MINT CONDITION
Grab a Bowl and Gather ‘Round the Table for a Tale That Stays Crispy in Milk!
N
ot all fandoms reach the masses — some are an acquired taste. Like breakfast cereal. While some fans work to round out their collections of action figures, die-cast cars, sports memorabilia, or fine art, there’s a growing legion of collectors focused on cereal. In a lot of ways, they share a kinship with shoe-collecting sneakerheads, right down to their nickname: cerealheads. Gabe Fonseca is a TV writer and producer, with credits including Netflix’s Marvel’s Jessica Jones and NBC’s The Night Shift. He’s currently spending time in New York City working on the hip-hop mini-series Wu-Tang: An American Saga, which is set to debut on Hulu later this year. Back home in Los Angeles, though, Fonseca has 216 cereal boxes displayed on a wall in his house, with more than 300 additional flattened boxes stored away in a closet. When he’s not working behind the scenes, he’s jumping in front of the camera to throw down some knowl-
92 | Issue No. 4 | THE POP INSIDER
by James Zahn, senior editor edge on breakfast history. Through his popular YouTube series, Cereal Time TV, Fonseca takes viewers beyond the box and into the history of cereal — exploring each brand in great detail. Sometimes he’ll even crack open a vintage box for a taste, but that’s one of those things he’d rather you not try at home. “The YouTube channel came out of necessity more than anything else,” he explains.”My collection of unopened boxes had grown quite large, … and my wife suggested that I open the boxes on video and explain a little about the history of each cereal. It started as a way for me to document and save memories of these old cereals for myself, ... but apparently other people enjoy the trip down memory lane.” Fonseca says that the seeds of his collection started back when Wheaties would regularly feature NBA stars, such as Michael
Jordan, the “Bad Boys”-era Detroit Pistons, and the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers. “That was just a small, very specific collection,” he says. “I didn’t start collecting boxes seriously until the early 2000s. I was browsing eBay one day and came across an unopened box of Spider-Man Cereal (1995) from Ralston. That was one of my favorite cereals of the ‘90s, and I decided I had to buy it. From there everything kind of snowballed. I would continue to check eBay and buy other boxes that sparked a nostalgic feeling in me — boxes that took me back to Saturday mornings, sitting in front of the TV while watching cartoons and eating cereal.” For those of a certain age, the Saturday morning experience is a cherished reminder of simpler times. Between the ‘70s and ‘90s, there was an explosion of pop culture that gave birth to an onslaught of licensing that saw countless popular characters make the jump from the screen to the cereal aisle. “I’m a sucker for the licensed cereals. I