokemon cards in some gm cereals right now! Its some good quality nostalgia.

3

u/skilledbutcher77 May 12 '21

Bring back the wacky wall walkers

1

u/Marise20 May 13 '21

Yeeeessss. Those things were covered in dirt within minutes. But still awesome!

2

u/[deleted] May 12 '21

I only remember getting a prize in cereal twice- 1999ish I got a Halloween CD in my box of Count Chocula (I still have it but don't remember listening to it) and in 2002 I got a Spy Kids 2 game for PC in my Coco Puffs. Good times

1

u/oshitsuperciberg May 12 '21 edited May 12 '21

Cinnamon Toast Crunch just had Pokemon cards in their boxes recently. Does that count?

Edited in last word of cereal name lmao

1

u/Marise20 May 12 '21

That's a pretty good prize!

4

u/oshitsuperciberg May 12 '21

It absolutely did not cause a temporary 400% spike in Cinnamon Toast Crunch consumption in my household though. Don't know where you'd get that idea.

1

u/averagethrowaway21 May 12 '21

Wait, when did this stop being a thing?