Imagine you're the breakfast cereal division of a company whose best known product is Dog and Cat food. How can you trick the kids into eating the one cereal you produce? Just repackage it constantly, licensing various cartoon and television characters to slap on the boxes!
Yes, that was the Ralston business model in the 1980's and 1990's- making the same cereal in different shapes with different popular characters on the boxes. This gimmick worked well for them; most of the licensed gimmicky cereal at the time came from Ralston, who were happy to get your mind off of the fact that they also produced your pet food.
In the case of the GI-Joe cereal based on the toy and cartoon franchise, they even hid the company name:
Girls shouldn't feel left out; Ralston pandered to them too:
In this case, cereal enjoyed by a disgusting, slimy ghost creature was preferable to promoting the fact that your dog's favorite chow was probably produced on the other side of the factory:
Got the munchies, stoners? Eat the cereal based on a TV cartoon for kids inspired by a movie with two drugged out losers:
Now if this TV tie-in isn't scraping the bottom of the barrel, it's pretty close:
This is quite possibly the bottom of the barrel, though it admittedly isn't based on a TV show. Let's see if the youth of today will buy cereal based on outdated comic strips that only the Matlock set still claim to read. Who'd buy this cereal? Not me!
