Results: Weird Music Wednesday: The Sugar Bears-Buibble Gum Music From Breakfast Cereal Boxes

It may be an odd question to start a music survey, but are you familiar with the breakfast cereal that was once named Super Sugar Crisp (it's now Golden Crisp n the US and Sugar Crisp in canadam, though its mascot's name remains Sugar Bear) ?

If you couldn't guess from this survey's titile and the parentetical comment ending the previous qeustion, the rest of the queries here are about the band ("band"?) based on a breakfast cereal's cartoon mascot: The Sugar Bears. This musical menargerie cross-marketing a record company and a food company arrived with an album, Presenting The Sugar Bears, in 1971, toward the end of the boom in bubble gum music, which pitched rock & roll and soul down to pre-tween kid-friendliness. Before reading of them here, had you heard of The Sugar Bears?

The Sugar Bears' attempt ot shill a sugary breakfast entree, and maybe earn a gold record for the trouble (the 'Bears weren't so troulbled), actually spawned a nearly-hit single, at least in the US. "You Are The One"peaked in the upper-50's on Billboard Maagzine's Hot 100 pop singles chart. Perhaps it could've been a bigger hit, but do you think that some radio station music directors and pop music listeners may have been wary or dismissive of a musical "act" than could be viewed as an adverrising offshoot of a breakfast cereal?

One possible trouble facing the marketing of The Sugars Bears' records was that, for a while, one could hear their music without having t buy any vinyl. "You Are The One" and four other songs from their album were available on records available on the back of boxes of Super Sugar Crisp. Cut out the record from the back of the box, put it on a record player, put the needle on the thinly-grooved surface of dubious fideilty, and there you go! The sound quality offered from such a record may have sufficed for many of the 'Bears' younger would-be listeners. Post, the brand under which 'Crsp and other cereals are marketed, also offered cereal box records by The Archies, The Jackson Five, and Bobby Sherman around the same time as The Sugar Bears' era; other cereal compaies offered box back records far back as the 1950's. Do you recall records on cereal box backs?

The musicians involved in The Sugar Bears were made anonymous by their cartoon counterparts. But one had a a significant sory preceding his time as a Bear. Another had a #1 US pop hit coming a decade later. Mike Settle was a member of Kenny Rogers & The First Edition before his involvement with cereal box bubble gum music. Kim Carnes would go on to have hit duets with Gene Cotton and Kenny Rogers; and among her solo singles is probably the biggest pop song of 1981, "Bette Davis Eyes." Can you share any knowledge about obscure back stories of singers who went on to have greater success>?