Kelloggs Baking Powder boats- woo! look at it sit there!

The Beer Baron

These fantastic pieces of inert plastic were released twice by Kelloggs, once, in packets of Corn Flakes, and then with Frosties.
There were three models in total, there was a tiny plastic boat, which you opened at the top and filled with baking soda and it was supposed to bubble and buzz about the bathtub like nobody's business, but basically farted white foam for a few seconds and sank. (Perhaps it was my mother's penny pinching buying inferior brands of baking powder, or perhaps the fact that whilst every mother had baking powder it was always the same tin for over a decade)

Then we had the diver.
The diver you filled with baking powder.
And down he went, trailing microbubbles, and then it just sat there at the bottom of the basin never to return.

My personal favourite, however, and the only one I ever got any movement out of was the yellow submarines. Now they rocked!
You could pull aside the thing at the bottom and pretend they were wings effectivly doubling your playing potential, now, not only is a an inert baking-power (tm & (c) Kelloggs) sub but it was now a flying submarine! Oh the madness!

Of course when I got this submarine (I really loved those submarines) it also failed the baking powder test, and it was with a rather glum expression that I scooped out the baking powder gloop out of its little chamber faced with the prospect of another bowl of horrible corn flakes to eat (I hated corn flakes) until some other piece of sh1t toy came out and I hassled the mammy to get me that instead.

Again they came out with Frosties, and I was somehow expecting that they'd improved the design a little but it was not to be. I guess they had a surplus of these things in some warehouse in Taiwan and decided to pawn the rest off to second generation of suckers. They still done jack sh1t. But this time I was older and wiser and had researched alternative fuels and come up with my own baking power alternative- Andrews.

Initial tests with the diver and the boat failed. The diver sank, and never came up. The boat began to bubble mightily, but mostly sat there, before sinking and never coming up. But the submarine- oh that fantabulous submarine! -it didn't just dive and sink once, but twice!
I was overjoyed.

Yes, I must admit to having something of a soft spot for nautical-styled cereal toys, and I must also admit that the technology has improved dramatically over the years- why those wind-up Finding Nemo fish I got in my Shreddies some time back, the sheer speed and power of those really blew my mind.

Emboss

MAN! hahahaha

they came free with KELLOGGS?????


WE ALL GOT THEM FOR XMAS!!!!

i'll i'll f*cking kill her :mad:

Agent Smith

hahahahahahahaha




oh wait....

Seamie

You got yours to fizz before they sank?!?!?

gaelic cowboy

I always thought the problem was it was not the correct type of baking powder being used in ireland i'm nearly sure baking soda is what you were supposed to use or was it the other way round

Tivoli

not a word of a lie here

i was a kid like 5 or 6 out the back with the mentioned sinking boat in an old bathtub 3/4 full of rainwater, anyway went in to retrieve my miniture vessle, rolled up sleve and reached in, grabbed something, and submerged a fooking huge drowned RAT, thanks for the memories lads, think i'll book a shrink

byte

/me roffles

That was hilarious. Andrews indeed!

jor el

I remember the sub and boat, but never got the diver though. I seem to remember waiting in anticipation for the damn thing to zoom around the bath, only to find that it would just spit white goo out the back and not really do anything else.
Still, had great fun playing with them anyway, even if they weren't self propelled.

jill_valentine

Beer Baron, I'd just like to say I hope you do something involving writing for a living cuz that whole passage had me in stitches, and I don't even remember the subs, boats or divers...

Sarky

I remember getting the diver to go up and down a couple of times before turning sideways and floating to the top to stay. Or rather, a grown up getting it to do that. I could just about see over the kitchen table at the time...

I remember wondering at the time, too, about the colours. I thought it was odd that a diver would be all the one colour. Even his face was red/yellow/black. I found it highly suspicious at the time. I must have been such a wierd child...

SantaHoe

Yeah what a heap of crap they were... although it's good to teach kids about false advertising at a young age.
Thanks kellogs.

ALLGOOD

those bloody things, they just sat there but on the advert they flew !

i'll tell you what was better - the small model cars you could get with tokens, they were cool.