1955 Post Sugar Crisp Cereal Commercial Featuring Ted Williams and Baseball Patches

I recently came across this great commercial for Post Sugar Crisp cereal from 1955 with spokesman Ted Williams talking about the the baseball team logo patches, and demonstrating how you can apply them:

For a detailed look at the 1955 Post Sugar Crisp cereal baseball patches including the never issued Kansas City A's patch, please take a look at my earlier post showing an uncut sheet of the patches.

How a box of Post Rice Krinkles answered my questions about the 1963 Post Cereal Baseball Pennants

When I first reviewed these early 1960's mini baseball pennants


I wasn't sure whether or not they had been issued by Post Cereal. Nowhere on the front or back


is there any indication that this was a Post Cereal promotion. I had not been able to find a Post cereal box that contained any information about the pennants to confirm that these were offered by Post until Greg sent me some pictures showing a Post Rice Krinkles box with the pennant offer on the front:


and a picture of the RedSox pennant and information about the pennants on the back:


The box indicates there are 19 team pennants, which confirms that there was no pennant made for the Houston Colt .45s. In fact the box even says "Except Houston" right under the information about the stickers and just above Tom Cheney's card. For some reason, it looks like the National League pennant was issued in its place (which brings the set to 20 pennants). That would explain why there appears to be no corresponding AL pennant.

The Post Cereal cards have stats from the 1962 season, so this confirms that this would have been a 1963 release.

I'd like to say thanks to Greg for this fantastic find! This box answers all of the questions I had not been able to previously answer.

The Mystery of the Missing Kansas City A's 1955 Post Sugar Crisp Cereal Patch

A while back I reviewed the 1955 Post Sugar Crisp Cereal Cloth Patches which included only 15 of the 16 teams that were in existence at the time. For some reason, there was no patch for the Athletics. Thanks to the watchful eye of Dave from the amazing blog The Topps Archives, we now have proof that an Athletics patch was at least initially planned:


This amazing uncut sheet was recently up for auction, and provides proof that originally all 16 teams were intended for release. If you take a close look at the A's logo, you will see that it has an "X" beside it, presumably indicating that this may have been a proof sheet.

The auction also shows the back of the sheet. The instructions on the back of the patches indicates that the set was to be 16 patches:


Here is a closer look:


At some point between the creation of this sheet and the actual release of the promotion however, the decision was made to remove the A's as only 15 patches were ultimately issued.

The auction included a full set of the patches that were issued, and as you can see below, it only included 15 teams and did not feature the A's:


There was also a Post Sugar Crisp Cereal box that was included in the auction, and it shows all the teams except the A's and indicates that a set of 15 patches (not 16) could be ordered through the mail:


The auction also features an ad, again with only 15 teams and excluding the A's:


So why were the A's originally included, and then removed? The only thing I can think of is that it is due to the fact that the Athletics moved from Philadelphia to Kansas City the year this was released, so either Post wasn't sure if they should still use the logo (since perhaps there was some thought that it might get changed), or perhaps they weren't able to negotiate for the rights to use the logo as the team was in the process of relocating.

Since this was well before the days of MLB Properties, it could be that each team would have had to have been negotiated with individually to license their logo, and with the team in transition there was no opportunity to work out a licensing deal, so the A's were taken out of the series.

The auction also features some of the artwork that was used to create the patches, including an alternative White Sox logo that was not used:




Its great coming across finds like this that provide some insight into the creation of a set. Now if only the memo would surface that explains why the Athletics logo had to be taken out of the series!

Thanks to Dave for letting me know about this auction!

1984 Post Cereal Baseball Stickers

Post continued their 3rd annual baseball related promotion in 1984 with a fold out card that contained 4 team stickers on one card:


and a scratch-off game on the other card:


The rules and the list of prizes were included on the inside of the cards:


Prizes included pennants, batting helmets, baseballs, shirts, and team jackets. The rules don't mention which Post cereals were included in the promotion, so its not clear if these were only included in one particular brand of cereal or not.

Here is a look at the unfolded card:


This is how they came packaged:


I haven't been able to find too many pictures of these, so I'm afraid these are the only stickers that I have to show at this point:



1984 was the last year that Post included MLB logo items in their cereal for many years. Unfortunately when Post returned to using baseball to promote their cereals in the early 1990s, they did so without a license with MLB, so we ended up with cards like this:


It wouldn't be until 2001 that Post finally started including logos on their Baseball cards when they partnered with Topps to include cards like this:

1983 Post Cereal Baseball Team Cards

Post Cereal followed up their 1982 Team Card set with a similar set in 1983:


Given the Super Sugar Crisp logo on the front of the card, it appears that rather than being found in a number of different brands of Post Cereal like the 1982 set, the 1983 set was only available in this one brand of cereal.

The cards once again featured a team history on the back:


In looking at the back of this Orioles team card, it looks like Post has got its history wrong. According to this card, Jim Palmer never won 20 games or a Cy Young award. I guess this means you can't trust Sugar Bear to get his baseball facts straight.


