Remember the days when a box of cereal rattled with a plastic toy? Amelia Tait hears how they got there and where they went – and meets the enthusiasts still tracking down these elusive treasures
No one would ever guess, says product designer James Allerton, just how many people it took to make the glow-in-the-dark, lightsaber-shaped plastic puzzles once dropped by Kellogg’s into boxes of Corn Flakes.
Allerton, 47 from Sussex, now runs his own creative studio, but from 2000 to 2008 he worked for Logistix, a promotional marketing agency that founder Ian Madeley, 67, estimates manufactured more than 1bn cereal toys. Remember them? If you use Facebook, you could hardly forget them, as nostalgic memes regularly celebrate the baking powder submarines, Rugrats pencil toppers and Tony the Tiger-shaped bike reflectors that once plonked so satisfyingly into our bowls.
