In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 189: Forgotten 90s Cereals, Blink & You'll Miss It Retro Pt. 4, Weirdest Sega Games, April Fools Prank Goes Wrong(4-2-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 189

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Some forgotten 1990s cereals. Household products that came and went in a flash. Sega video games that had people shaking their heads.

Episode 189 is filled with nostalgia and that's no April Fools joke.

⚡ Blink and You’ll Miss It: Retro Edition #4 – From cleaning products to gadgets, we’re breaking down six household items that arrived with a bang… and disappeared just as fast. Did you ever own (or even remember) these short-lived creations?

🥣 Lost Cereals of the 1990s – The ‘90s gave us some legendary cereals… but we’re not talking about those. Instead, we’re diving into the forgotten breakfast bowls that had their moment before vanishing from grocery store shelves. Which of these would you bring back?

🎮 The Weirdest Sega Games Ever Made – Some of these sound like April Fools jokes—but they were real. This week’s Top 5 looks at Sega games that had players scratching their heads. Did you ever play these bizarre titles?

🕰️ This Week in History & Time Capsule – A look back at a notorious April Fools prank that once fooled an entire Boston TV audience.

Hit play and let the nostalgia roll! 🚀

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Speaker 02:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 189. April has started. Hopefully you have not been the victim of any April Fool's pranks. Well, I'm going to bring a heaping pile of nostalgia, and that is no prank. We're going to kick the show off with the return of Blink and You'll Miss It Retro, Part 4. This is some household items that came and went fast. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at some forgotten 1990s cereals. Were these on your breakfast table in the 90s? There will be a brand new top five that are some of the weirdest Sega video games ever. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around one of the most infamous April Fool's pranks in New England history, the Great Blue Hill Eruption. All of that is coming up right now on episode 189 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So a funny thing, I actually thought about doing... Some kind of an April Fool's prank to start the show where I would introduce it in another voice or with different music. And I figured those of you that listen to the show weekly, you'd understand my humor. But I also was thinking if there's someone discovering the show for the first time and they're like, what in the world is this foolishness? They'd never come back because my April Fool's joke would have fooled them too well. So April Fool's, prank or not, welcome into the show. What are we going to talk about this week? Well, I already shared much of the itinerary. I can give you a little bit of a wrap-up of my experience on a movie set for the first time. This was last weekend. You've heard me talking a lot over the last few months about my very first acting gig in the campy, low-budget horror film that my friend Frank Durant produced. I did my scenes, so this past weekend was the final shooting days. It was definitely a fun and unique experience. The day started off with getting up before sunrise to drive to Provincetown to hike about five miles round trip to Race Point Lighthouse. And then the day continued being on the movie set, trying to keep my mouth shut and not get in trouble. I didn't want the director to yell at me. I did several interviews. I've got a lot of content from this past weekend, but some of it I won't be able to share until the movie's ready to come out. Because I don't want any spoilers. I want to be able to attach links to the movie where you can stream it or buy copies of it. All of that content will be available, likely late May, June. The best way that I can sum up my experience on the movie set from this past weekend is with a little anecdote. One of the members of the crew, her uncle is a performer in Provincetown, and she said, oh, he can dress up as Frankenstein if you want him to be in the film. So I had to go to another filming location and we were getting driven there. It was like a half mile, but it's quicker to be driven. So I go to get into this minivan and in the passenger seat, there's Frankenstein all made up and he is fully in character. The highlight of this whole experience was driving down Commercial Street in Provincetown, which those of you that are from Cape Cod or have been here, you know that street is very, very narrow. Everyone is looking at Frankenstein and he is just yelling and growling at everybody that he passes. It's just insanity. It was so much fun, and I'm really looking forward to hopefully having more in the way of acting roles, whether they're small, whether they're voiceover work. I really enjoyed it, and I think I want to add more of that to my content plate, my table of contents, I guess. So I'm not really glossing over that fun experience from this past weekend. What I did do was I recorded a long form video. It was about 20 minutes long where I really went into depth as to what was going on this past weekend, complete with visuals. And that's up on Patreon for my subscribers. So there's a good tease. If you want to become a subscriber on Patreon for $5 a month, you get access to bonus podcast episodes. access to the remastered Without a Map live streams that go up once a month, and also access to the long-form video of what my experience was like on the movie set. So shout out and thank you to my Patreon subscribers, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, Matt. If you haven't watched that video yet, Go watch it, complete with behind-the-scenes clips from the movie. Ooh, there you go. That is no April Fool's joke. That's for real. We'll get into more of that housekeeping-type stuff at the end of the podcast, because right now it's time to get into it. It's time for the return of Blinkin' You'll Miss It Retro, and that's getting started right now. It's time. It's time for the return. The return of Blink and You'll Miss It Retro. The segment where we take a look at a six pack of items from the past that came and went pretty quickly. It's the segment that I was just looking for a placeholder on the page where I was listing all of these items. And I came up with Blink and You'll Miss It Retro and I just kept it that way. I didn't come up with any more clever title for this segment. For those new to the podcast, this segment is divided into categories. I have done segments on TV shows. I've done segments on toys, on foods that came and went fast where it's like if you blinked, you missed it. This is part four. We're going to be looking at household items that came and went fast. Pulling back the curtain a little bit, the way that I came up with this segment was I enjoy watching compilations of old commercials, especially when enjoying an edible. And what I would notice was there would be certain commercials that I didn't remember the product. I've got a pretty good memory. Obviously, I built a podcast around nostalgia, so I do remember it quite well. I found that when I... saw a commercial of something that I didn't remember, I would pause the compilation, go Google it, and see if it was something that was famous and I just forgot, or if it was something that really was a product fail that came out and was gone pretty quickly. And they all made the list. Let's get started then. As I said, I've got a six-pack of items to dive into. Why did I choose six? Because... Because I have top five countdowns, I have top tens, I'm just going to have so many countdowns, it'll be different amounts in each one. The very first item we're going to talk about here is something called the Airwick Air Wand. Very good to say quickly.

