E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Cereal
General Mills
1984
It may very well have been the first peanut butter and chocolate cereal I ever ate as a kid, and it was crazy delicious. Each bowl of E.T. Cereal was jam packed with "E" and "T" shaped bits, and was a delight to eat time and time again in 1984.
Sadly, it was one of those many "grab it while you can boxes", as no sooner did kids get to enjoy the cereal, it was being removed from store shelves.
It's interesting to find that a lot of people who like to sell old cereal boxes confuse this particular one as being sold in 1982. This is because of the copyright date on the bottom left of the back of the box which does in fact read '82. However, this is not the date of the cereal, but rather the date of the copyright for the film and record promotion being offered.
I know of two variations of boxes for the cereal, but some claim their is a third which had a promotion for stickers and miniatures. With the exception of a tiny thumbnail, I've not come across this actual box. It's possible this variation was a foreign released box where the mail away record wouldn't be feasible.
Though both the boxes I know of came with the promotion of a mail away E.T. storybook album narrated by Michael Jackson, the above box was the first edition. The dead give away being the giant yellow "NEW" banner plastered across the top of the box.
The second box removes the "NEW" banner, and also changes the blurb of the promotion to now mention that the album was a 1984 Grammy winner.
Though one could have just as easily gone to their local store and picked up a copy of this now famous story telling of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial by Michael Jackson, back in 1984 it was available for just five UPC's from E.T. cereal.
There's an interesting story surrounding the "album". As it turns out, MCA Records, who were also the label behind the score from John Williams for the film, were only allowed to use Michael Jackson to narrate the record if two stipulations were followed. The first was that MCA were not allowed to release the album until Christmas of 1982. The second, the song, "Someone In The Dark," was not allowed to be released as a single. MCA Records disregarded and breached both of those conditions, and soon found themselves in a lawsuit with Epic Records.The storybook record was released in early November, just weeks before the release of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Additionally, MCA gave seven inch promos of the song to radio stations. When Epic lodged a two million dollar lawsuit, MCA was forced to withdraw their album and not release any further promos of the song. Lastly, Epic requested MCA be banned from ever working with Jackson again.
In 1984 Jackson won eight Grammy Awards. Seven were for the album Thriller, and the last for his work on E.T. When accepting the award, he stated out of all of them he had received that evening, he was most proud of this one. Guess he liked E.T. more than his own album, Thriller.
More irony is that empty boxes of the cereal go for far more than this album. While you can get the record for about fifteen bucks, an empty box of cereal fetches around thirty to fifty. I suppose more of those did get thrown away, rather than saved. So, they are obviously more scarce than a mass produced album.
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