Cap’n Crunch, full name Horatio Magellan Crunch, is an icon. But I think it’s safe to say that he’s known almost exclusively for his contributions to the cereal sphere. Whether that makes him a hero or villain is probably up to how intact the roof of your mouth was after a bowl of his eponymous crunch.

And yet, it turns out that Cap’n Crunch’s origins might have been a warm-up for one of the most lauded sitcoms of all time.

That would be The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a series co-created by a man named Allan Burns. It ran for seven seasons and won the positively gob-smacking total of 29 Emmys, accompanied by a litany of other high-profile praise, like holding the number one spot on Entertainment Weekly’s list of 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

But before he was given the reins to his own network sitcom,...