Speaker 00:

This

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was

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in a line of concentrated air fresheners, sort of like those little small space ones that you would plug in if you've got a small apartment or a small room you want to smell good. The Airwick Air Wand was around in the early 1980s. This thing, it was kind of like a stick. You would open it and you would twist it and it would open and the fragrance would come out from the bottom and you could regulate how much scent you needed. It's interesting because it's not that much different from the types of air fresheners that are out today. They've got the ones like Renews It. where it's got the little packaging on it, and you twist it, and the top part kind of opens, and in the middle there's that gel that's got the scent in it. The Airwick Air Wand wasn't that much different from it, so I don't know if it was just ahead of its time, or if the small space fragrance market wasn't something that was there at the time. The second one to talk about here is a product called Metaprin.

Speaker 06:

As Bob's gotten older, he gets more aches and pains. That's why his next move is to Mediprin. Mediprin has the same medicine as Motrin, and nothing's proven faster for relief of body pain or any kind of pain.

Speaker 02:

This is a version of ibuprofen, kind of a generic brand from the late 1980s. What made these commercials stick out to me and make me want to put them on this list was the Heaven Got Time for the Pain song that was part of it. If you don't know, that's a Carly Simon song from 1974. Metaprin came in a red box that had various human silhouettes holding areas that would be in pain. My guess is that when you're flooding the market with pain relievers and you've already got Advil, Excedrin, Aleve, Anacin, that there's really not room for a new brand like Mediprin. Although I was researching and it seems like Mediprin is the generic name for ibuprofen, which I don't know if that's true or not or if my sources are bad. Because I would have thought the generic name for ibuprofen was ibuprofen. But what do I know? I'm not in medicine. As far as I could see, though, metaprin was in a lot of places in the mid to late 80s. But then in the 90s, it's just gone. So I'm not sure exactly what happened to it. But if any of you out there are metaprin experts, you can let me know if you know the story of it. We've gone from air fresheners to pain relief products. Now we go to cleaning your kitchen floor. So this one is called Clean and Clear Floor Cleaner. It's from the early 1980s. I can only assume that the major selling point of Clean and Clear Floor Cleaner was that it was a no-rinse cleaner. I assume that because that's what it says on the bottle. You could use it on the floor, appliances, cabinets, all that stuff. Clean and Clear was made by the C. Johnson & Son Company. It says it's specifically for no-wax floors, but yet you can also use it on appliances and cabinets. I have no idea what happened to Clean and Clear. I kind of think it's sort of like the Metaprint where you've got a lot of competition. So if you're trying to come into a market that's already flooded with floor cleaners, you're going to have a hard time getting in there and getting your share unless it's something really special. But hey, if you don't believe me about Clean and Clear, you can buy vintage bottles on eBay. I don't know if they're filled with the liquid. I don't know if it evaporates. I don't know if floor cleaner goes bad, like if you're going to pour it on your floor and it'll make it more dirty or it'll disintegrate the floor. Sometimes when you're trying to get your new product out there, it's best to just say what it is instead of having a fancy name. That's this next one. It's called For Oily Hair Only Shampoo. So you know that this product is for oily hair only.

