Am I making too much of this? Is this one of those “Well, in MY day we had…” rants?

Maybe. But come on cereal companies. In the last few decades you’ve raised your prices, have reduced the size of your boxes, thus giving us less for our money, and now this. You have the most obvious opportunity to give a free toy inside, and you don’t???!!

BTW, they had multiple box fronts, here’s what the other ones look like: