Twinkles, the magical elephant with the roto-tail, was created in 1960 to sell General Mills cereals during the "King Leonardo and His Short Subjects" series on NBC-TV. The short, minute and a half stories featured Twinkles and his animal friends in stories that usually ended with a moral. Twinkles was also featured in commercials for and on boxes of General Mills Twinkles cereal, "the only cereal in the storybook package".