Speaker 08:

If you have oily hair, you have a different kind of sebum.

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And all the detergent in the world won't change it.

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Now there's a new kind of shampoo.

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For oily hair only.

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FOHO.

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Made with a blend of natural ingredients. To control and normalize oily conditions.

Speaker 02:

Don't you dare go use it if your hair's not oily. This was around in the early 1980s. It was made by the Gillette Company. Obviously, it's made for people with oily hair. And you would get shampoo and then something else just called rinse. It doesn't say conditioner, but I think that's what it is. The company tried to seem cool and hip in the early 80s by calling it FOHO. So for oily hair only FOHO. And they had it. It was called the FOHO system with the shampoo and rinse. In the ads that I have seen, it asks the people if they're afraid of conditioners. I will say, even though this product did not last long, at least Gillette knew who their audience was. They were like, let's make a shampoo for people with oily hair. Well, what do we call it? How about for oily hair only? It's like, okay, great. It is a very right on the nose title. I know that a few minutes ago I talked about the Airwick air wand as far as freshening up the scent in your house apartment. If you're not convinced to buy an air freshener from Airwick, how about buying an air freshener from Listerine? This next one, it's Listerol disinfectant spray, and it's literally made by the Listerine company.

Speaker 00:

Speaking for new Listerol spray disinfectant from the Listerine people. Listerol sounded like something I'd like, and I do. It has four germ killers to wipe out odor-causing germs, prevents mold and mildew, and has proven more effective in controlling their odors than the leading brand.

Speaker 02:

This came out in the mid-1970s, and it does all the stuff that an air freshener would do, kill germs and such. But its claim to fame is, it says, from the makers of Listerine. So your favorite mouthwash has now made a disinfectant spray. Much like with the other products on this Blink and You'll Miss It retro segment, I couldn't really find the time when they were canceled or discontinued. I give a product a few years, three years. If they're around that long but not longer, that kind of qualifies as the Blink and You'll Miss It type. Because you figure companies that release these products, they're going to give it time, hoping, well, if it doesn't catch on right away, maybe word of mouth after six months or a year. I mean, even Crystal Pepsi got at least two years to fail spectacularly. So we've had air fresheners, floor cleaners, ibuprofen. We've had oily hair shampoo. I couldn't wrap up this segment without another staple of the 1980s, and that's diet and appetite suppressant pills. This last one, it's called PVM appetite pills, and they're from the early 1980s.

