The Angela Lansbury Cereal Commercial You Probably Forgot About

Angela Lansbury fulfilled a career on TV screens that most can only hope for. As noted by Smooth Radio, Landsbury's eight-decade career spanned numerous movies, a 12-year television series, and even a food commercial.

Lansbury's acting career started during a period when much of the world was in unrest. It was 1944, and a bloody World War II raged half a world away. During this period, no one had much time for the arts. A slew of successful actors dropped their promising careers to don military fatigues, according to the National WW2 Museum, BBC. That marked the year Lansbury appeared in the film "Gaslight." Fortunately, life soon improved, and the actor launched a promising career.

In the '50s, '60s, and '70s, babies boomed, economies flourished (via Khan Academy), and America celebrated its bicentennial anniversary as a nation. Landsbury's contribution to these three decades came in the form of her roles in "The Manchurian Candidate," "Mame," "Dear World," "Gypsy," and "Sweeney Todd," according to The Hollywood Reporter. In 1984, Lansbury started on her magnum opus –– the series "Murder, She Wrote." The 12-year series would catapult her to the forefront of popular culture. It also inspired a food commercial.

Television networks boomed in the 1980s, and hundreds of cable channels became available, per The Guardian. The latter gave the already present trend of television commercials — one that had been flourishing since the 1950s (per Chron) — a large enough platform to proliferate and drive the consumerism and materialism that defined that decade, per History. 

Angela Lansbury, thanks to "Murder, She Wrote," had become something of a TV hero for many murder mystery fans. Because of her status as a household name (per News 24), a cereal breakfast company got an idea that probably was not the first of its kind. They likely figured that if they connected their brand to the television figurehead of amateur sleuthing, their cereals would appear in households as often Lansbury's face did.

As such, they enlisted her in the 1980s for a commercial, you probably never knew existed (so perhaps it probably wasn't the most successful piece of marketing). In the commercial, she stands behind an assortment of cereal boxes (Shredded Wheat and Corn Flakes included) and says: "Like to play detective? Of all these cereals, only one has calcium. Total." Fortunately, thanks to YouTube, the commercial hasn't been lost to history. Lansbury fans have another small piece of the actor's legacy to enjoy.