I admit it, the only reason I bought the box of cereal that I did was because there was a free toy in it. What the free toy was isn't really pertinent to this discussion nor was it to me at the time of my purchase. These days it's almost impossible to find an actual toy in a cereal box, now you have to mail away for them all. But the way I figure, if it's got a free toy IN it, I'm sold. (That would be how I ended up with a large collection of really ugly temporary biker tattoos.) If you must know, this was a pretty respectable toy, as far as cereal box toys go--it was a bendable Pumbaa figurine. And what's even better than knowing there is a small rubber Lion King-inspired toy living in your cereal box is that day when you finally find it buried down in the depths amongst pulverized powdered reminants of cereal. No, I take that back, shoving your hand down in the box, digging around for an eternity with cereal spontaneously leaping out and finally grabbing onto the toy is just as good (that was easier when my hands were smaller). So you can imagine my surprise and disgust when I opened up my brand-new box of cereal and there, right in front of me was the Pumbaa toy in its own wrapper sitting on top of the separate sealed bag of cereal! It wasn't even IN the cereal bag! Where is the challenge in that?! I've always had a problem with the cereal bags that had the toy towards the top of the bag but I've passed that off as "contents settling after packaging"--I mean, fair warning I guess. But they didn't even TRY! It wasn't in the bag! It wasn't in the bag! Oh how I wished I had accidentally opened the wrong side of the box. They should have a disclaimer that warns about the toy being on top of the bag inside. Imagine the effects this could have on children, just look what it did to me! And people wonder why kids are so lazy these days. Everything is just handed to them, no work required. That is the real tragedy here. The children and their destroyed work ethic.