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This is

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just

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another line of diet pills, like Dexatrim, things like that from the 80s. What I found interesting about the PVM pills was the advertising campaign. They must not have been doing well, so they came out with the PVM Beautiful Refund. You can find these ads online where it's a woman, she's nude, laying down, and it says they'll pay you to take these PVM pills and then kind of report back to them with pictures of them making you more beautiful. On the box it says you will lose weight because you will stick to a calorie-restricted diet. Which, basically, anyone that's looking to lose weight, that's how you do it. So I don't know exactly what PVM was doing that you couldn't do on your own. It was hard to find in my research exactly why PVM was taken off the market. I am only going to assume that one of those letters, PVM, stood for some kind of medication that the FDA later found was dangerous. They didn't last long. None of these products lasted long. A couple of years at most. Did any of you out there try any of these? Hopefully you didn't try PVM. But did you try the Airwick Air Wand? Or did you use Metaprin for a headache? Or use Clean & Clear Floor Cleaner? 4 Oily Hair Only Shampoo? Or Listerol Disinfectant Spray? Well, that wraps up the fourth Blink and You'll Miss It retro segment. I'll be back with a fifth one at some point in the future. Let me know if you want it to be something like toys or food again. I've got a lot, and every time I watch these old commercial compilations, I find more of these interesting product fails. This week in history, we are going back 45 years ago this week to April 1st, 1980 and the Great Blue Hill eruption, April Fool's prank. For those not from New England, not from the eastern part of Massachusetts, Great Blue Hill is a 635 foot tall hill in the towns of Milton, Canton, part of the Great Blue Hills Reservation up near Boston. I've hiked it a couple of times. It's got beautiful views. You can see the Boston skyline. So that's a bit of the backdrop of what Great Blue Hill is. But let's focus on exactly what we're talking about here, an April Fool's prank. On April 1st, 1980, Boston TV station WNAC Channel 7 aired an April Fool's prank that quickly spiraled out of control. And it led to widespread panic and significant professional repercussions. This happened at the end of the 6 o'clock newscast. There was a fabricated special bulletin announcing that Great Blue Hill in Milton had in fact erupted, spewing lava and ash onto nearby homes. Now, I guess there could be a very, very small shred of truth to this, because Great Blue Hill had volcanic activity in the past. Now, that past was 440 million years ago, but still, you could say, yeah, it used to be a volcano. WNAC... continued to stoke the flames of panic with footage featuring lava flowing down a hillside, but that was from the recent eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State. They continued the prank with edited remarks from President Jimmy Carter, Governor Edward J. King, where they expressed concern and labeled the situation as serious. Reporter Jan Harrison attributed the disaster to a geological chain reaction that had been triggered by Mount St. Helens. The segment concluded with Harrison holding up a sign that read April Fools. If you had watched the whole segment that took all of three, four minutes, you'd see it was a harmless prank. You and I both know people naturally overreact, so despite the reveal, many viewers had already overreacted. The Milton Police Department, receiving over 100 calls from distressed citizens, there were some that started evacuating their homes without seeing anything. You go outside, there's no smoke, you don't see lava flows. The Massachusetts Department of Civil Defense was inundated with inquiries about the evacuation procedures. So you imagine that, saying to the civil defense people, what did we do because Great Blue Hill erupted? And they're like, what in the world? The TV station faced immediate backlash. Dozens of angry viewers contacted WNAC to express their outrage. In response, the station issued an apology during the 11 p.m. newscast. Sadly, the following day, a man named Homer Silly, who was the executive producer of the 6 p.m. news, was terminated for his failure to exercise good news judgment and for violating FCC regulation regarding the use of stock footage without proper identification. It's an unbelievable story, yet not that unbelievable when you really step back to think about it. How many times hoaxes have gotten people? You would have thought after the War of the Worlds hoax in the 1930s that people would be more apt to check around to make sure something was real and not fake. But I guess I have too much faith in humanity for that. And that Great Blue Hill eruption prank occurred 45 years ago this week in history. Oh, this is no April Fool's prank. It is time for another time capsule. We are going to stick to the same day. So Great Blue Hill is erupting, according to news reports. What's going on in the world of pop culture back then on the same date? Well, let's find out. The number one song was Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2 by Pink Floyd. This is off of their iconic double album, The Wall. This part two was a part of a three-part song. And this is the one that's shorter. It's got actually kind of a disco beat. This song was a rarity for Pink Floyd, not just because it had a dance beat, but because they released it as a single. The single sold more than 4 million copies, with the album The Wall spending 15 weeks at number one in the U.S. and selling more than 30 million copies worldwide. The number one movie was Coal Miner's Daughter, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $2.69. This is the biographical film about country singer Loretta Lynn, starring Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn, Beverly D'Angelo as Patsy Cline, Tommy Lee Jones as Doolittle Lynn. It made about $68 million at the box office on a budget of about $15 million. and won Sissy Spacek the Academy Award for Best Actress. The number one TV show was MASH. This was the sitcom based during the Korean War. It was on for 11 seasons from 1972 to 1983. MASH stood for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The show itself was based on a film called And as many of you know who've listened to the podcast, the final episode of MASH is the highest rated TV show ever. That had 125 million viewers. And if you were around back then, April Fool's Day, 1980, maybe you've just seen the Great Blue Hill eruption prank on the news. You want to go outside and see if everything's burning down. Well, you're in luck, especially if you're a kid. Because you can go to the Sears catalog and get yourself what they called a steel gym set, also known as a swing set. You get, and this is their words, two cool plastic swings, a two-passenger lawn swing, what they call the glide ride, and a six-foot slide. And that rhymes. It's basically a typical swing set that you would have in your yard in the early 1980s. You could get all of this for $97.99 or about $377 when adjusted for inflation to 2025. Just make sure that the legs of the swing set are fully supported because if you get several kids doing all these swings, the thing might flip over. I know that's what us kids tried to do with ours way back in the day. It was never successful, which was probably a good thing for us. So that wraps up the time capsule. That wraps up this week in history. We go from a terrible April Fool's prank to some video games that seem like they would have been April Fool's pranks, but no, they're real. So let's look at some weird Sega games right now. In the early 1990s, I became a Sega Genesis fan. That was my preferred console. In the years leading up to that, I had played the Atari 2600 as a kid, little kid, and then the Nintendo Entertainment System. I remember