Quisp vs. Quake: The “breakfast feud” between cereals from outer and inner space

Fifty years ago, in 1965, the Quaker Oats company decided to simultaneously release two new cereal flavors — Quisp and Quake — and they further decided to have the two cereals compete against one another in a kind of popularity contest, broadcasting a TV commercial in which the voice-over announcer, Paul Frees, invited viewers at home to decide: “Take sides with either – two new cereals from Quaker, sort of a breakfast feud.”

Both characters were created by animators Jay Ward and Bill Scott, who had teamed up in 1959 to make cartoons in Los Angeles. Their first creation was “Rocky and Friends,” featuring iconic cartoon characters Rocky & Bullwinkle, but Ward was also responsible for “Dudley Do-Right.” Rocky and Bullwinkle were owned, in part, by a competing cereal company, General Mills. Ward and Scott may have been inspired in designing Quisp by the moon men Gidney and Cloyd who appeared in “Rocky and His Friends.”

Each cereal had its own mascot, but they were essentially the same cereal with different shapes and slogans: Quisp was “The quisp new cereal from outer space!” and Quake was “The power cereal from inner space!”

Quisp — voiced in the commercial by Daws Butler, the voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Cap’n Crunch — was an annoying little space alien with a propeller on the top of his head. He’d say things like “For quazy energy . . . Quisp is best!,” and would cry out that his cereal was the “the biggest-selling cereal from Saturn to Alpha Centauri.”

Quake — voiced by actor William Conrad — was a lunkhead miner with a miner’s helmet and oversized biceps who would talk about the brute strength his cereal provided, referring to his Quake as an “earthquake-powered cereal.”

Ward and Scott had created cereal mascots before too: a few years earlier they had created the now iconic Cap’n Crunch, which if you ask us was the best of all the sugar-sweetened kids cereals in the sixties.

The commercials also sometimes featured Quake’s mother, Mother Lode (voiced by June Foray) and Quisp’s sidekick Quunchy (voiced by Bill Scott).

The competition reached its peak in 1972, when a series of commercials asked children to vote for which cereal should remain on the shelves. Quake had a makeover in 1969, changing his miner hat for a cowboy hat. This commercial shows how he changed.

It turned out to be no contest at all: Quisp was the winner and Quake was immediately discontinued.

The character Quake was later resurrected in 1976, for an orange-flavored cereal called Quangaroos, the character now apprearing with a sidekick, an orange kangaroo named Simon, only he appeared to have undergone some kind of diet (he was much slimmer) and also had become Australian.

That year, Quaker Oats ran another contest, this time asking children to choose between Quisp and Quangaroos. Quisp won again and Quangaroos was discontinued.