Bugs Bunny [Quaker Puffed Rice/Wheat - B Series] #1
This pocket-sized, mail-order-only promotional comic represents a distinctive chapter in how Golden Age publishers reached young readers outside the newsstand entirely — placing licensed Warner Bros. characters directly in cereal boxes as a consumer incentive. As the lead issue of Set B, 'Bugs Bunny and Buried Treasure' pairs Bugs against Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig in a self-contained adventure, demonstrating how quickly Looney Tunes properties were adapted into multi-character comic storytelling just a few years after Sam's theatrical debut. The Quaker Puffed Wheat/Rice series as a whole — fifteen issues across three sets — stands as one of the more ambitious cereal-premium comic campaigns of the late 1940s, an era when Western Publishing leveraged its Warner Bros. license far beyond the Dell newsstand arrangement.
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Western Publishing, which held the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes comic license and produced comics for Dell's newsstand distribution, also operated a separate arm creating giveaway and premium comics entirely outside Dell's involvement. The Quaker Oats promotion was one such effort: Western produced all fifteen issues for Quaker Oats, who distributed them via a mail-in coupon printed on the back label of select Quaker Puffed Wheat cereal boxes, with each set of five books available for fifteen cents. The comics arrived in a branded mailing envelope illustrated with Bugs Bunny. No individual writer or artist credits for the B Series issues have surfaced in available sources.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Story title: 'Bugs Bunny and Buried Treasure' — the lead issue (B-1) of the five-comic B Set.
- Published 1949 by Quaker Oats; produced by Western Publishing under the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes license.
- Distributed exclusively via mail-order: readers cut a coupon from the back label of Quaker Puffed Wheat cereal boxes and mailed in 15 cents to receive a set of five pocket-sized comics.
- Format: approximately 6.75" x 3", 32 pages, full color on newsprint — a miniature digest designed to arrive by post.
- The complete Quaker promotion comprised three sets (A, B, and C), totaling 15 issues, each set delivered in a distinctive Bugs Bunny–illustrated mailing envelope.
- Guest stars Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig; Yosemite Sam had made his first comic book appearance the prior year in Dell's Four Color #187 (April 1948), making this one of his earliest comic guest appearances.
- These comics were produced by Western Publishing independently of its concurrent Dell newsstand partnership — Dell had no involvement in premium/giveaway titles.
- The other B-Set issues are: B-2 'Bugs Bunny Outwits the Smugglers,' B-3 'Bugs Bunny Joins the Marines,' B-4 'Bugs Bunny Meets the Dwarf Ghost' (also guest-starring Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig), and B-5 'Bugs Bunny Finds Aladdin's Lamp' (guest-starring Elmer Fudd).
Cast · 3 characters
Full plot ⚠ may contain spoilers
▸ Reveal full plot — may contain spoilers
Yosemite Sam is determined to hunt down rabbits because one of them ate his grandpappy's treasure map. Bugs thinks he has Sam fooled with a fake map.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).