This week’s friday afternoon timewaster is Topher’s Breakfast Cereal Character Guide, the web’s leading encyclopedic reference work for fictional characters, animated and otherwise, used to convince children that sugar, chemical, and dye-laden corn flour is part of a nutritious, balanced breakfast.

While Topher covers all of the usual suspects like Cap’n Crunch, Dig’em, and the snot-nosed ragamuffins resident at the Honeycomb Hideout, the obscure and the short-lived get equal attention. Favorites there include the hideously inappropriate Indian warrior (reminiscent of “Iron Eyes” Cody) who fueled his days of hunting and killing settlers with Sugar Smax, the Golden Grahams Bear of Muscle Beach, and Sir Grapefellow, the flying ace of grape-flavored (ugh!) cereal flakes. Also covered in loving detail are the many and varied villains of cereal, whose intricate plots invariably involved stealing bowls of stuff that was available in any grocery at a dollar a box.

Finally Topher’s presents us with an assortment of extras and prizes (appropriate given the subject matter) including the great cereals of fiction, and a make-your-own virtual cereal creator.

Note that very few of the characters covered represent relatively healthful, non-sugar slathered cereals, such as Cheerios, Grape Nuts, Corn Flakes, or Muesli, whatever that is. I suppose General Mills, Post, and their competitors know all too well that no thirty second animated cartoon can make eating good food fun.

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