seeing the commercials for the Genesis and the graphics and the gameplay, and I was like, ooh, I want that. So it pains me a little bit to do this top five segment where we look at the weirdest Sega games ever. I never played these, so I had to do my research to find ones that people were talking about as being just weird games that you couldn't understand why they got made. Ones with characters that were weird or plots that were weird. And I'm stressing the word weird, because I'm not saying these games were bad. I'm just saying that some of these ideas likely came after either a night of smoking, a night of drinking, or whatever the hell else the creators were doing. This is a continuation of my top five series for weirdest games from different gaming consoles. Back in episode 156, I did the top five weirdest Atari games ever, if you want to go check that out. But now let's get into the weird Sega games. So with a lot of these top fives, not all, but most, they're in no particular order. There are some honorable mentions. I'll try to kind of steamroll through the honorable mentions to give a little more time to the actual top five. Honorable mentions for weird Sega games include McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. This is from 1993, and you play as Ronald McDonald going through this treasure land, trying to find bits of a treasure map. It's weird, but it's got great reviews. Another honorable mention is kind of a mashup It's Mutant League Hockey and Mutant League Football. These are two different games with Mutant League Football coming out in 1993, Mutant League Hockey in 1994. What makes them weird is that they're seen as a way to get around licensing for official football and hockey teams and players. You just have mutants instead. Another honorable mention, continuing with the sports theme, is Shaq Fu. This is a fighting game from 1994 based around NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal. Another honorable mention is The Ooze. This is from 1995 and you play as this green puddle of ooze fighting villains. You're the good guy. And the last honorable mention is Toe Jam and Earl. This is from 1991, with ToeJam and Earl being alien rappers that have to escape the Earth. Those are the honorable mentions. Had you heard of most of those? Had you played any? I would think ToeJam and Earl is the one that most of you will have heard of. Sega really pushed that when it first came out. They pushed that almost as much as Sonic the Hedgehog, at least as far as I remember. So if those weren't weird enough for you, let's get into the actual top five. And we're going to start it off with number one, Balls 3D. Now you know it's weird because Balls is spelled with a Z. This game is from 1994. Things that make it weird, so it says Balls 3D, it's actually considered 2.5D, which I didn't know was even a thing. The characters are made completely of spheres, so it makes it look kind of pseudo-3D. It's an action-fighting game. You can be one of nine characters, and in single-player mode there are five bosses you have to defeat. Reviews were mixed for this game, with a lot crediting the spheres, giving a new spin on the action-fighting genre. with other reviews saying the soundtrack was so irritating you'd want to play it with the sound muted. So that's kind of the shallow end of weird. What about this one? Number two is Wild Woody. This game came out in 1995, and it was for the Sega CD platform. Back in episode 27, I did a full segment about the Sega CD, including the fact that I actually owned that console. Wild Woody is a side-scrolling platform game. He is an anthropomorphic pencil who's looking to gather parts of a totem pole that brought him to life. Reviews for this game were not kind. It was seen as one of the worst games for the Sega CD platform with lots of terrible cutscenes, grainy animation. It was also crushed in its reviews for the sexually suggestive nature of the game. I mean, think about it. Wild Woody. It's not just the title. There's more to it in the game. But being a high school boy, I'm sure a lot wanted that game to at least see. It failed pretty quickly and didn't make any sort of lasting impact on the gaming industry. Was that weird enough for you? A talking pencil named Woody? Well, how about this one? Number three is Seaman. It takes all of my effort to not just say seaman. This game came out in 1999 for the Sega Dreamcast, and it's a virtual pet game. It's unique because you can also use the Sega Dreamcast microphone as part of this game, but what really makes it weird is the Seaman is a mythical fish with a human face. It's weird just because of that. The graphics of the fish with a human face, it's terrifying. Like I said, though, it's a virtual pet game, so it's in real time, meaning you've got to constantly check in with this half-human, half-fish, keep it company, feed it. The reviews are okay, but I can only imagine being a kid in high school and having this game and having to go to school and then come home and you forget to check in on your seaman pet and he's just dead. It was seen as a success for the interactive nature between you and the creature. It even spawned a sequel, Seaman 2. Moving on, though. Number four is Boogerman. Just the title in itself should give you an idea of what this game's gonna be about. This game was for the Genesis from 1994. And I'm sorry, the full title was Boogerman, A Pick-and-Flick Adventure. This adventure game stars you as Boogerman, who flicks, snots, and farts on people in this quest to defeat the ultimate boss, the Boogermeister. That in and of itself is weird, but you've got to think about it. You get this idea that seems like it's a one-hit wonder. Oh man, a Boogerman hero. But then you've got to actually sit down and create the game. I don't know how you could be serious knowing this is what you're creating. Your audience would have to be teenage boys, but how many of them are going to buy the game? I couldn't imagine my mother buying me this game back when I was in high school. I want to get Boogerman. She'd be like, get out of here. In 2013, a Kickstarter campaign was launched to try to create a sequel to Boogerman. It did not get anywhere near the money needed, so I think that this game is a one and done. And finally, number five on the top five weirdest Sega games ever is Bubba and Stix. This is a side-scroller from 1994 for the Sega Genesis. What makes it weird is that it's a tie-in to the Bubblicious Bubblegum brand. It features Bubba, a redneck character who gets kidnapped, and he's got his anthropomorphic stick-of-gum friend called Sticks. The reviews of the game were slightly above average, but it being a game based around a brand of bubblegum, that's what makes it weird. It's like going to the supermarket and looking at any product on a shelf and imagining that being made into a video game. Rice-a-roni Adventures, Wonder Bread Football League, Stridex Pads Dating Game, I don't know, all those ones. So there you have it, some of the weirdest Sega games ever. Did you own any of these? Come on, fess up. Did you buy Boogerman? Did you check out Wild Woody? In the future, I'll be doing top fives for other gaming platforms. So let me know if there are any weird games for Nintendo or PlayStation or PC or any of those that you want me to talk about. Oh yes, the 1990s were my heyday when it came to cereal. I can remember we had this big orange Tupperware bowl that I used for cereal. I would fill that thing up and eat cereal like there was no tomorrow. Honeycomb, Corn Pops, Lucky Charms, those were my go-to's. What we're going to do now, though, is go way back in the day and look at some forgotten 1990 cereals. These were ones that came and went pretty fast. That doesn't mean immediate, but it means it's ones that are definitely not still around today. I also tried to make sure with these forgotten cereals that they weren't just tie-ins to movies so that they were briefly out. Because when I did a segment on discontinued cereals back in episode 150, I had some guy message me saying,

