My brother who was a military buff when I was a kid but became a Navy guy served in wars and stuff told me that "crispy critters" was the slang term Vietnam combat fighters used to refer to burn victims in the Vietnam war. It destroyed this commercial for me when I was a kid.
The reasoning behind this ad may seem elusive now, but kids in the 80s were wild for this shit.
I remember pestering my mom for six straight months until she finally caved in and got me Thunder Punch Jimmy Durante for my seventh birthday. What a day that was.
Between this and Kix I realized that "low in sugar" = "has no taste" so for the next 20 years I only liked cereal with marshmallows, because they're pure sugar.