If you want to get a cereal spokesanimal who actually knows his baseball, then Tony the Tiger is the guy to talk to since everyone knows he rolls with Ozzie Smith.


You can see the full story here at Cardboard Junkie's awesome retelling of the baseball classic "The Kid Who Could".


There was no contest associated with the team card promotion as far as I can tell as there is no contest card attached to the team card like there was the year before. Perhaps there was some type of promotion on the cereal box, but I have not found any pictures of the box to confirm.

Since a number of complete sets can be found for sale on ebay, the cereal box may have contained an offer to order the entire set. Speaking of complete sets, here is a look at the full set of 26 teams:


It would be nice to see an updated version of a promotion like this as it sure would make breakfast more fun!

1982 Post Cereal Team Cards & Contest

While the Mini Pennant set that I previously reviewed may or may not have been released by Post Cereal back in the early 1960s, there is no doubt that these 1982 Team Cards were part of a promotion done by Post:


The team cards fold out and have the team's history on the back of the team logo card


as well as an attached contest form:


It appears the contest was to collect character stamps from different Post Cereals (like Super Bear from Sugar Crisp, Fred Flintstone from Fruity Pebbles, etc) and place them on a game board that was on back of the cereal boxes.

If you were able to get all the players shown on the box, you could send in the pieces and receive a T-shirt (which was considered 3rd Prize). There was also a Grand Prize as well as Second Prizes, but the cards don't mention what those prizes were. Here is a view of the inside of the entire unfolded card:


The flip side of the contest card had all the legal terms and conditions as well as the form to claim your T-shirt:



I've only got a few of these, so I'm afraid I can't show the entire set. These are from the boxes of cereal that I ate back in '82. I'm glad I saved the cards, but I wish I'd gotten a few more boxes!




And here are a few I've seen for sale on ebay:

1963 Post Cereal Baseball Mini Pennant Stickers

Today's post covers a sticker set that may have been released by Post Cereal in the early 1960's, but I have not been able to confirm since I haven't found much information about the set other than one auction listing.

Here is a look at the pennants from the set that I have been able to find:


As you can see I've got the Orioles pennant in a top loader, so this should give an idea as to the size of these pennants.









Most of the pennants use the team's official logo, but in some cases the logos are a bit different, as is the case with the Dodgers pennant:





Here is an interesting variation of the Mets logo without the word Mets


and a similar situation with the Yankees logo:






The Giants also have a logo variation without the name Giants on the baseball logo:



In addition to the teams, there were pennants for the leagues as well:


I haven't been able to find an American League pennant yet.

Since we have the expansion teams from 1962 and the Braves pennant indicates they were in Milwaukee, that narrows the dates that these could have been issued to between 1962 to 1965, since the Braves moved to Atlanta for the 1966 season.

I have been able to locate (or at least find pictures of) 19 of the 20 teams that were in the league from 1962 - 1965 with one exception - Houston. I'm not sure if there is a pennant for the Houston team, and if so, whether it is the Colt 45s or the Astros since I'm not 100% sure of the year(s) these were issued. Perhaps this is yet another Astros oddity where they were left out of a set, or maybe I just haven't come across one yet (as I haven't found the AL pennant either).

The backs of the pennants have instructions on how to attach the stickers, and indicate that they can be reused.


Unfortunately, there is no information on the back regarding the year they were made or who issued them, which is why they remain somewhat of a mystery. If these had been a Post Cereal promotion, I would think that they would have included their name on the back, which is why I'm a bit uncertain whether or not these were truly issued by Post Cereal.

I mentioned that I have seen these listed as being from 1963 and issued by Post Cereal. Here is the only place I've seen these identified as such:

This was a listing in an Auctions Collect.com auction catalog from 2009:

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a Post Cereal box or ad mentioning these pennants. This example of a Post Cereal box with the 1963 Post Cereal cards does not mention any promotion where pennants could be found in cereal boxes nor is there any type of mail in offer:

Perhaps the pennants were a different promotion and not tied into the card promotion and were included on different boxes, but at this point given there is nothing on the pennant mentioning Post, and the 1963 cereal box example doesn't mention them even though the box includes baseball cards, I'm going to say that they "may" have been issued by Post, but so far we don't have much in terms of confirmation.

UPDATE: 2/2012

Thanks to Greg, we now have confirmation that these were in fact available in boxes of Post Cereal in 1963:


The front of this box of Post Rice Krinkles indicates there is a miniature Major League pennant inside the box, and the back shows the Red Sox pennant along with 4 cards:


The box indicates there are 19 team pennants, which confirms that there was no pennant made for the Houston Colt .45s. In fact the box even says "Except Houston" right under the information about the stickers and just above Tom Cheney's card. For some reason, it looks like the National League pennant was issued in its place (which brings the set to 20 pennants). That would explain why there appears to be no corresponding AL pennant.

The Post Cereal cards have stats from the 1962 season, so this confirms that this would have been a 1963 release.

I'd like to say thanks to Greg for this fantastic find! This box answers all of the questions I had not been able to previously answer.