Cracker Jack and the prize inside - Life in America 

Let’s get one fact straight: NO corporate buyout owner changes a recipe unless it’s to rip off the consumer or save money. Rarely does it improve taste. Ever.

I think we can all agree that Cracker Jack was an integral part of our collective childhoods.

It's not the same without the actual toy prize.

I knew as soon a large company got involved they would start short changing the customer.Funny how some things dont change.

My mom and dad would bring us kids boxes of Cracker Jack home from the grocery store when they went to town to shop for the week's groceries. It was fun to eat the popcorn and peanuts and work our way down to the prize inside. Thank you for the great memory!

Remember the jingle?! "Candy-coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize, that's what you get in Cracker Jack!"!

Take me back to my childhood Cracker Jack Days, those were the best of Cracker Jack

A concrete memory for me. I'm a child of the 50's and that was always a special treat for me. Glad I was an adult in the 60's when all the changes took place. I always remember how it just wasn't the same anymore. "More profit, less nuts" ! Too bad !

I remember my dad shouting out of the car window "Did you get your license out of a cracker jack box"

I remember as a child in the early 60's the joy of getting a toy in each box. It was something you could actually play with, not throw away stuff like today. I miss those days, it was a magical time.

Just once I'd like to see a product from my childhood stay "As Is" how sad my kids and Grandkids will not know how Crackerjack tastes with it's full measure of peanuts and popcorn and the delight of a ring or car you were wishing for, for a prize, I would not mind if they went back to how it was and charge a few more cents.

I used to get in trouble with my mom or aunt for pouring out the caramel corn onto the kitchen table just to get to the Prize! What a memory!

There is NOTHING like the ORIGINAL!!

Give me some peanuts and crackerjacks, I don’t care if I ever get back🎵🎼🎶

As a kid in the 70s, Cracker Jacks were my favorite. For a few decades, I had a box of the prizes I had accumulated.

A memory of growing up my dad bless his heart he would bring us cracker jack every week when he got paid we were happy to get one cuz what prize was inside we wondered what we got we would eat our CJ then see what we got as a surprise was fun opening them still a remembersnce of CJ & my Dad who I miss so much with ❤️ of A great memory

I stopped eating Cracker Jack years ago because of the lack of peanuts.

Those were the days with half of it peanuts!

Yep ,,, my childhood was way more awesome that I remember it being !!!!!

I remember looking forward to getting cool prizes. Now all we get is some cheap paper not worth keeping. Life back then was better. Had more stuff for the price and better quality. Now they give you much less and charge you much more.

1872 wow ! Cracker Jack, everybody liked Cracker Jack... yes, and that little prize, oh my. It was good all the way around. Haven't had it in years. thank you!

Only the people that grew up in the 50's and 60's can relate to this channel.

I still love Cracker Jack. Now you're lucky to get even a few peanuts. The "prizes" are also a pathetic crock now. Cheapskates! I'd sure like to have those old baseball cards.

My friend got a miniature record as a Cracker Jack prize. He put it on a turntable; put the needle on, and intelligible sound actually came out of the speaker. As I recall it was a short song to the effect, " I kiss your hand, madam."

Cracker Jack was still good when i was a kid in the 70's and the prizes were so much better than they are today(my favorite prizes were the fake tattoos and magnifying glass). I rarely eat cracker jack now. In my teen/young adult yrs(80's) i started eating crunch-n-munch and from the 90's onward i only eat poppycock(my favorite flavor is caramel/cashews)

Congrats on (almost) 50K subs! I just wanted to say how much I love all your videos on this channel. They always feel nostalgic and relaxing. Keep them coming!

I loved the little fortunes that used to be printed on the prize packets. I miss them almost as much as the peanuts.

I don't remember ever eating them as a child but I do remember my step-grandfather loving him and had a big giant glass bowl full of the toys that came in it

Where did you get your drivers license? Out of a box of Cracker Jacks! In the 60s and 70s Cracker Jacks had much better toys, not any more.

My mom absolutely hated the whistle I don't understand why😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

Here's another fond memory from my childhood... back when my teeth could actually handle some Cracker Jack's! Getting to the bottom of the box to reveal the "BIG little PRIZE" was a treat in itself.

Can you do a video about TANG???

I was born in 1964 even though I liked Cracker Jacks growing up my parents both said how much better it was before 1964 which until this video I had no idea what they meant. it was just a coincidence that it was sold and I was born in 64 but I was like WTF? lol

Man I feel old now. I grew up having this all the time as a kid. You weren't cool unless you had these, sunflower seeds or candy cigarettes during practice. Great memories.

You won't find a diamond in a Cracker Jack box.- Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad, by Meatloaf.

I used to love the Cracker Jack prizes that were inside, mostly the cute little miniature books. The rings inside usually broke within the same day of wearing them.

