Chewable vitamins for kids existed well before 1968, they just weren’t much fun to take. Miles had already put out Chocks in 1960, marketed as the first chewable vitamin made specifically for children, and other companies were shaping their own tablets like footballs and flavoring them cherry or citrus to make the medicine cabinet feel a little less grim. None of that solved the basic problem though. A vitamin that looked and tasted like medicine got treated like medicine, and getting a four-year-old to swallow one still took some negotiating.
The Flintstones gave Miles something the competition didn’t have, a cartoon family that already felt like part of the household. The show ran in prime time from 1960 to 1966 before settling into an endless afterlife of reruns and Saturday morning slots, and by 1968 Fred, Wilma, Barney, Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm and Dino were about as familiar to American kids as their own relatives.
Betty Rubble, oddly, wasn’t part of the original lineup. Her spot went to a shape of the Flintstone car instead, and she didn’t get her own vitamin until 1995, after a nationwide vote and a few years of fans (Rosie O’Donnell among the loudest) pointing out that even the family dinosaur had made the lineup before Barney’s own wife did.
The vitamins eventually came with a jingle — “We are Flintstones kids, ten million strong and growing” — sung so often on Saturday mornings that it felt like it had been part of the brand from day one. The taste, of course, was there from the start. Miles wanted a vitamin kids would ask for instead of resist, and made it sweet enough that plenty of kids treated the bottle like a candy dish. The approach worked well enough that Sesame Street, Bugs Bunny and the Smurfs all got their own chewable vitamin lines within a decade or two, and even Pac-Man eventually turned up in tablet form.
VIDEO | “Flintstones’ Kids” TV commercial
Success brought some scrutiny along with it. In the early 1970s, the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission looked hard at how vitamin makers pitched health claims directly to children during Saturday morning cartoons, and Miles pulled its advertising back from kids’ programming as a result.
Miles itself became part of Bayer later in the decade, though the Flintstones name and its cast of characters stayed right where they were and kept their lead in the category. The product kept changing shape over the following decades too, adding iron, then omega-3s, and eventually trading hard chewable tablets for gummies, which brought the whole line even closer to the candy it had always been compared to.
These days the lineup includes gummies, sour gummies and versions built around immunity or bone health, running the character idea about as far as it can go.
One of the first: Vi-Daylin chewable vitamins with entrapped flavor (1962)
New Shape, New Color, New Bottle. New Vi-Daylin Chewable tablets are football-shaped. This shape got a high degree of acceptance in our taste tests and seems to have an intrinsic interest for children.
The orange color ties in with the mild, sweet citrus flavor. And the wide-mouthed new bottle looks handsome on the table.
Won’t you taste-test new Vi-Daylin Chewable multivitamins yourself? We’re certain you’ll be pleasantly surprised at their sweet good taste.
They’re the candy-flavored multivitamins with entrapped flavor… little folks taste the candy flavor, never the vitamins.
MORE: Remember the magic of baby aspirin, and how much kids loved those little orange pills?
Vintage Rexall MinuteMan chewable multiple vitamins for children (1964)
Vi-Daylin chewable vitamins – cherry flavor (1964)
Children preferred them to all leading brands of Chewable Vitamins in Independent Taste Studies*
In recent taste studies, new cherry-flavored Vi-Daylin Chewable was compared with the five leading brands of chewable vitamins… Our dual-coating process provides a key to the superior taste characteristics of this new product. This process civilizes raw vitamin tastes and odors and protects volatile flavoring agents until use. Also, the tablets are sweetened with sugar-free Sucaryl.
Unicap Chewable vitamins for children (1964)
Upjohn relates the attractive coloring of its Unicap Chewable vitamins by showing how color appeals to children; also uses the color to get maximum package identification as well!
Fred Flintstone – Kids just eat him up: Flintstones Vitamins (1969)
Fred, Barney, Pebbles, Bamm-Bamm, Dino, the Flintmobile — what a great way to get your kids to take their vitamins! In six fun shapes and bright lively colors,
Flintstones really are good to chew. And just one each day has all the vitamins kids normally need to take — if they don’t eat right. Get the Flintstones, Regular or Plus Iron. They’re all for the best.
Chocks fruit-flavored vitamins for kids (1970)
Monster Vitamins for kids – vintage ad with Vincent Price (1975)
Smurf vitamins for kids, from Mead Johnson (1985)
The fun vitamins you can take seriously: New Smurf chewable vitamins
Now there’s a children’s chewable vitamin that both you and your child will love. Smurf chewable look just like Papa Smurf, Smurfette, and other popular Smurf characters, and are just as much fun, so your child will look forward to taking vitamins every day…
As an extra bonus, each bottle comes with a loveable Smurf head for your child to collect.
