At a time when Cap’N Crunch was the only successful cereal introduction in years, Freakies cereal went into test market and got a 65% higher trial than the norm in test market.

It also got a 98% awareness with an advertising budget about one fourth the size of Cap’N Crunch.

So in 1974, Ralston Purina took Freakies cereal national and the Freakies phenomenon in test market was duplicated throughout the country.

Specifically, Freakies fan clubs sprang up among kids 5 to 12 years old and among Sororities and Fraternities.

Freakies T-Shirts offered on the package sides were often on backorder. (Fraternities and Sororities, not to mention kids, were ordering them like crazy.)

The owner of the company that manufactured the Freakies premiums became a millionaire in the first year. (One of the reasons was that Jackie End insisted upon writing specific Freakies stories for each premium featured on the package backs. So the premiums were incorporated into the mythology of the Freakies and that increased their desirability.)

Kids and college students wrote letters begging for more Freakies characters.

In one letter a little boy from the Midwest said he’d organized a Freakies Club and there were 7 members, each with the name of one of the Freakies. He, of course, was BossMoss. But he had another 20 kids who wanted to join and so he needed 20 more Freakie characters so he could let the other kids in!

Research showed the Freakies did so well because 7 different characters meant there was a Freakie for every kid to relate to.

Research showed the Freakies were loveable and funny.

Research showed, that in a time when all cereal advertising mandated simple adversarial storylines, the personality conflicts between the Freakies were far more interesting to kids.

The Freakies first appeared in 1971 when Copywriter, Jackie End created the cereal name and characters for Ralston Purina.

Each of the characters was based on someone she worked with but she made sure that each was recognizable as a playground archetype and that each character was funny and loveable. And both the commercials and the package backs were handled with gentle humor.

The introductions of line extensions, Cocoa Freakies and Fruity Freakies were incredibly successful and to this day, these package backs and premiums command the highest prices in the cereal memorabilia market.

In fact, the Freakies characters were so charming and memorable that;  A fanzine dedicated to them began publishing in 1994 (Today, The Freakie Magnet has a licensing agreement with The Freakies Company and is in distribution at Borders, Tower Records and other book stores and has subscribers in Japan, England, Australia and Canada.)

The original 60 second Freakies commercial won several international animation awards and was a permanent installation at The Museum of Modern Art for many years, And they were given several pages in the book, Cerealizing America, published in 1995.

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