I used to open the down side of the box just to get to the prize faster.

I ate a lot of Cracker Jack back during my childhood in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. It was never a favorite, but my mother loved it and always kept boxes of it in the pantry. The peanuts were my favorite part. I loved fresh caramel popcorn at fairs and amusement parks, though. Cracker Jack always had a sort of bitter, burnt taste to it that fresh caramel popcorn didn’t have. Our family got a microwave oven in 1973 and there wasn’t much you could do with it back then besides heat water or melt butter. We got a microwave cookbook that had a recipe for microwave caramel popcorn and it turned out to be a great recipe! We started making our own version of Cracker Jack with as many peanuts as we wanted. SO much better than the stuff in the box. I wish I still had that particular recipe. It worked perfectly every time. Of course, that recipe was made specifically for the Amana Radarange so it probably wouldn’t work the same way in a different microwave. Those Amana Radarange were like home thermonuclear accelerators…

Cracker Jack was better in the 1960’s. It tasted better, and had real prizes. Now you just get digital codes. What’s so special about that? You can get digital codes anywhere. If you buy a Disney movie on DVD, there’s a digital code inside.

Iconic product. We always ate the box of Cracker Jacks from the bottom. We'd open the box...get the prize first. We were hedonists. Life.😎👍👍

Awesome video, thank you for the memories

"When You're the Best..They call You a Cracker Jack" their slogan read.

My aunt was a Cracker Jack freak! She always kept it around up until her death at 90. She had saved the prizes from the early days (back to the 20's) when they were still made of metal. She would pull them out and show us from time to time, she had about 60 or so, some of which were valued around $200-$300 each. We never knew exactly where she hid them and searched all over for them after she passed away but never did find them.

Screaming Yellow Zonkers were tasty as well. Compared to Cracker Jacks, they were a flash in the pan, though. I still fondly remember the plastic trinket prizes, which often required some assembly.

I remember when I was just a little girl, family friends of ours had those tins that most people keep sewing stuff in but they had old cracker jack prized. They were so cool and fun to play with. I miss being a little girl.

I love cracker Jacks. When I was a kid we would wake up on Sunday morning and find a box of them by my pillow, my dad would always bring us some on sundays. It was a lot better when you actually had a real prize inside. A tiny car, a ring, etc. I still buy cracker Jacks when I can find them but it’s sad that they don’t have toys in them anymore.

And if you own one of those baseball cards from 1914 or 1915 today, you can buy a whole boatload of Cracker Jack. Seems we hear this line quite a bit in your vids, "In (year), (original company) was sold to (bigger company) and the quality of the product (went to seed)."...

My Father was born in 1921. He loved Cracker Jack. I guess he must have eaten a lot of them. There was a really nice prize in the box and my Gramma saved them all for him. When I was about 13 my Dad gave me 3 of his shoe boxes full of the toys inside his his Cracker Jack boxes. They were Copper footballs, dolls, horses. baseball, all kinds of neat stuff. I got Bingo and Sailor Jack. by the time I was 20 these toys were very valuable. I ended up selling them at an auction for $6800.00.

What a great historical overview! Very well done, sir!

Cracker Jack was such a nice summer treat. I also remember the commercials featuring Jack Guilford, especially when he intercepts a package of cracker jacks passed back and forth by two occupants in a train's sleeping car bunks - and gets caught.

Remember the green snap-together toys that were in Cracker Jack in the late 60's? Those were manufactured in my hometown of Palatine, IL.. My sisters Girl Scout Troop took a tour of the facility, and i went with. The guys there felt sorry for me, they gave me a huge bag of those toys. I was about 6.

6:16 Yeah, and now it's like 2 peanuts per box if you're lucky. BUT... "The more you eat, the more you want." Besides, in the 1970s, you were just diggin' in that box hoping for a lick-n-stick tattoo. #GoodTimes

In the 70's one of the prizes I loved getting was the 3D lenticular cards.

I loved eating Cracker Jack back in the day when it cost 10 cents a box. The Cracker Jacks today is not the same as it was 55 years ago.

Still love them today! 💜 Except for the loss of peanuts ...

Really well done video! Growing up in New York in the fifties and sixties... Cracker Jacks were certainly a part of growing up. Frankly I was not crazy about the molasses flavor but loved the surprise element of the prize in each box.

I loved the glow in the dark stickers and the tattoos that were in the cracker jacks!

Fiddle Faddle is much better these days than what is currently sold as Cracker Jack.

I remember you used to get little snap together toy carriages and cars, like little model kits, that you could put together and play with. They were kid of fragile but were really neat to get in the box. I actually remember being disappointed when I would get a temporary tattoo or a joke book instead.

Too bad the old-fashioned Cracker Jack is just a memory.

