Part of a Balanced Breakfast: 90s Cereal Commercials We'll Never Forget

Ahhh breakfast cereal commercials of the 90s. They were cartoons in themselves with terrifyingly catchy jingles, strange not-quite-british accents, and ZING-y one-liners. I couldn't even have told you the difference between "That's all folks" and "Part of a well-balanced breakfast"...I just thought either one was said as a cartoon was ending.

Anyway, for real...Toucan Sam, Cocoa the Monkey, the Cookie Cop - what the hell was up with their accents? Did they have to lure us with pseudo British accents because American English isn't cool enough? (It isn't) Lucky had an excuse to be Irish but the rest of it is just very suspect. WELL, here is a nice little mashup of my Top 9 favorite throwback cereal commercials of the 90s - assembled using Searchles TV and so can you!! Click here for more info.



1. Fruit Loops, Rapping Rhino. "Totally fresh" about sums up this fruit loop episode with Toucan Sam and the Rapping Rhino. To me, Fruit Loops were like Cheerios on awesome steroids. For great taste, just follow your nose.

2. Cocoa and his Cocoa Krispies. I love a good monkey outsmarting other jungle animals storyline and Cocoa always delivered. Even the milk turns chocolate! Is that natural?

3. Corn Pops. Gotta have my pops. This one I never really understood because corn pops weren't all that good...but I did enjoy the tension that mounted with jaws-like background music until they found that extra box of Corn Pops.

4. Lucky Charms. Everybody's after me Lucky Charms. The marshmallow mountain is like finding gold at the end of the rainbow! I always separated out my Lucky Charms by each color of marshmallow and ate them bit by bit always keeping the piles even. Come to think of it my morning routine may have been a bit more OCD than originally anticipated.

5. Frosted Flakes. Vitamin packed! Anybody could score on a Tony the Tiger assist. This one must've come out around the first Mighty Ducks to take advantage of our hockey buzz.

6. Apple Jacks. If they named it Apple Jacks, shouldn't it taste like Apples? THEY NEVER ANSWERED THIS QUESTION. But they did usually have nice middle school flirting action in their commercials which I ate up as a 5th grader...dreaming of middle school.

7. Cap'n Crunch. Peanut Butter. The Soggies. Pirates. Inspector Gadget-style chopper. This commercial has all the makings of something great.

8. Trix. Silly rabbit...Trix are for kids. This was not a stellar lesson in sharing and/or animal cruelty awareness.

9. Cookie Crisps. It still strikes me as a little ridiculous that some children you could only get to eat a 'balanced' breakfast by making part of it look like cookies. Then again my mother never got me Cookie Crisps so perhaps I'm just bitter.

10 Memorable Commercials Based in One Song and Vivid Imagery

Sometimes commercials seem less and less like commercials and more and more like music videos...music videos that make you want to buy GAP khakis and wish you were more hip to Indie Rock. Actually some Indie fans get really angry at this selling-out for iTunes downloads that some bands/musicians indulge themselves in as noted here...but hey, they're kind of great commercials and generally involve a lot of beautiful colors. I was remembering back to the Nick Drake Cabrio commercial (#1) that reintroduced the world to Pink Moon and really captured the essence of good old American joy-riding. So sometimes these ads can give some old classics new life. Here are what I arbitrarily judge to be the top 10. Like this embeddable video playlist thing? You yourself can give Searchles TV a go and make your own channel.



1. VW Cabrio ad - Pink Moon by Nick Drake

How it made me feel: Constricted by the four walls around me and bad about the fact that I was watching TV. This one 'takes you away' a bit.

2. iPod Nano ad - 1235 by Feist

How it made me feel: Like tube top jumpsuits were really going to make another go of it and that maybe I WILL move to Canada if a Republican makes it into the White House. That Feist...she's a keeper.

3. VW ad - Da Da Da by Trio

How it made me feel: Hazy, a little stupid and weird about all my secondhand furniture. Apparently the sale of those little skeleton handtoy thingers really blew up after this ad started airing.

4. Sony Bravia ad - Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez

How it made me feel: Very warm and fuzzy and glad I wasn't on the clean-up crew for this shoot.

Star of the ad: The frog.

5. Gap ad - Jump Jive an' Wail by Brian Setzer Orchestra

How it made me feel: Bouncy...yet still uncoordinated. This one is actually credited with kickstarting a swing dancing trend.

6. Zune ad - Lake Michigan by Rogue Wave

How it made me feel: Like Alice in Indie-Rock-Land. Zune, however...failed.

