Kids have put up posters in their rooms for decades - if not longer. Postering your bedroom wall is a vital part of the adolescent years. But posters are expensive. Youngsters looking to plaster their wall with a shot of the LA Lakers or LeBron James will have to shell out between $8 and $15 for the honor. But it wasn't always this way.

Granted, there have always been expensive posters available. I remember paying $5 or maybe even $8 for some posters, but those were the hard to find posters which would be comparable to the Michael Jordan "Wings" poster that sells today for $25. So what is the difference? Cereal Boxes.

Cereal boxes frequently had some of the best posters as prizes. Occasionally a box of cereal would contain a dud- maybe a giant poster of King Vitamin wearing a Santa hat or something. More often, though, cereal boxes contained great posters that were worthy of wall hanging.

There were many different approaches to hanging wall posters; as there is today. Some prefer the layered approach where older posters are eventually covered by newer posters; creating a strata of the ages showing the evolution from Sesame Street to pop idols or sports heroes. Others prefer the more simplistic, museum approach; removing old, outdated posters and replacing them neatly with the new. Myriad hybrids of these two strategies exist, but the bottom line is that not just any poster can attain the honor of reaching the adolescent walls.

Cereal companies should realize the disservice they are doing to our children and bring back the day of quality posters in cereal boxes. Besides, I have an empty spot on the wall in my bedroom that is just calling for a Toucan Sam poster.