Now there’s a duo that never made it into Marvel Team-Up – Spider-Man and Cap’n Crunch

I pulled this ad out of an old Rom comic that I looked at the other day. I had forgotten all about the “Where’s the Cap’n?” promotion from back in the 80’s, which was just another cheap ploy to get kids to buy more sugar-loaded cereal. This ad flipped a switch in my head, mainly dredging up remembrances of sitting in front of the TV on Saturday mornings and watching cartoons and the endless commercials for toys and junk food. It even brought back the memory of the time Lucky Charms was adding a new marshmallow and there was a mystery as to what it would be (It was purple horseshoes, btw).

Ah, the base lengths Madison Avenue goes to in order to keep kids hooked on high-fructose corn syrup. But you know what I was ususally munching while I watched those cartoons with their endless commercials? You guessed it, sugar-loaded cereal. So I suppose the least you can say about the ad agencies is that they know a thing or two about their craft.

In this particular promotion the Cap’n even went missing from the front of his own cereal boxes and was replaced by the question mark design that you ssee in the ad. Our friend Spidey joined the search for him:

I have a feeling that the secret code is something along the “Drink more Ovaltine” lines. And, if you’re wondering, the Cap’n was hanging out in the Milky Way. Get it? Nyuk nyuk nyuk. I guess that sells more cereal than “He pissed off the wrong people, kid.”

This wasn’t the only time Spider-Man crossed paths with this seafaring cereal peddler. Some hasty internet research revealed another occasion where he battled the Sogmaster and the Soggies in Sogland while they held Cap’n Crunch prisoner.

But we’ll save that epic for another time. As Mako said at the end of Conan the Barbarian, “This story shall also be told.”