OLDGUY: SUPERHERO,

CRIME BUSTER

The Post Toasties CEO’s ne’er-do-well son,
employed in PR, decides Oldguy will make
a perfect frontman for his plan to dust off
their Junior G-Man Club, which was such

a sales booster in the 1930s. Boys and girls can,
once again, receive badges, secret code books,
signet rings and two-way wrist radios. But
in photographs of Oldguy “relishing” bowls

of the cereal, he looks as if he’s being forced
to eat yellowed toenail clippings. When asked
for a cogent anticrime tip, Oldguy says, “If you
have to use a bowl of cereal, aim for the eyes,

then go low with the denture-grapple.”
The CEO rescues this project by presenting
Oldguy as a wily-uncle type who dispenses
salty truths, skewering the competition.

Sure enough, competitors’ sales nosedive
as Oldguy compares their products to silage,
dried horse dung, and yard waste. When
Post Toasties sales take off, a bidding war

develops for Oldguy’s services. Wheaties
wins, putting his picture on the front of their box.
But when he keeps getting their cereal
mixed up with the others, he ends up back on

his old beat. A year or so after, breakfasting
at an outdoor table downtown, he’s assaulted
by a mugger, who gets a bowl of oatmeal
high and, down low, the trusty grapple.