Originally published at: In the 1970s boxes of Alpha-Bits cereal had tiny terrariums as the toy surprise | Boing Boing
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I remember these. I think I had two out of the three.
Bonus: The kid in the commercial is Doug McKeon, who you might remember from On Golden Pond and Night Crossing, which I consider to be the worst portrayal of an East German teen I’ve ever seen in a movie.
He played a teen well, but East German? No.
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If I weren’t on a strict no-Twitter diet right now, all my tweets would all be replies to people’s personal news tweets saying:
Good
Yummy
OK wow
Fun
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Verified. I had at last one of then.
I am getting old.
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What I found most disturbing about that advert video was that the cartoon kids seemed to be holding their spoons from underneath. Which may work up to a point, technically, for for spoonfuls of liquid is a recipe for much spillage.
How not to teach table manners/cutlery etiquette, Alpha-Bits.
Alpha-Bits, now with micro plastics!
Haven’t thought about these in 40+ years, but I definitely had at least one. After I got bored with sprouting herbs, I definitely re-used it for some craptastic childhood build.
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I had at least one, the round version, I think. It was cool, until the plants died.
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I miss cereal toys. What a simpler time for us kids in the early 70s. Now kids need so much more to excite them. Our neighbor’s grand daughter is 10 and our favorite 10 year old. She might be the exception, you can give her a piece of sting or a rock and she gets so excited. I hope she never grows out of the childhood innocence.
I had an Alph-Bits terrarium.
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I had the round one. It didn’t hold my attention for very long.
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The Terrariums got really old really fast. The plant sprouted… then immediately died and rotted… every time. You could open it up about twice before the plastic cracked, and the top wouldn’t stay on after that.
The toys from Super Sugar Crisp were the best. Had several of the little “bowling ball swing” toys. (they were more honest in cereal names back then too) And the bike reflector thing was actually something useful. I seem to recall getting bike license plates from some cereal box as well (actual metal plate)
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Probably a bit small for a self-sustaining sealed ecosystem.
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I did have at least one of these… but my favorite box of cereal as a certain box Cocoa Pebbles. The toy was a metal coil with one of a selection of Dinosaur on it… 'cept this one box. This box had 10 coins in it. I was hot shit at school with my complete dinosaur coin collection.
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Oh boy, I remember having these in my house but never knew where they came from! I ended up liking it so much I begged my mom to get me a bigger one (not my image but it was the same one):
And my son and I loved this video series: The Pond On My Window Sill - Ecosphere Week 1 - YouTube
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In 1960 David Latimer got curious and decided to plant a glass bottle with seed. He would have never guessed it would turn into a beautiful case study of a self-sustaining sealed ecosystem. In fact, more than a century has passed and David’s sealed bottle garden is still thriving and robust as can be.
Even more impressive than the terrarium is that apparently a time traveller from after 2060 has discovered it!
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i remember these, but i don’t recall ever having one. terrarriums are cool again, from what i’ve heard – i guess it makes sense, since a lot of the other 70s things have come around again, and people are so interested in nature and cyclic earth things again.
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A no-Twitter diet sounds like the way to go. I need to try that.
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Thanks for excavating a pleasant, long-buried and forgotten memory.
We had terrariums and aquariums when I was a kid. Lizards, newts and frogs for the terrariums; fish (eventually some cool cichlids), frogs, fiddler crabs* and snails for the aquariums.
*There was a big sexy rock the crabs could crawl out on.
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