Thursday, October 7, 2010

Cereal Box 45's: Ghost Story Edition

In my vinyl record collection I have three 45's that aren't vinyl at all-- they're actually made of cardboard and cut from the back of a cereal box. Yes, back when I was a kid you could get a cool record that was printed right on a box of Alpha-Bits, Honeycomb, or any of the great Monster Cereals, etc. The three 45's I have featured in today's post haven't been grooved by a needle in over 30 years, and only just recently did I learn that most of these spooky stories originated from actual horror albums that were previously released... this gave me the sweat-free option to just link to some of them already uploaded on youtube.

[NOTE: If memory serves, I believe the first record is the same re-telling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which is also featured on RECORD 3. So far I've only found the stories from that one, so if anyone has links to RECORD 2 please let me know. Now, click the highlighted links to hear the stories!]


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RECORD 2:
  • The Haunted House
  • The Ghost in the Attic
  • Sounds of the Unknown
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RECORD 3:

19 comments:

Mykal Banta said...

Wow, is this stuff choice! What foresight you must have had as a kid to save these. Amazing. I'll be the first to ask: How did they play?

Mr. Karswell said...

Not really foresight Mykal, just the lifelong inability to ever part with anything. These 45's play great though, if you click the links I believe two of them are directly from the cardboard 45's.

Mykal Banta said...

Karswell: "Not really foresight Mykal, just the lifelong inability to ever part with anything."

That's probably more like it for a lot of us!

Prof. Grewbeard said...

after looking through my collection i could find nothing that matched Record #2's titles, so i'm very curious about them...

Mr. Karswell said...

>i could find nothing that matched Record #2's titles, so i'm very curious about them...

Unlike me, you're obviously set up to rip mp3s from a turntable Prof (my record player crapped out years ago), but if you'd like I can send you RECORD 2 and you can make a copy of it... I still have to send you back some of your vhs tapes I borrowed a billion trillion years ago anyway!

Prof. Grewbeard said...

sounds good to me!

Anonymous said...

I don't understand, cut from the back of a cereal box?

Jen S. said...

Anonymous these were actually cardboard records that you could cut out from the back of the cereal box. Weird concept but they worked! Gotta say it is really fun seeing this stuff. I never would have remembered these even existed. Kinda makes me bummed out how much crap I got rid of. Thankfully we have people like you that can't throw things away! :-)

Mr. Karswell said...

Fast food chains did this back in the day too, Burger Chef for example used to have them on their kid's Fun Meals. And sometimes the records were also made of clear, floppy plastic and came inside the cereal box.

Tiny Sepuku said...

Great posts. An old friend has those Alpha-Bits records and played them when we were kids. If I recall correctly, one of the tales was a really weird story about a trailer from outer space. I could totally be imagining it, but I recall it so vividly. Anyway, keep up the awesome posts.

Unknown said...

I totally had that haunted house one! And ones from Bobby Sherman, Mama Cass etc.

Anonymous said...

I had that one too. it was called "the Mysterious Space Trailer."
I still remember it. The best part was this old lady flipping the tv channels
old lady: darn tv, all i get is this channel 1
Investigators (Rick?): Channel 1, where does that come from
Old lady: That's whats funny... there isn't any channel 1 (cue scary music)

google isn't letting me sign in
http://johncoulter.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

I just asked someone if they remembered the cereal box 45's and they directed me to your site. I remember having a Bobby Sherman cardboard 45's.

Lucy Starcrest said...

Hey, I had that last record there, the one with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Amazing - I had thought about it in so long, yet I can still recite lines from it. Any idea when that one came out, and on which cereal box? Thanks!

Mr. Karswell said...

I appreciate the continued comments here on this post... I was told these examples all came from a variety of different POST Brand cereals, like Alphas Bits and Sugar Crisp.

Lucy Starcrest said...

Oh my, I just noticed you've linked to the audio on YouTube. Amazing, thanks so much!

Crafty C said...

even though you said all this stuff was published on albums previously and it's entirely possible that i have whatever they were published on - i am still very sad that i can't hear Record 2.

but i got to hear Record 3! yay!

thanks for posting these! they're really cool!

GroovyDoom said...

The second record was part of a series of three, there were a few people curious about record two. Someone posted the first story, "The Haunted House", on YouTube. Here's the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqyo_oJ-czY

Brother Bill said...

Just a comment on story #2--the Ghost in the Attic, while I won't swear to it, a grade school friend of mine had this record and I'm pretty sure they had story #2 (I've been looking for a rip of it on-line for awhile with no luck.) I recall it being a riff on the old jack-in-the-boxy "dark, dark" type story "Inside the dark, dark house, was a dark, dark room. In the dark, dark room, was a dark, dark staircase. Up the dark, dark staircase was a dark, dark door.." etc., ending on a dark, dark chest in the attic, and the big "jolt" ending was "Inside the dark, dark chest.... WAS A THING!"