Cap'n Crunch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since January 2007. |
- For information on the phone phreak called Captain Crunch, see John Draper.
Cap'n Crunch is a sweetened corn and oat breakfast cereal manufactured by Quaker Oats Company and was created in 1963. The mascot of the cereal is a character named Cap'n Horatio Crunch [1]. The cereal pieces resemble yellow, slightly-flattened boxes, intended to look like treasure chests. A Cap'n Crunch Crunchberries version of the cereal was created in 1967 and also contains spherical pieces in red, blue, and green, intended to represent berries (originally it only had red crunchberries). Peanut Butter Crunch would follow two years later in 1969; According to sales charts this version was the most successful. A special edition named Christmas Crunch was first released for the 1988 holiday season and contained Cap'n Crunch with red and green crunchberries in a green box with the Cap'n wearing a Santa Claus hat. This variety is now only available currently in certain regions of the United States. Another special edition was Oops! All Berries containing nothing but the strawberry flavored crunchberries and none of the corn squares.
Contents |
[edit] Advertising
For nearly five decades, TV commercials have made Cap'n Crunch a Saturday morning icon. When Cap'n Crunch commercials debuted, they featured three children and their dog who sailed with the Cap'n on his ship, The Good Ship Guppy, ever encountering the Cap'n's nemesis, Jean LaFoote, the "barefoot pirate." The Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes contained small comic books featuring these characters. In a recent ad, Jean LaFoote returns, this time trying to steal the Captain's cereal recipe.
Commercials for Cap'n Crunch typically use basic cartoon animation; however, Vinton Studios produced a claymation ad during the '80s[2]. Daws Butler would provide the voice of the Cap'n from the 1960s up until his death in 1988.
In modern TV ads, Cap'n Crunch is often seen riding his ship through a wall as the whistle blares. He often comes in the middle of a predicament and uses his cereal to solve the problem at hand by "Crunch-a-tizing" it. Another reference to the cereal's crunchiness, a regular theme used to feature Cap'n Crunch battling off the evil "Soggies" who attempted to "sog out" the taste of his cereal; however, this hasn't been a common theme as of late.
According to the Ken Jennings' book Brainiac, Cap'n Crunch's full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.
[edit] Relation to hacking culture
-
- Main article: John Draper
In early 1971, a Vietnam War veteran named John Draper discovered with his friend Joe Engressia that a toy whistle that was, at the time, packaged in boxes of the cereal could be easily modified to emit a tone at precisely 2600 hertz, the same frequency that was used by AT&T long lines to indicate that a trunk line was ready and available to route a new call. This would effectively disconnect one end of the trunk, allowing the still-connected side to enter an operator mode. Experimenting with this whistle inspired Draper to build blue boxes, electronic devices capable of reproducing other tones used by the phone company.
He was sentenced in October 1971 to five years' probation for toll fraud. In 1973, he taught friends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak how to build a blue box. Jobs and Wozniak later founded the computer corporation Apple.
[edit] Trivia
- Cap'n Crunch was featured in the song, "Breakfast", by the Newsboys on their 1996 album, "Take Me To Your Leader." Even today, Cap'n Crunch boxes are seen at all Newsboys concerts. Source: Newsboys Wikipedia page.
- Cap'n Crunch is featured in the lyrics of the 1974 Ronnie Milsap song, "Pure Love."
- In the beginning of the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "Eat It," Cap'n Crunch is mentioned, along with Raisin Bran.
- Thrash metal band M.O.D. have a song about the character, "Cap'n Crunch" which appears on their "Gross Misconduct" album.
- Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon contains several pages about the procedure of eating Cap'n Crunch
- In the song "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything", Relient K sings "we don't wake up before lunch, but we all eat Cap'n Crunch"
- In "There's Something About Paulie", a Season 2 episode of Family Guy, The Cap'n appears in a scene where he asks a Mafia Don to kill Count Chocula. When the Don asks why, The Cap'n responds "Because that son of a bitch has been spreading lies about me! My cereal does NOT cut the roof of your mouth!".
- The Cap'n also appears in season 2 of Family Guy in "Let's Go To The Hop", as a member of The Breakfast Club
- In season 1 of Robot Chicken, episode 18, "The Sack" a parody of The Cap'n (along with Tony the Tiger) defends a drug dealer's mansion from the authorities, proclaiming, "Their bones will stay crunchy, even when soaked in blood!"
- Cap'n Crunch appears in an episode of Futurama where he was promoted to "Admiral Crunch", along with the promotion of Count Chocula to Archduke.
- Early Cap'n Crunch cartoons were brough to us by Jay Ward Studios, best known as the makers of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
- In 2006, as part of a promotion for Superman Returns, Quaker sold a Superman Cap'n Crunch cereal that turns milk blue.
- In one episode of The Powerpuff Girls, there was a cereal called "Lucky Cap'n Rabbit King Nuggets". The cereal and mascot are parodies of Cap'n Crunch, Lucky Charms, Trix, and King Vitaman.
- Cap'n Crunch plays a prominent role in a piece of the theatrical shows of Blue Man Group. In the piece, the "Blue Men" make music by crunching the cereal in their mouths, which is a statement about the cereal because its appeal is how loud it crunches and not its nutritional value.
- In season 2 of Friends, episode 16, "The One Where Joey Moves Out," Joey offhandedly comments to Chandler, "Man, this is weird. Did you ever notice Cap'n Crunch's eyebrows are actually on his hat?"
- In the movie 100 Girls, Emmanuelle Chriqui's character states that she eats Cap'n Crunch to get her in "the mood".
