You are ten years old. You've just gotten home and thrown your backpack in the corner and turned on the TV

I already linked this video on Twitter, but here it is again:



A few comments:

• Oh God, that Kid Sister/My Buddy song. It stays with you.
• "Airlandia"? A world where "everything is powered by wind"? HELL FUCKING YES. I have no recollection of these toys, and it doesn't even seem as though there was any cartoon that actually accompanied them. It was just this entire concept and basic storyline introduced within a 30 second commercial. You especially have to love the "fighting for air against the tyrants of wind" line, too. I wish I could see recording studio footage of the grown men who sang the chorus, "Air Raiders, the power is--in--the--Air Raiders...." Also, a really nice touch: you hardly notice it, but at the very end of the commercial it shows a kid falling away from the camera (getting blown away from the camera, perhaps?), and then the Air Raiders logo appears. He probably ended up in the same dimension that you get sucked into when you lose at Crossfire.
• I also have no recollection of Freakies cereal. It looks God awful. And it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense: why are these cereal aliens modeled after the Beach Boys? They're all wearing Hawaiian shirts and the song sounds like it's supposed to be the Beach Boys. Did kids even know who the Beach Boys were? Who are they targeting with this? Also, the name "Freakies" is a horrible name. Also: it's kind of cheating to make the mascot of a cereal a big, misshapen cereal-like lump and then turn around and pretend that you made the cereal into the shape of the mascot.
  
• Flintstones: weak.
• Wow, Video Art. I love how high-concept and stylized the commercial is--and man would it be cool to have one of those today. Sixteen colors!
• Screw Alpha-Bits.
• If I was friends with the Turtles, and they slept over, in the morning I'd always be like, "Hey, you want Golden Grams for breakfast???", and they'd be like, "Fuck you", but then like, "Wait, do you have Golden Grams?", and I'd be like, "No, I was only joking", and then they'd look a little let down maybe?
• I really, really like the ice cream cone cereal commercial. Ice Cream Jones has got to be near the bottom of the heap in terms of forgotten cereal mascots. I imagine he parks that ridiculous cart outside a run-down apartment building in a bad part of town, goes into his sparsely furnished apartment, and drinks and cries. Also: I love how they just beat you over the head with their mind-bending concept of an ice cream cone cereal. The kid at the end (who looks vaguely stoned, I might add) says it best: "Mmmm, ice cream cone cereal." They might as well have just showed 30 seconds of silence with nothing but big block letters that said "BUY ICE CREAM CONE CEREAL NOW". Actually, I would like to see a commercial done in that style some day.
  
• I totally remember this Honeycombs commercial. Aurally the most visceral parts are the "Yeah yeah yeah" and "no no no", but visually I have to say the most visceral image is the calipers holding the piece of cereal with the ruler on the robot measuring it to be a full inch. As a kid I never understood what this was supposed to prove or why I was supposed to care if the individual cereal bits were big. Baffling, but there you have it. Also: Hannity & Honeycombs.
• That kaleidoscope thing is WEAK.
• I remember a different version of the Connect Four song, where it goes: "Go for it--connect four!" Maybe that came later.
• Ahh, Duck Tales bumpers.
  

By the way, I have to say that I've always been fascinated with cereal and the way it's marketed. It's like this weird perfect intersection between children and capitalism that produces a marketing Galapagos Island of exotic cartoon characters and high concept junk food. I imagine that someone from Russia visiting here in 1982 would have been utterly astonished by the sheer number and variety of sugary cereals available, and would have immediately realized that Communism didn't stand a chance.

PS: It's been a long-standing dream of mine to create a children's cereal called Basically Just Sugar.