Card of the Day - 2022-11-21

Weeties "Popular Film Stars"
Cereal Foods [trade : breakfast cereal : O/S : Australia] "Popular Film Stars" (1955) - C82-28

This is a set you probably have not seen before, unless you are reading this in Australasia. The cards measure a pleasing size too, of 83 x 58 m/m. And it contains several stars that are hard to find, like John Wayne (10/30) and Marlon Brando (30/30), as well as a card of Marilyn Monroe (11/30)!

Number 8/30 is also interesting, for it shows Maggie McNamara, born in New York in 1928, nominated for an Academy Award for her first film, but dying, of an overdose, aged just 49 .

You can find the full checklist, and see most of the cards, at tcdb/popular vita-brits

Cereal Foods, based in Carlton, Melbourne and several other regional centres, was an amalgamation - of Cereal Foods, Kornie Food Co, and Purina Grain Foods, whose brands were Crispies, Kornies, Purina Rice Flakes, Vita Brits, and Weeties. That is why you can find the set with three different fronts,
A. Crispies - Vita Brits
B. Crispies - Vita Brits - Kornies
C. Weeties - Vita Brits - Crispies

If you were a tacker in the 1950s I imagine this brings back all kinds of breakfast memories! 

The amalgamation happened some time in the 1950s, but it only lasted a short while before it was taken over again by Nabisco, in 1961. 

By the way most of our information comes from our Australian and New Zealand Index, RB.30, issued in 1983. It is an excellent volume, but hard to come by, and it deals with all cards issued in the Antipodes. There is a follow up volume too, part two.