I am sure I spent many hours doing little else other than watching my tiny Nautilus ascend from the bottom of the sink, surface long enough to discharge a bubble or two and then "dive" again to the bottom. Life was simple then and I was obviously easily amused.

I also was finally able to collect the entire series of six airplanes, all of the Douglas Curtis design, such as the DC-3. Seems to me that they were found in boxes of Sugar Crisps, but I could be wrong.

The coolest thing I ever got from a cereal box was a ray-gun. It wasn't actually in the box, though. I had to tape two quarters to a boxtop and send it to the magical city (Battle Creek). The ray-gun finally arrived in what seemed to me to be a very long time afterwards. I can't recall the mechanism of it very well, but essentially the pistol was loaded with talcum powder. A cloud of powder was released with each pull of the trigger. Unfortunately, if I remember right, it was a single-shot device and reloading was rather involved.

My ray-gun lasted only a few hours. I only had to drop it once and it shattered beyond repair - a rather traumatic event for me at age five as I recall.