Cereal box prizes

A cereal box prize, also known as a cereal box toy in the UK and Ireland, is a form of advertising that involves using a promotional toy or small item that is offered as an incentive to buy a particular breakfast cereal. Prizes are found inside or sometimes on the cereal box. The term "cereal box prize" is sometimes used as a broader term to also include premiums that can be ordered through the mail from an advertising promotion printed on the outside of the cereal box.

Nostalgia and media
A 1974 article characterized cereal prizes of the 1950s as "Captain Midnight secret-decoder rings and.. baking soda-powered frogmen", whose arrival by mail, children waited for "impatiently". In 1959, columnist Tom Harris of the West Virginia Gazette-Mail lamented the passing of the send-in box-top prize in place of the in-box prize. The column humorously noted the family battles over cereal purchases which the in-box prizes instigated. In late 1974, the Federal Trade Commission considered banning television commercials which promoted cereal box prizes as a means of selling cereal.

In 1996, General Mills distributed the PC video game Chex Quest on CD in boxes of Chex cereal. It was a total conversion based on id software's DooM engine.