Toys Return to Cereal Boxes

If you've missed rooting around in a cereal box for a toy, you're in luck. WK Kellogg Co. said Thursday it's including toys with some of its breakfast cereals for the first time in more than a decade. Starting on Sunday, special-edition boxes of Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, AppleJacks, and Corn Pops will have plastic toys shaped like characters from Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5. The movie is scheduled to hit theaters in June, the AP reports.

Plastic toys used to be a mainstay in breakfast cereal, but they have gradually disappeared as manufacturers cut costs and consumers worried about choking and other hazards. Kellogg was criticized in 2004 for including Spider-Man watches with mercury batteries in its cereal boxes, for example. Kellogg said it thought Toy Story 5 was a good fit for the reintroduction, since it explores the role of toys in a tech-driven world. "Bringing toys back inside the box reintroduces that sense of discovery through a simple, screen-free moment of play that parents can now share with their own kids," said Laura Newman, a brand marketing vice president at Kellogg.