I mentioned these old commercials created by Jay Ward Productions (Rocky and Bullwinkle, George of the Jungle) over on our sexy sister site Ad Jab, but I thought you folks would enjoy them as well. It wasn't unusual for cartoon characters from television to appear in ads for cereal back in the day: General Mills used Rocky and Bullwinkle in their ads (I know for certain they were in ads for Cheerios, I'm sure there were others), and Kellogg's and Hanna-Barbera had a partnership as well (here's some examples, also from Ad Jab).

In some cases, however, entirely new characters were created specifically as cereal mascots. Jay Ward's studio helped create the characters Quisp and Quake, and the cereals bearing their names. Quisp was a nutty alien and Quake was a hardhat-wearing muscle man who lived in the center of the Earth. The two went against one another in a series of commercials in which they tried to convince the kids at home that their cereal was the better of the two.

Both Quisp and Quake were manufactured by Quaker, as was Cap'n Crunch, a character also created by Jay Ward's studio and voiced by the legendary Daws Butler. What's great about these old commercials is that, unlike today, the characters aren't just animated images slapped on the screen to catch a child's attention for a split second. They actually had continuing adventures, and the ads were engaging and fun to watch. Cap'n Crunch had his own ship, the Guppy, and an arch enemy named Jean LaFoot the Pirate. Of course, it was all meant to sell cereal, but at least some efforts were made to make these advertisements enjoyable. Clips after the jump.

By the way, you can still buy Quisp.