

BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT CEREAL (1990-91) Ralston Purina entered the world of Bill & Ted with this most excellent part of a complete breakfast! Cinnamon oats with marshmallow notes were offered in regular retail stores for some time in 1990 / 1991 and could be found for a time afterwards in warehouse-style discount stores. This is one of the few products Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves didn't mind touting, and even Quentin Tarantino at one time said this was a most excellent product. The boxes featured the cartoon Bill & Ted and several different premiums, covered below: SALES SAMPLE This rare sales sample of the cereal box was made to showcase the upcoming premiums plans for the Bill & Ted cereal and the packaging for the product. The advertising and promotion plan displayed on the back of the box includes all of the actual premiums which made it to market, just short of the Bill & Ted toys. Also not included was the college scholarship and pencil toppers premium which were produced in some quantity but never released to market. TAPE TOTES The first cereal premium was a Phone booth shaped tape tote which came shrink wrapped to the boxes (we sympathize with the store stock people who must have found this very tricky to put many of these on the shelves). The idea of the box is to have something to carry cassette tapes around in, although some people actually mistook it for a mini-cereal bowl (which it could have been used for as well, come to think of it!). HYSTERICAL POSTCARDS The second cereal premiums (actually still part of the first one!) were the Hysterical Postcard set. The boxes which featured the tape totes also included Hysterical Postcards printed on the back of each box, featuring the cartoon Bill and Ted with famous historical personages: Christopher Columbus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington.

DIAL-A-DUDE Next came the Dial-a-Dude premium - enclosed in boxes of the cereal were a shrink wrapped, phone booth shaped pull-out phone directory. By detaching the list portion and inserting it in the Dial-a-Dude you could look up any name and number in the small slot on the front. This premium was also tied-in to a contest in which the prize was a full sized phone booth! HISTORICAL LUGGAGE TAGS The last premium were the Historical Luggage Tags, three separate styles of tags were available, one per box and shrink wrapped. This premium was tied-in to a contest for trip around the world! PENCIL TOPPERS PREMIUM (Not Released) The most excellent Shannon babe alerted us to this interesting Bill & Ted cereal box premium

which never made it to market! The pencil toppers that were to be offered in this particular box

(along with the chance to win a college scholarship as a grand prize!) actually did make it to

the collector's market but before now we weren't sure where they came from! What could be better than buying Bill & Ted's Excellent Cereal? Saving money on it, too! To help promote the product, coupons were offered in local newspapers offering $1.00 on a box. Not bad!! OUR RATING??

**Bodacious!** This was by far the most popular and well promoted of all the Bill & Ted tie-in products and definitely the most "hip" by far. While Alex and Keanu didn't show much enthusiasm for things like the action figures they did openly eat this cereal during interviews and talk about how they liked it. So anything the Two Great Ones endorse themselves we have to stand behind, and besides, it was a most excellent munch (although if you still own a box today we wouldn't recommend trying it any more)! The premiums were pretty cool as well and gave collectors a lot of different boxes to seek out. This is the original piece of mock-up artwork for the front of the cereal box which shows Bill, Ted and Rufus

full-figured with the entire phone booth: BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT CEREAL COMMERCIAL (1991) This commercial aired during 1991 to promote this most excellent cereal. Featuring the animated Bill & Ted (but *not* the voices of either Alex or Keanu), the commercial shows the dudes traveling back in time to the "land of heavy metal" (Medieval England) to share their most excellent cereal. They find King Arthur's men having a food fight using their most heinous gruel, so the dudes quickly pass around their cereal. The commercial ends when Ted asks "Who gets the last bowl?" and a fire breathing dragon reaches down to take it and everyone concedes "He does!" OUR RATING??

**Most excellent!** This commercial was perfect for the cereal and the animation was done very well. A cute advertisement with

the cereal box cut in cleverly included in many shots, this is one of our favorites.