Bugs Bunny [Quaker Puffed Rice/Wheat - A Series] #3
This pocket-sized giveaway is part of a historically notable 1949 promotional campaign that brought Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes cast — Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, and Sylvester — into an entirely new distribution channel: the cereal box mail-in. Rather than being sold through newsstands or spinner racks, these fifteen miniature comics were available exclusively as a mail-order premium, representing an early and creative use of branded comics to market a consumer food product directly to children. As one of the third issues in the A-series, 'Rocket to the Moon' also reflects the postwar American fascination with space travel and adventure that would saturate popular culture throughout the 1950s, demonstrating how even a licensed funny-animal title could tap into contemporaneous cultural currents.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The series was published in 1949 under the copyright of Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. and produced for Quaker Oats — the parent company of Quaker Puffed Wheat and Quaker Puffed Rice cereals. The books were not distributed through traditional comic channels; instead, readers redeemed a coupon cut from the back label of a Quaker cereal box and mailed in fifteen cents to receive one of three sets (A, B, or C), each containing five comics. The publisher behind the production was Western (the same Western Publishing organization whose Dell imprint would go on to publish a long-running stand-alone Bugs Bunny series beginning in 1952), making this an early example of that studio-licensing relationship in action. Individual story and art credits for the Quaker mini-comics are not documented in available sources.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Issue #3A is titled 'Bugs Bunny Rocket to the Moon' and was published in 1949, copyrighted to Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc.
- The series comprised fifteen total pocket-sized comics divided into three mail-in sets (A, B, and C), each set containing five issues — a distribution model exclusive to Quaker cereal promotions.
- Each book in the series is a miniature format: approximately 6.75 inches tall by 3 inches wide, 32 pages, printed in full color on newsprint.
- The comics were not sold in stores; readers obtained them by cutting a coupon from a Quaker Puffed Wheat or Puffed Rice cereal box label and mailing in fifteen cents.
- The completed mailing envelope bore an illustration of Bugs Bunny with a word balloon indicating which set (A, B, or C) had been ordered.
- Western Publishing — which held the Dell/Gold Key Looney Tunes licenses — produced the series, situating these giveaways within the same creative ecosystem as the later, long-running Dell Bugs Bunny comic (1952–1984).
- Other issues across the three sets are confirmed to guest-star Elmer Fudd (#5A), Porky Pig (#1B, #1C), Sylvester (#2C), and Yosemite Sam (#1B, #4B), showing that the Quaker run drew broadly from the Looney Tunes ensemble cast.
- The Quaker Puffed Rice/Wheat mini-comics predate the dedicated Dell Bugs Bunny ongoing series by roughly three years, making them among the earliest standalone Bugs Bunny comic publications outside the anthology title Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics.