Eyes, nose, ears and mouth...

Yes, you guessed it. It's none other than MR.POTATO HEAD!

Few people know that Mr. Potato Head was almost little more than a forgotten cereal premium. But history has a way of being kind to the classics.
During the World War 2 era, George Lerner enjoyed success as a well known inventor and designer. Just before 1950, he designed and produced a first generation set of plastic face pieces. The push pin shaped noses, ears, eyes and mouth parts could be pushed into fruits or vegetables to transform the food into an endless array of magical anthropomorphic playmates.
The toy wasn't an immediate hit however. There was still a World War 2 mentality to conserve resources. Toy companies didn't think that customers would accept the idea of wasting a piece of food as a child's toy. But after awhile, George finally sold the toy to a cereal company, who planned to use the pieces as a premium giveaway in cereal boxes.

Merrill experimented with filling the boxes with small toys instead of school supplies, and the idea took off. They began making their boxes into doctor kits, nurse kits, paint sets and even junior air raid kits. In 1951, George Lerner approached Merrill with a set of toy face pieces as an idea to fill one of their boxes. Merrill loved the idea of making funny faces with fruits and vegetables...and bought the toy from the cereal company. It was a purchase that would become their first huge toy hit, and help boost their company, later called HASBRO, into the ranks of toy legends!

The Hassenfeld’s introduced their new Mr. Potato Head Funny Face Kit to the world on April 30th, 1952, and began one of America’s greatest toy stories. The earliest boxed set, Mr. Potato Head featured a package with goofy vegetable faces and says that you could use any fruit or vegetable to make a funny face man. The original price for this Mr. Potato Head in 1952 was under one dollar!