They used to put a compass in the box. I love the stuff.

I loved the toy as well as the candied popcorn. Good ole times.

I loved cracker jack!! but the boxes I grew up with eating in the 70s were much more colorful. Wow cracker jack & Chicago make me smile. 🙂💖 I know, I was blown away, when I saw them in the bag, and not in a box! 👀 Yikes.😳

Never did trust Elsie the Cow. At least now I know where all those peanuts went!

I still remember when my dad took me to Yankee Stadium for the first time in 1969 and I got a box of cracker jacks with one of those maze game toys.

I remember when the peanuts started getting scarce. Then they sold Cracker Jack "Nothing But Nuts" for a while, but I guess the market wasn't there for it.

They were my treats for many Halloweens and the kids would often sneak back for seconds.

My dad use to work for Cracker Jack and he would bring a box of them home to share with us. Today, all his children has a box in his honor because he use to work for the company.

Buy me some peanuts and cracker Jack's... I guess the dislike never got the prize.

Remember them in the 50's & 60's when yes an actual toy could be found in every box, with the magnifying glass being my favorite, most cherished prize. LOL Lived a few miles from the clearing plant on Cicero Ave. Just before the Nabisco bridge we'd ride our bikes up & down at high speed. Could smell Cracker Jack for a mile radius around that factory.

Surprise a peanut.

This video made me smile 😊 Thank You.

I think I was one of the last generations of people who had actual prizes and cracker Jack boxes. I distinctively remember when they started putting paper prizes in.

Modern times sure watered down the product.

Was born in 64 and I have had so many boxes of cracker jacks. My favorite prize was the temporary tattoos.. I have purchased as a grownup and they just don't taste the same!

I love Cracker Jacks, especially since I was a little girl.

In 1992 ,a replica BASEBALL card ,and Dunruss series was inclosed.

cracker jack days were the best saved me getting a shiner from bullies walking home from school..ha ha ha !

i sure do remember eating the original product in the 1960s. A lot of them were sold in the candy isles too in the stores.

I love American foods.

There's a blast from the past, up here the box had the circus elephant on it, and had the prize. Years later the prize were always stickers,which sucked afterwards

Cracker jacks....loved by dentists everywhere! I liked the prizes the popcorn and I remember the peanuts weren’t stale! All of us kids loved them!

Coupons that could buy a Daisy air rifle! "You'll shoot your eye out kid!"

Thanks for the memories and now I'm hungry for Crackerjacks.😏😋😊👍🏻

I have the cracker jacks boy in his sailor suit , got him in the late 60s. He's plastic about 3 inches tall.

Thank you for your professional entertaining, educational video! Great job!

I'm the youngest of 9 kids. When we were growing up , Mom would buy a 3pk of the boxes . Her rule was the 3 youngest kids got the cracker jacks. The sister I bumped off that list , still holds a loving grudge for taking her box of crack jacks.. to this day she still reminds me of the injustice I caused her . I'm gonna send her a case... Or 2.

dang it, RR. I cant stop watching. Subscribed.

I can remember the cardboard box, peanuts, popcorn and temporary tattoos! I haven’t bought a box of Cracker Jack in such a long time. I didn’t realize that there were no longer prizes inside, but now a QR code and few peanuts?? I remember hearing stories about marriage proposals by putting the engagement ring inside the box. Wonder if that is still going to happen…

Remember the paper wrapping from the 60s. Another staple of Americana

In the early 40s, my mom found a ring with a picture of a young John Wayne on it. (Her heartthrob.) She eventually gave it to me. They had pretty good prizes back then.

My cousin had a beanie hat on which was sewn toys from the cracker Jack boxes and other toys from the penny machines. I was so jealous! Now, if you buy a box of cracker jacks you get a joke on a piece of paper. It's just not the same...I'll buy Fiddle Faddle!

I was averaging three peanuts a box or just a few more. I wrote Borden and told them it was every box I had, I even went on to say change the slogan to " Candy coated popcorn A Peanut And A Prize" They did not respond. There are more on the face of the box. They just got cheap. Never again.

2032 : cracker Jack is bought again, for the 19th time, and changes the recipe from popcorn , to " corn based product" which is baked from "bioprocessed livestock grain " a Bi-product of factory cattle farms. The bag is the toy .cheers

I bought some cracker jacks after years of not having any. Was highly disappointed there wasn't a prize. I'm 50.

Remember when Fiddle Faddle was da bomb.

They used to have the best prizes they started with junk in the 70s and now there just pieces of paper. Its a shame our children missed out on the great things in life.

Honestly, I didn't even know Cracker Jack was still around. I haven't had any since the 80s, or even the late 70s. I always loved eating it though.

too bad they got cheap with the peanuts, i would rather have the 30 peanuts per box

Back when simple things meant a lot.