Speaker 01:

all the ones you put were movie tie-ins, so of course they're discontinued.

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That's my imitation of that idiot. So these I tried to do my best to make sure they're not movie tie-ins so I don't get any fools like that in my DMs. Are you ready for some forgotten 90s cereals? Do you remember Pop-Tarts Crunch?

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To make sure I wasn't dreaming, I attempted to fly and landed on the dog. Great, it means there really is a Pop-Tart cereal.

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Kellogg's Pop-Tarts Crunch Cereal, part of this complete breakfast. They're Pop-Tarts for your spoon.

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P.S. Elmo's okay.

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This is the original mini Pop-Tart cereal. It's made a little bit of a comeback as a different brand Pop-Tart cereal. You can get it at Walmart. I'm talking about the OG. The cereal from Kellogg's debuted in 1994. There was frosted cinnamon brown sugar and frosted strawberry. I loved Pop-Tarts, so it would have been natural to try mini Pop-Tarts covered in milk, but I don't think I ever did. By the way, before I get too deep into this segment, if you're into old cereals, which is a random interest, but hey, there's an awesome website called mrbreakfast.com. I'll link to it in the description of the podcast. He was a huge resource for this segment. A cereal that was pretty popular when it was out in the 90s but faded away was Sprinkle Spangles.

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This

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was made by General Mills. It came out in 1993. Sweetened corn stars with holes in the middle covered with sprinkles. I distinctly remember the commercials, but again, it wasn't one that I tried. This is one where if you look at the commercials, you can definitely tell it's mid-1990s. Another forgotten 90s cereal was Hot Wheels cereal based on the toy cars. This was made by the Ralston Company. It came out in 1990. There were marshmallow cars and frosted oat mag wheels. The big selling point for Hot Wheels cereal, at least for the kids that got it, was there was a free Hot Wheels car inside the cereal box. So you'd get your free car, then look at your parents and say, can you go get me 10 more boxes of this so I can have a whole fleet of Hot Wheels? Hot Wheels is hardly the only toy line to have its own cereal. I mean, God, even Cabbage Patch Kids had its own cereal. Another forgotten 90s cereal is Urkel-O's. Yes, I can hear that idiot guy.

Speaker 01:

Family Matters, of course, it's discontinued. Shut up.

