Classic Television Commercial for Kix Cereal (1953)

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Uploaded by on Feb 16, 2009

A Classic 1950's Television Commercial for Kix Cereal. This is from an episode of ''Ding Dong School'', and the complete episode can be found elsewhere on the Internet Archive.

Miss Frances was born in Ottawa, Ohio. She earned her Master's degree in education from Columbia University and received her Doctorate at Northwestern University. She became the head of the department of education at Chicago's Roosevelt College.

"Miss Frances' Ding Dong School" was developed by the show's producer, Reinald Werrenrath, Jr. together with Judith Waller, director of public affairs programming for the NBC Central Division and began to air in the Chicago area on NBC. The show quickly gained popularity among young children and was quickly broadcast nationally, Monday through Friday, in November of 1952. In that year, she won the George Foster Peabody Award. The show at one time is suspected of having a 95 percent share on all preschoolers. In 1954, Miss Frances moved to New York, where she supervised all of NBC's children's programming. She held this position until 1956, when the show was canceled in favor of The Price is Right. Horwich owned the rights to Ding Dong School and syndicated the show until 1965.

By 1970, Miss Frances returned to Chicago and became involved with local programming once again. She eventually retired with her husband, Harvey, to Scottsdale, Arizona. She died of congestive heart failure on 22 July 2001 at the age of 94.


Miss Frances is famed for her uncompromising principles. In addition to resigning from NBC in protest of what she felt was commercialism over education, she would never advertise products a child could not use and would never advertise toys she felt glorified violence. She is also cited as inventing the approach of talking to the viewing audience as if they were there with you. Other notable users of this style were Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. Miss Frances was mentioned by name in three different Peanuts strips. Miss Frances was inducted into the Silver Circle of the Chicago Chapter of the National Academy of the Television Arts and Sciences on June 2, 2001. In 2006, an Ohio Historical Marker was placed by the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter in her hometown of Ottawa, Ohio.

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  • Miss Frances is just trying to tell us how good Kix with all that fruit is for us. We sure could use more people like Miss Frances on TV these days. She seemed very down to earth; I was never a Ding Dong School Fan; I was more into Romper Room.

  • this sounds like she trying to sell this on the home shopping channel

  • They weren't very good at advertising back then lol. Now they use a more subtle form of advertising to affect the subconcious mind rather than the concious mind.

  • This woman is dead now.

  • Miss Frances is apparently about to down 3 heaping bowls of Kix cereal for breakfast. Good luck Babe. I mean, it's good cereal and all that, but why three bowls? Ready for a little "binge 'n' purge", are we? Sorry, just havin' a bit of fun with the Ding Dong School lady.

  • im eating a bowl of kix right now with nothing added

  • OMG look at that new box of kix!

  • I'm surprised that's all the bigger a family size box was back then.I figured it'd be twice that.

  • lol this is odd

  • o.O

    This is a commercial?

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