The Inventor Of Cap'n Crunch Also Created This Classic Sitcom

Cap’n Crunch, full name Horatio Magellan Crunch, is an icon. But I think it’s safe to say that he’s known almost exclusively for his contributions to the cereal sphere. Whether that makes him a hero or villain is probably up to how intact the roof of your mouth was after a bowl of his eponymous crunch. 

And yet, it turns out that Cap’n Crunch’s origins might have been a warm-up for one of the most lauded sitcoms of all time.

That would be The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a series co-created by a man named Allan Burns. It ran for seven seasons and won the positively gob-smacking total of 29 Emmys, accompanied by a litany of other high-profile praise, like holding the number one spot on Entertainment Weekly’s list of 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. 

But before he was given the reins to his own network sitcom, he was working in animation with a man named Jay Ward, sharpening his writing skills on cartoons like Rocky and Bullwinkle and Dudley Do-Right. It was during this time that Quaker Oats reached out to them for a cereal mascot, and Cap’n Crunch was the result.

He then moved into the world of real-life actors and together with Chris Hayward, created another TV sitcom you’re probably well familiar with: The Munsters. He’d work his way through a couple more writing jobs, all successful, which eventually caught the eye of TV producer extraordinaire James L. Brooks. When CBS needed a series built for budding star Mary Tyler Moore, they got handed the task, and succeeded by any metric you could imagine. 

Such is the unlikely link between a cereal-loving naval officer and one of the best sitcoms of all time. The only real miss here? That there was never a Cap’n Crunch crossover episode.