Speaker 02:

Yes, it's based around Steve Urkel, the character from Family Matters. This serial was created by Ralston. It came out in 1991. Family Matters was on from 1989 to 97 with Jaleel White playing Steve Urkel. Steve Urkel, the character, became a phenomenon. His catchphrase, did I do that? There was a do the Urkel board game. The cereal itself was strawberry and banana flavored loops, kind of like Froot Loops. The cereal boxes featured Steve Urkel in different costumes and different poses. Those of you that didn't grow up in the early 1990s have no idea of how big of a phenomenon the Steve Urkel character was. Sadly, I've read that Jaleel White, he's distanced himself from the Urkel character. I mean, he could probably still make tons of money at signings just being Urkel, even though now he's in his late 40s. Come on, Jaleel, it's fine. You were a huge star as Urkel. Embrace it. Another forgotten serial from the 90s was Major League Grand Slams, so based around baseball. This was made by General Mills. It came out in 1998, and all of the pieces in the cereal have to do with baseball. Marshmallow bats, gloves, plates, home plates, not kitchen plates. You could send away for a batting helmet cereal bowl, which that would have been right up my alley, but when this came out, I was in college, so I wasn't eating as much cereal. I would think that having people over and... And having me eating cereal out of a big baseball helmet in my early 20s, you'd be like, what's wrong with that guy? Now in my late 40s, I'd love to do it, so everything is cyclical, I guess. This next one I distinctly remember as well, and that's Teddy Graham's Breakfast Bears.

Speaker 09:

Teddy

Speaker 03:

Grahams are

Speaker 02:

those little bear-shaped crackers, which I remember even when this cereal came out, I was like, why not just get Teddy Grahams the crackers and just pour them in a bowl and put milk on them? These were created by Nabisco, naturally, because they make Teddy Grahams. They came out in 1990. The boxes would feature cartoon versions of the Teddy Grahams that you'd see in the commercials. It was said that these Teddy Grahams were specially made so that the milk would bring out the Graham flavor. Sure it was. It's just a way to sucker us kids into being like, can we get Teddy Graham cereal? They were in cinnamon, chocolate, and honey flavor. Teddy Grahams themselves, they are still around. So you could definitely go to the store, buy some, and then dump them in a bowl and put milk on them and let me know if it's just like having the cereal. That's an interesting concept to grab something like Teddy Grahams, but maybe another kind of cookie or candy and dump it in a bowl and put milk on it. See if you could create a new cereal. That seems like it was kind of the idea behind this next one. That was cinnamon mini buns.

Speaker 09:

What do I do with these buns? Then I get this idea.

Speaker 08:

Kellogg's cinnamon mini buns. The cinnamini part of this complete breakfast.

Speaker 09:

Mmm. Mega taste and crunchy mini buns.

Speaker 02:

Cinnamon mini buns. Get it? Because, man, cinnamon rolls, cinnamon buns, whatever you want to call them, they're delicious. So mini ones... with milk on them are probably just as good. These were created by Kellogg's. They came out in 1991. And it had the genius marketing campaign of saying that eating 70 cinnamon buns can be nutritious. That's the same logic as getting the 100 calorie packs of different snacks, whether it's chips or nuts. And then you see the serving size is like one half chip. It's like, well, yeah, it's 100 calories, but you don't get nothing. These cinnamon buns had no added fat, no artificial flavors. Oh, and one of their big giveaways was you could get a free cassette single. This was from 1992. So take a moment, think of 1992, the musical acts that you enjoyed back Now, would you like to know the artists that you could have gotten a free cassette single from in Cinnamon Mini Bun cereal? There was Bad Company, Soho, Information Society, Betty Boo, and TKA. So there you go. You could get a free cassette single of one of those artists. And if there weren't any hidden treasures in those artists with the cassette singles, then the next cereal, Hidden Treasures, you could just go to the store and buy. There's a pretty good segue. Hidden Treasures were created by General Mills. They came out in 1993 and featured this robot on the cover of the box. The robot was named HT for Hidden Treasures. It was sweetened cereal that had kind of a center in the pieces. The Hidden Treasures idea was that not all the pieces of cereal had this fruit center to it. You get some that were empty, some that had fruit. And you could stare at the hidden treasure cereal box, stare at the back and look at HT the robot and his stereotypically 90s kid friends and yell at him when pieces didn't have fruit in the center. One cereal that I think a lot of you 90s kids will remember is Dino Pebbles.

