Nintendo Cereal System Cards

Nintendo Cereal System Cards — from American Food Premiums in the Zelda Cards Gallery.

The founding food tie-in of the wing: one cereal box holding two bags — fruit-flavoured Super Mario Bros. pieces and berry-flavoured Legend of Zelda pieces shaped as Links, hearts, shields and keys. Each box carried four of a set of twelve collectible Nintendo Power trading cards, Mario and Zelda mixed. This is where Zelda cards reached American kids first: through food, a decade before Japan’s candy cards.

On the printing photographed here, the cards are punch-outs printed on the box’s back panel, four to a box; other printings carried offer backs instead — the disagreement in period sources is a printing difference, not an error.

The 1989 ad line: "Nintendo is two cereals in one… If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em." Production lasted about a year.

More from this set line: Nintendo Cereal System — The Box.

Shown here at its verified native size, 250×298, the largest honest copy the Library holds for this object.

No verified back has been sighted for this object yet, so it is shown front-only — SOJ never pairs a front with an unverified back. The hunt for the missing backs continues, and each joins its page the week it verifies.