Here's what may be the first commercial for Quisp and Quake, two cereals that the Quaker Oats Company introduced in 1965 via a marketing campaign done in tandem with Jay Ward.
What I always thought was interesting about these cereals was that — at least for the initial campaign — they never told you what the cereals actually were. They told you they were sweet and vitamin-charged and that they tasted great and were packed with energy…but they didn't tell you if each contained corn or rice or oats or wheat or styrofoam or what it was about them that might tickle your tastebuds. Apple Jacks tasted like apples (they claimed) and Cocoa Krispies were a chocolate-flavored rice cereal and Trix were fruit-flavored something…but they really didn't tell you anything about what you'd be eating if you bought Quisp or Quake. You were supposed to try a box or two just because they had neat characters on the packaging and in their commercials, and those neat characters were feuding so you had to take sides.
I guess it worked…at least for a while. Reportedly, both sold decently for a few years but even though the two cereals were (I'm told) almost identical, their sales were not. Quisp's eventually went up and Quake's went down — just like the characters, themselves. Quake was discontinued and so was Quisp for a while, but in 1999, they began making it again, pushing it as the first "Internet Cereal." They still make it but it receives limited distribution and is promoted largely on the Quisp website. I am amused that nowhere on that site, from what I can tell, do they tell you what the cereal actually is. If you hunt around the Quaker Oats site, you can find out that it's a "saucer-shaped, crunchy corn cereal…but that's about it. They're still selling the mascot and not the product.
Here's the ad. Daws Butler was the voice of Quisp, William Conrad was the voice of Quake, and Paul Frees was the voice of the host in this spot, which was probably written and directed by Bill Scott.
