It's a world where children are foils. Where the sight to fructose covered chocolate puffs can incite a bird to go cuckoo. A place where even marshmallows can be a part of a balanced breakfast. It's a world of cereals.

Breakfast cereals are a part of that magical time when Saturday morning cartoons met with Lucky the Leprechan in your favorite plastic bowl.

Little did we know then, but someday we'd trade in our world of super-sweet kid breakfast treats for the bran and oats of healthy adult cereals. Some still haven't made the switch. And others still prefer to fond with some kind of sepia-toned nostalgia over the whimsy of cereals and their hapless cartoon spokesanimals.

But they are so much more than advertising ploys.

The Trix Rabbit is a symbol for the human condition, with his fruitless efforts to obtain his life's pleasure ... a simple bowl of fruit-flavored cereal that's held out just past arms length by a flock of menacing children.

And by the way, how did it come to be a cereal commercial cliché that the character always lusted after the cereal only to have an obstacle stand in his way. Lucky had that problem. The Cookie Crisp burglar and had that problem. Fred Flintstone had had that problem with Barney Rubble stealing his Fruity Pebbles. The Trix Rabbit definitely had that problem.

But, according to Topher's Breakfast Cereal Guide, the Trix Rabbit actually got to eat Trix twice, once in 1974 and again in 1980. Other tidbits of sugar puffed information the site provides are the Corn Flakes Rooster's name (Cornelius - how clever), info about the rumored fourth Rice Krispies elf, and shots of Toucan Sam before and after his "beak job." You can also trace the magical evolution of the Lucky Charms marshmallow shapes (remember when it was just simple stuff, diamonds, stars, and clovers? Now there's balloons and rainbows. How are balloons lucky?).

Also be sure to check out the very cool foreign cereals like Japan's Melbin the elephant and K Rex dinosaur, and Mexico's Forticalcio Kid who expounds the benefits of a diet high in calcium.

So if you remember eating Nintendo Cereal System (you know, the one with two individually packaged cereals inside, Zelda on one side and Super Mario Bros. on the other) or if you can sing note for note the song the Cocoa Krispies monkey Coco sang as he swung through the forest, you are simply a product of a sugar-fueled cereal childhood, just like me. Wasn't it grrrrreat!

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