Daniel85

Came across these while kicking it around my local Safeway recently:

I don’t think there’s been any advertising for them (but then, a product like this would probably be advertised during the morning cartoons, and I’m never up before 10 AM), so I dunno how long they’ve been around. Could be old news for all I know.

Let me tell you a little something about Tiny Teddies. They first entered the hearts, minds, and stomachs of Australian children in 1990, in ‘chocolate’ and ‘honey’ form. They’re loosely ripped-off (I mean based on) what the Yanks call ‘Teddy Grahams’. 

Now, in 1990 both the Care and Gummi Bears were still going strong (and who could forget the Ewoks?) so kids would eat up any product related to those small, fuzzy natural born killers.

Wait a minute! Eat up? Small bears? Small… tiny. Bears… teddies. Tiny Teddies.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that’s how one of the brainstorming sessions at Arnott’s would have gone in early 1989.

Anyway, I remember when they had just come out, there was a display at the Safeway on the corner of Shannon Ave and Aberdeen St (G-Town represent!) which consisted of a massive edifice built of boxes of Tiny Teddies. I was five years old at the time, and so right smack in the middle of the group Arnott’s was aiming for. I don’t recall if there had been much advertising for Tiny Teddies, or if seeing them in-store was my first exposure, but I do know that I wanted them bad.

My memory is a little hazy as to the exact sequence of events, but I think I was walking down the frozen food aisle with my mum when I saw the awesome spectacle of a ziggurat of Tiny Teddy boxes. I must have stopped and she kept going, cos I remember running up to her later, ready to make any kind of deal necessary to have those things in my belly within the hour. Strangely enough, she agreed to let me get them without my having to make the brocolli pledge, and I ran back to grab a box.

I dunno if I was just so excited that common sense physics went out the window, or if I was simply a stupid kid to begin with, but I just reached right into the middle of the masterpiece of whatever high school kid had pulled display stacking duty and grabbed a box of honey Tiny Teddies.

Sure enough, the whole damn thing came tumbling down.

I don’t remember what happened after that, but I don’t think I cared too much. I had my Tiny Teddies and a kick-ass ‘remember when’ story to boot.     

Back to the matter at hand, though.

There’s been a whole bunch of crazy Tiny Teddy shit going in the last few years, and I’ve tried to keep up as best I can. First there were new flavours, then whole new products (the Dunkaroo-esque ‘Tiny Teddy Dippers’, plus the Godzilla of the Tiny Teddy universe, the over-sized ‘Tiny Teddy Creams’, and the ill-fated savoury-flavoured Tiny Teddies).

I’ve always felt that there should have been a Tiny Teddy cartoon. I know that it’s not the early 80s anymore, and you can’t get away with shit like that in children’s programming, but come on- they could make it a positive, edifying multicultural thing. You’ve got the black/chocolate Tiny Teddies, the white/honey Tiny Teddies, and the half-caste choc-chip Tiny Teddies. And you know what the strawberry ones could represent.

No good? Ah well, it was worth a try. 

With this Tiny Teddy On Safari thing we get a hint of the Tiny Teddies actually engaging in some kind of activity beyond just existing to be eaten. (I’ve always felt the ‘Meet them, then eat them’ tagline in the advertising was a bit creepy. Kind of like those Cadbury ads where the chocolate people take bites out of their environment, pets, and each other.)

You’ll probably have to enlarge that to read the text. It’s worth it, believe me. Rex the Rhino, Ellie the Elephant, and Leonard the Lion. Leonard is such an uninspiring name for the King of the Jungle. I’da called him ‘Lucius’.

The standard fun-’n'-games on the back of the box. At least finger puppets are a bit more useful than one of those freakin’ mazes you usually get. 

So here’s what’s on the inside. I was going to try and do a David Attenborough sort of thing here, y’know, like “observe the creatures of the plastic savannah in their-’ oh, fuck it. Richard Attenborough was always my favourite Attenborough anyway.

There’s your lineup. I hate those fucking giggling ones. I think they’re there to laugh at the fat one, to show kids that it’s not okay to be obese. Hey, that could be a public service announcement. “Remember, kids: it’s not O-kay to be O-bese!”

Upon seeing the lion, I decided perhaps Leonard is the right name. He’s just so wimpy. The elephant, on the other hand, is goddamn scary. Those eyes…

I was pretty happy that these biscuits came in the honey flavour, because as far as I know you can’t get boxes of honey Tiny Teddies now; it’s  only available in those cumbersome multipacks with the little baggies that contain like six and a half Tiny Teddies. Those are okay for my two year old cousin, but I don’t need that many layers of plastic slowing me down. I want to just open a big box of Tiny Teddies and stuff my face with handfuls of them. I guess they had to go with honey on this one, though, because ‘chocolate’ and ’safari’ would just be inviting racism claims.

Yesssss. There’s my man Grumpy, clearly the best of the Tiny Teddy gang. If you compare the actual Grumpy to his animated avatar on the box, he is about 100 times more pissed off in biscuit form.

Here’s a line of Grumpy Tiny Teddies, just cos.

I think one of the things kids are supposed to do with Tiny Teddies is create their own little stories with them before eating them. The danger there is that you form attachments and don’t want to eat them, so you end up with ten year old grotty food on your mantlepiece. But anyway, if I was doing a story with the contents of this box it’d be all about Grumpy and his lion posse terrorising everyone else.

How do we get down to one Grumpy, you ask? Well, there’d be a Battle Royale amongst all the Grumpies to decide that. Every non-successful Grumpy would die by being uppercutted into my mouth.

If Nesquik got its own cereal, why not Tiny Teddies? It’s pretty practical, actually, cutting out the tedious dipping process and just getting some good old biscuit + milk action right into ya. Kelloggs + Arnott’s, you know what to do.