Spoonmen Cereal Premiums
| ||||||||||||||||
|
Nabisco "SPOON SIZE" SHREDDED WHEAT JUNIORS Spoonmen Spacemen | |||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
Created in 1959 by the late great John "Wally" Walworth for Nabisco these diminutive plastic characters have remained one of the most popular and fondly remembered cereal premiums from the 1950's. Named Munchy, Crunchy & Spoon Size these figures ranged in height from just under 2" for Munchy down to just over 1 1/2" for Spoon Size. Each figure has its name molded on their backs in raised letters. Known as Spoon Sitters, these in-pack cereal box prizes are designed to be slipped on a standard spoon via the notch on the bottom of the figure so that they could emulate the characters on the box not to mention the TV commercials and print ads of the time. The five most common colors appear to be red, blue, powder blue, light lavender & caramel. All of these colors are semi-translucent. The translucence is best observed at the ends of the feet and in the antennas but the figures are more opaque than the Buffalo Bee Breakfast Buddy. There is also a more opaque brown but this color seems to turn up less often. Other colors have been reported but I have not seen any examples other than the ones shown here. If you own Spoonmen in colors other than the ones shown on this page please let me know. |
|
|||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
None of the Spoonmen on this page has ever seen the inside of a cereal box. They came direct from the collection of Wally Wallworth, hand picked from a gallon bag full of Spoonmen (I only picked one of each color but I wanted them all!). He had a few like the examples shown here to the left. One is a very translucent milky white with a touch of yellow in the foot and the other is a translucent green with a tiny bit of black plastic swirled in. It is generally thought that these were test-shots. Neither of the figures have their names molded on them. The green Crunchy figure has ill-defined decorations on the front and a back that is not filled out like the production run. Also the production run of these figures are molded in solid colors. Swirled colors generally occur when one color is changed for another during the run and some of the former color gets mixed into the latter color until it is purged. Although some companies purposefully created swirled colors in the early years of plastic toy production. | ||||||||||||||||
| Want to talk Spoonman? Email me here! | ||||||||||||||||
Photos & HTML - © copyright 2007Mike's Toy Planet Shredded Wheat Juniors, "Spoon Size" & Spoonmen © copyright Nabisco | ||||||||||||||||
