Big G in Wonderland

Breakfast cereals used to come in boxes that contained nothing else, bearing a label with directions for cooking. Today, cereals hit the table ready to eat, bite-sized, sugar-toasted, cocoa-flavored or doughnut-shaped; their sales appeal is gauged less by flavor and nutrition than by the servings of toy automobiles, plastic submarines, code-message rings and baseball cards buried among the flakes or offered on the label. This week. Cereal Giant General Mills moves to serve a better after-breakfast bonus. On 45 million boxes of nine "Big G" cereals. General Mills will offer juvenile crunchers a serious, 48-page "Nature's Wonderland Stamp Album." For one boxtop and 30-c-, a kid can be the first in his neighborhood to study 45 species of wildlife with the aid of fact-crammed texts and sets of six-color stamps to be pasted into the album.

"Nature's Wonderland" is the creation of General Mills' cereal-marketing manager, Cyril Plattes, 45. A passionate woodsman who keeps a canoe stashed handy to his Minneapolis home for quick response to the call of the wild, Plattes dreamed of such a book all the time he was stuffing model cars and magic tricks into cereal boxes. "If we're going to give the kids something," says he, "let's give them something to help them rather than, the usual old blah." Forsaking blah. Plat tes commissioned Dr. Walter J. Breckenridge, director of Minnesota's Natural History Museum, to compile an illustrated nature book. Breckenridge included pertinent facts about each animal (horned toads are really lizards; skunks are ac curate up to 12 ft.), tips on such field-trip essentials as avoiding snakebite, and a habitat map of U.S. wildlife.

Up to now, General Mills' hottest box-topper has been a 15 radioactive polonium ring that drew 2,000,000 requests.

Hoping that his nature book, which sells at cost, may prove even hotter, Plattes has ordered a first printing of 1,000,000.

If it moves well. General Mills will try other educational offers, may even -- to the relief of prize-surfeited mothers and fathers -- start an industry trend. Says Plattes hopefully: "The adults all seem to like it. The question is: Will the kids?"

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