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Does anyone recall the little plastic submarines that were free with Corn Flakes back in the late 50s and appeared again, briefly, in the 60s. You put baking soda in a special round socket underneath and this caused the submarine (approx 2 inches) to sink, then surface, repeatedly.
Thats it!!! I used to open the box, despite orders to the contrary, and dive my hand in to find the little plastic bag!!
In 1953 Benjamin & Henry Hirsch, owners of a small cosmetic lab, discovered that the gas (carbon dioxide) created when baking powder comes in contact with water could be used to raise a submerged object. Delighted with their discovery they made a crude model of a submarine that could dive and surface & presented it to a major cereal company in nearby Battle Creek, Michigan. The rest is history.
Introduced in 1954 for twenty-five cents and one box top, the four-and-one-half inch long working model of the submarine U.S.S. Nautilus required three shifts to keep up with orders. By May of that year over one million subs had been produced and work was started on a two-and-one-eighth inch give-away version.
Probably down to nanny-state Britain.. Companies could be sued if someone choked on a toy that was hidden in the cereal, and had not noticed the warning on the packet.
Actually, that probably says more about the Nation of idiots we've become than the government
why don't cereal boxes contain toys anymore (or do they?)....
Not very often its all cut out tokens for books for schools etc, and when they occasionally do the toy is underneath the inner wrapper rather than inside it with the cereal.
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