Speaker 09:

This

Speaker 02:

was an offshoot of Fruity Pebbles, Cocoa Pebbles, the cereals based on the Flintstones cartoon. Dino Pebbles were created by Post. They came out in 1990. It was very much like the Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles with the sweetened rice, but this one had marshmallow-shaped dinosaurs. The cereal itself was vanilla-flavored. It said that it had 10 essential vitamins and minerals in there. I don't know if one of those minerals was loads of sugar, but I'm sure that was there. I was actually surprised to find that Dino Pebbles wasn't more successful. With these cereals, it's not that they were here and gone within a few months. Some of them lasted a few years. But when you go to the cereal aisle and you see Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs and Apple Jacks and things that have been around 50, 60 years, cereals that are here and gone in like five years, they are seen as failures. But let's wrap up with another forgotten 90s cereal that is sure to irritate that guy that didn't like my discontinued cereals having movie tie-ins. And that is Millennios. No, this is not a movie tie-in. It's a cereal tie-in from the Cheerios makers based around the new millennium. When I first saw Millennios, I thought it was a cereal for millennials for the generation. I was like, well, where's Gen X O's for me? Grunge flavored cereal with flannel shirt marshmallows. Come on, we could make it now. Millennios was Cheerios. So all the little O's, but then there would be twos in there as well for the year 2000. Obviously, it came out in 1999. One of the unique things about Millennios was that it said you could use that cereal box to create your own time capsule. It suggests that you put toys, newspaper clippings, coins, stamps inside this box. I don't know what you're supposed to do with it then. Put it in your attic, bury it in the yard. Does cardboard, how quick does it degenerate if it's buried? I would recommend if you're going to make a time capsule, you don't use a cardboard cereal box. It was definitely an interesting concept, and I don't blame Cheerios for trying. Make more money off of something that happens once every thousand years. I still like that idea of Gen X cereal, though. Anyone out there that's from Gen X, would you eat Gen X cereal if it came out? So those are some forgotten 90s cereals. How many of those did you have on your breakfast table when you were growing up in the 90s? I'm thinking out of all of these that we went over, the only one that I'm like, man, I wish I had tried it, was the Pop-Tarts Crunch. And the irony is I could go to get the new brand of Pop-Tarts cereal from Walmart if I wanted to. But eating boxes of cereal at a time in your late 40s is not good for your overall health, so I'll probably skip it. But enough about cereal. Until next time, that's going to wrap up episode 189 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you so much to all of you that have listened, all of you that made it to the end, all of you that make this part of your week. I do my best to help you escape from the world, look back at the old days, even if it's for an hour a week. I'm constantly on the lookout for nostalgia, pop culture, Things from the 60s through the early 2000s that I can share because I know I'm not the only one that enjoys hearing about these things. I'll keep bringing the nostalgia week after week. Next week is episode 190. We're getting close to episode 200. Next week, I'm going to talk about something that I can't believe it took me this long to get onto the show. And that is Garfield, the Garfield comics, the Garfield books, the TV shows. My childhood is empty without Garfield. Well, not totally, but it's a huge part of me growing up. And I finally was like, wait, I haven't talked about Garfield. Well, that's coming next week. I still have all my vintage Garfield books, some of them 40 years old. If you enjoy my podcast, the rest of my content, and you want to support me, like I said, $5 a month on Patreon, you get access to bonus podcast episodes, remastered Without a Map live streams. Recently, the newest bonus podcast episode went up. In fact, it was yesterday on April Fool's Day. And I put up, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, the long form video talking about my whole experience with my first movie role. So go and check that out. You can always buy me a coffee as well. That's cheaper. You can go as low as a dollar, which I say won't buy me a coffee, but that's fine. It's the thought that counts. The best way that you can support me and what I do is sharing my content. Liking a post on social media does virtually nothing. Sharing the post does so much more. Because I can promote myself till I'm blue in the face, and I do. But it means more when it's others besides me saying, hey, go check out this guy's podcast, subscribe to his YouTube channel, read his blogs, read his books, and soon I'll be saying watch his movies. Yeah, so I've always got something going on. You've got forever to live a boring, mundane life with a soul-crushing job that it's just punch in, punch out. Chasing your dreams, chasing your passions, those things that make you get out of bed and want to do work like what I'm doing right now. That's the stuff you want to hold on to. It's way more exciting and fulfilling for me creating podcasts, YouTube videos. from my own mind, my own skills, I suppose, for lack of a better term, and seeing the reaction of people. I get lots of great interaction from people with the podcast and on YouTube. Every now and then you get idiots, but that's the thing is, it's the risk when you create content for public consumption. The more eyes that get on you, the more likely it is you're going to get people that don't like what you do because they obviously don't like themselves. At least that's what I think. If I see content online that I don't like, rather than message the person and give them crap about trying to create something, I'm just like, well, that's not my thing. I'll move on. Man, I just... Paused this to take a drink of my seltzer water here. It went down the wrong tube. I've been gagging for several minutes here. I think that means it's a sign that it's time to wrap up episode 189 before I choke and drop dead and this never gets finished. So before I pass out on my keyboard, I'll just wrap up by saying, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all for tuning into the show. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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