7. iPod ad - Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet

How it made me feel: Okay...like dancing. Like people needed to get over iPods a bit.

8. Sony Bravia ad - She's a Rainbow by The Rolling Stones

How it made me feel: That the ad stays generally true to the realities of rabbit procreation and that this is an amazing often overlooked Stones song.

9. Heineken PL ad - It's Love by Chris Knox

How it made me feel: Like paying it forward. Like drinking.

10. Sprite ad - Falling Away by Benjamin Pacheco

How it made me feel: Good...this one just makes you feel really good. I believe it started airing during the Olympics. It made you feel a little better about yourself to watch only mildly talented athletes playing a pick-up game after watching Michael Phelps go for his 8th gold.

US Treasury Develops Innovative Financial Derivative to Participate in the Equity Upside of Banks It Supports

The Product is Known as a Convertible Undated Note Transferable into Stock or CU*Ts

(note: Searchles takes a quick breather from 'judging stuff' this morning to bring you breaking borderline-inappropriate news from Washington)

Washington, DC - 17 October, 2008 - As part of Hank Paulson’s TARP package, the US Treasury has developed an innovative financial product in order to give the Treasury and the US Taxpayer an opportunity to participate in the equity upside of the banks the Fed is currently supporting. The offering, known as a Convertible Undated Note Transferable into Stock or CU*Ts, is the product of weeks of deliberations between the US Treasury and Major Financial Institutions around the nation. The breakthrough came early this week when a number of leading officials met with Hank Paulson and Senior officials at the Treasury Department. It is rumored, according to a source close to the negotiations, that when the Treasury’s capital investment plan was presented in a summary term sheet to the CEOs, one of them dropped his head into his hands in despair and uttered “CU*Ts”, to which a Treasury official after closely analyzing the intricacies of the term sheet soberly replied “correct." No one is quite sure where the idea for the product and its acronym actually originated, though members of the Washington media elite are speculating it may have in fact originated from Joe The Plumber and his neighbor Derek the Drywall Guy. When asked by media this week how he would propose resolving the financial crisis, he responded, "When it comes to the Wall Street stimulus package, I think CU*Ts will play an integral role..."

YouTube Tearjerkers: 9 Videos of US Soldiers Coming Home Early to Surprise Family Members

It's like the airport scenes in "Love Actually" times 1000. These US soldiers returned home early from their tours to surprise their sons, daughters (at school!), wives, husbands, mothers and/or fathers in these poignant moments. Here are the 9 biggest tearjerkers on Youtube of these happy reunions. Note: extremely emotional, have tissues on hand. These videos are streamin' back-to-back through the Searchles TV Mashup tool.

Rickrolling the Rickroll: Rick Astley Parodies

The rickroll - it's all a beautiful bait and switch. You expect to see something (the Michelle Obama 'Whitey' video, for example) and you instead see that 80s superstud belting out one of his greatest hits. But let's say you're TRYING to watch "Never Gonna Give You Up" and instead of Rick Astley himself, you are DOUBLE rickrolled into watching an impersonator...and oh are they entertaining - as a matter of fact one particularly talented wannabe Rick here can't be more than 14 years old. Here are the 7 best Rick Astley parodies out there, mash'em up with Searchles TV mashup tool/embeddable player. Boo ya.

9 Most Baked Stoner Moments in Film

Now that Seth Rogan is one of the hottest Hollywood producers and Stoner films are officially classified as a movie sub-genre, it's nice to take a look at some favorite stoner moments of film's past - mostly involving attempts to make sense of a situation, or making so much sense it blows our flippin' minds, or generally damning the man (Mr. Hand, for example). I also just finally noticed the Can't Hardly Wait rip-off of "...was a hip hip lady" from Dazed and Confused. WFT. This is an arbitrary list for sometimes with these things I feel as though I could no sooner pick a favorite star in the heavens, ya know? These moments brought to you sequentially by searchles tv video mashup player. Check it ooot.



1. Super Troopers. "Littering aaaand...smokin' the reefer'.

2. Can't Hardly Wait. "He wears t-shirts, sometimes."

3. Dazed and Confused. "Martha Washington was a hip hip lady."

4. PCU. The Womenysts vs. Jerrytown Ultimate Frisbee Showdown

5. Outside Providence. A letter from Drugs Delaney.

6. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Jay and Silent Bob's rap.

7. Half Baked. Brian's story about Killer.

8. Orange County. Jack Black articulates his entrepreneurial aspirations.

9. Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Every Spicoli moment.