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Cap'n Crunch

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For information on the phone phreak called Captain Crunch, see John Draper.
An older Cap'n Crunch package
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An older Cap'n Crunch package


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Cap'n Crunch is a breakfast cereal manufactured by The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago, Illinois, and the mascot of that cereal.  It is one of many sugary cereals targeted towards children, and the majority of its television advertising is aired during children's television programming on Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons, during children's peak viewing hours. The cereal itself is a mixture of corn and syrup.  Pieces are shaped to resemble treasure chests, although some would argue that their shape more closely resembles bed pillows.


The cereal is promoted by the cartoon character Cap'n Crunch (full name Horatio Magellan Crunch).  Captain Crunch is the son of Admiral Horatio Crunch, Sr. and Gidget Runningstar, and was born and raised on Crunch Island in the Milk Sea.  His televised adventures aboard the S.S. Guppy revolve around the cereal, his first mate, Seadog, and his crew of four kids: Alfie, Carlyle, Dave, and Brunhilde. Their mission is to keep the cargo hold of cereal from falling into the hands of Jean LaFoote, The Barefoot Pirate.  Cap'n Crunch's story started at East Point Breakfast School, the military training school for breakfast cereal mascots.  A graduate of the class of 1969, Horatio Crunch quickly became Lieutenant Crunch. He saw action in the mascot wars of 1972, and suffered wounds to his head, which to this day, he keeps covered up with his trademark hat. For valorous actions in battle, Lieutenant Crunch was promoted to the rank of Captain, a title he currently holds today. Crunch debuted in 1963 with the commercial Breakfast On The Guppy, and was originally animated by Jay Ward Productions, and voiced by Daws Butler until his death in 1988.


Around the eighties Jean LaFoote, Seadog and the original children disappeared and Cap'N Crunch found himself having to deal with the Soggies, two soggy looking goons who tried to make his cereal soggy.  Currently the mascot has no opponents in his commercials and Cap'N Crunch seems to focus on providing bored children with his cereal.


Cap'n Crunch's animated commercial adventures have given Quaker Oats the opportunity to spin-off additional cereals based on the original, including Crunch Berries and Peanut Butter Crunch, and the holiday-themed cereal Christmas Crunch.


In common folklore, Cap'n Crunch cereal is said to be the preferred cereal of laboratory rats.  Although this claim has never been verified in controlled studies, many experimental psychologists anecdotally claim this to be the case.





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Effect on the mouth and gums

Cap'n Crunch is well-known to cause minor lacerations to the roof of the mouth and gums. This is likely due to the hardness of the cereal and the sharp edges formed when it is crushed during chewing. After eating Cap'n Crunch, one tends to notice a roughness or redness of the hard palate, even bleeding, which some have called "Cap'n Crunch Mouth".




Hacker References

Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon contains a several-page-long passage -- in chapter 56 -- about how to prepare and enjoy a delicious bowl of Cap'n Crunch. Neo is also described as eating Cap'n Crunch cereals in one of the early versions of the script for The Matrix. As both of these works are hacker- and computer security-oriented, these are probably references to the 2600 hertz whistle that came as a prize in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes in the late sixties. Not known to Quaker Oats was that the whistle's tone was the same used by the analog phone switches of the day for supervision, as many early practitioners of phone phreaking discovered independently. John Draper, one of the best-known phreakers of that era, went by the moniker "Cap'n Crunch" and still has one of the original whistles, though in most of the developed world their use become obsolete as telecom companies have since upgraded their equipment to digital switches with out-of-band signaling.



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