"A Prize in Every Box" by F. J. Bergmann

First appeared in Writers of the Future 36, edited by David Farland.

A small family keeps buying a new cereal, mostly because it has coupons that make the next box cheaper. But suddenly the prizes inside get stranger and more wonderful--even potentially deadly or disfiguring.

Comment with some spoilery bits:

This story updates the Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore's oeuvre. The opening is a masterwork of gripping the reader and not letting go. This mastery may have to do with Bergmann's background in poetry--the ability to capture the reader in a small space. Poetry and fiction are different if related skill sets, and it isn't often you see one crossing between the two genres.

It begins intriguingly enough:

We begged for the brand-name cereal as seen on TV, in aluminum-silver cylindrical boxes lined up the supermarket shelves like a phalanx of spaceships, with twice the nutrition of oatmeal. Hints about the prizes appeared in commercials: wind-up robots, tiny books, toy-store gift certificates, even the keys to a mansion... and other, special prizes.

Lots of goodies in here to make me bite. The "as seen on TV" has a nostalgic dimension, and it hints at what engages the speaker. It's hard to tell if this is the future or the past, though. 

A problem that occurs to me on the third read: over-promises. It suggests a larger scope than is covered here. Could this be an opening to a novel version? Once I got to the ending, I definitely wanted a novella.

Two other problems: When has cereal ever had this huge of a promotion budget? Why aren't other kids having similar experiences? They may not be. But we should know this, one way or another. The mansion seems problematic, but does that figure into the larger version of this story? 

We tried to include cereal as a "basic food group."

Love it. Great humor--whether the speaker is or is not aware of it. We get a strange description of the cereal and the coupons that keep the mother buying, and I'm still in the game. But it's not until this mysterious line that I'm finally sold and ready to roll with author where she's headed:

The nutritional information on the side of the boxes was phrased in an unusually convincing manner, however: 120% USRVTOL-recommended levels of aractozone! Results of recent studies published in the Journal of Developmental Confrontation suggest that this compound promotes general rectitude, reticence, and well formed stools.

 Yes! Yes! Yes!

I ran with this family as they discovered different prizes and how they worked. Except the ending tapers off, mostly because it doesn't address certain issues:

1. Who is behind the cereal, and why? 
2. How many people on the planet are affected and what's happening to it as a result? The title and the cereal's promotion budget suggests the whole planet is involved. Surely, this would conversation topic at every child's cafeteria table. However, the students in the classroom and bus seem oblivious.
3. What are the children's goals and how do these cereal prizes impact those?

To answer these questions would require a novella. Perhaps a novel could work if the scope were widened sufficiently. The opening may suggest a wide enough aperture. When the story takes place might suggest more necessary widening.

This might have worked as a short story if the answer to #1 and #2 were closed off. Maybe the cancer situation was the crisis moment with a sort of climax in solving the problem were kept in family--no bullies. The bullies open up question #2--a good tool for enlarging the story into a novella or novel.

I do hope we see more of this family in a larger tale. If it weren't for the ending, this might have been my favorite.

Bergmann's work has appeared in Pulp Literature, Abyss & Apex, and elsewhere. Her poetry has won the Elgin and Rhysling awards.