Waka waka! Retro Pac Man vitamins (1983)
“Good-bye, Fred — Hello, PAC-MAN”
BETTER, NO SUGAR. Because new PAC-MAN has absolutely no sugar. And studies show that too much sugar can be harmful to young children. Flintstones” has over 70% sugar.
BETTER: NOTHING ARTIFICIAL. Because new PAC-MAN has no artificial flavors or colors. Flintstones does.
BETTER: COMPLETE NUTRITION. New PAC-MAN comes in two formulas…for kids under 4 and kids 4 and over Each has 100% of the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance of the 10 essential vitamins and iron. Flintstones doesn’t.
Centrum childrens’ chewable vitamins (1985)
Space Invaders chewable vitamins for kids (1981)
P.Leiner introduces a unique new concept in children’s chewable vitamins: Space Invaders vitamins are here!
Children have always been enchanted by outer space, and never more so than now. That’s why we’ve created Space Invaders — an entirely new line of chewable vitamins that brings the excitement of space to the popular children’s chewable category.
Each tablet is molded into one of our four space Invaders space figures. They taste great. They’re fun to take. And they appeal to children of all ages.
Varieties shown: Chewable vitamin C, Chewable Multiple Vitamins & Chewable Multiple Vitamin with Iron
Poly-Vi-Sol chewable vitamins for kids – Purple pills (1983)
Your child can’t tell you which vitamin is best. But your doctor can.
When your child was a baby, your doctor probably recommended Poly-Vi-Sol. or Poly-Vi-Flory drops. Now that your child is older, ask again…your doctor will probably recommend Poly-Vi-Sol Chewables (or Poly-Vi-Flor Chewables if fluoride supplementation is recommended).
Doctors recommend Poly-Vi-Sol because they trust the pharmaceutical quality that goes into every Vi-Sol vitamin. Doctors know that the makers of Poly-Vi-Sol are leaders in pediatric nutrition. That’s why Poly-Vi-Sol is the children’s vitamin doctors recommend most.
Kids outgrow things… it’s time for Flintstones Chewables (clear bottle from 1985)
ALSO SEE: How the Flintstones TV show got its start, plus see the intro & theme song lyrics… Yabba dabba doo!
Sesame Street Years vitamins for kids (1992)
Now… vitamins designed for the Growing years, the Sesame Street Years
Varieties shown: Extra C (with Big Bird), Complete (with Elmo), and Plus Iron (with Cookie Monster) — P.S. They’re available now as gummies!
MORE: Swinging Sesame Street debuted in 1969 – Here’s a look back!
Animal Parade chewable multi-vitamin for kids (1994)
Kids can’t keep their paws off Animal Parade – everyone’s flavorite chewable multivitamin and mineral!
Whatever you do, Mom, don’t tell the kids about all the wholesome, 100% vegetarian nutrients in Animal Parade. The delicious new chewable multi-vitamin and mineral from Nature’s Plus.
Do they really need to know about the spinach, broccoli, carrots and other whole-food concentrates? The protein-rich Spirulina? Or the guaranteed burst of energy stored in every Source of Life’ supplement? And the less said about the 16 vitamins and 8 minerals, the better. All that natural goodness can be our little secret.
Just allow your little ones to fall in love with our adorable lions, tigers, elephants and hippos. And let them think they’re munching on a cherry-delicious new candy. Because, in this case, what they don’t know can really help them.
90s Bugs Bunny sugar-free vitamins for kids (1999)
Just what your own little character needs. Fun, sugar-free shapes packed with all the vitamins and minerals kids need.
Vitaball vitamin gumballs for kids (2002)
You may never have to remind your kids to take their vitamins again. With new Vitaball, there’s no begging, no pleading, no fuss. The first 5 minutes or so your Kids chew Vitaball, they get 100% RDA of 11 essential vitamins Kids need every day. And it comes in all their favorite gumball colors and flavors.
At last there’s a multi-vitamin kids won’t outgrow. You’ll love Vitaball as a kid, a teen and beyond. Get Vitaball for the whole family.
Unchewable “Gravestones” Wacky Packages, a play on Flintstones Vitamins (2004)
Flintstones Vitamins even made it to that cultural pinnacle: they were parodied on a Wacky Packages sticker!
NOW SEE THIS: Cool 80s cereal: Pac-Man, Strawberry Shortcake & so many more you probably forgot!
One Response
The Flintstones was the first TV show I remember watching (other than Mister Rodgers), so I was thrilled when Flintstones vitamins came out. The original version tasted great, but then they added an iron supplement, which made them very bitter. The iron version of the tablet was colorful on one side and brown on the other.