Category:
Cereal

Follies of the Madmen #529

Synesthesia in advertising.



Source.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 07, 2022 - Comments (1)
Category: Business, Advertising, Fey, Twee, Whimsical, Naive and Sadsack, Children, Cereal, 1900s

Fingos

A classic business failure. In the early 1990s, the marketing team at General Mills came up with the idea of a cereal that could be eaten without milk any time of day. Despite spending millions to promote it, hardly anyone bought the stuff.

From Wikipedia:

The cereal pieces were shaped as hexagons and were advertised as food that could be eaten at any time of the day... Consumers were confused by the marketing concept when Fingos were released due to it being advertised as a snack despite being in the cereal section. Fingos were unsuccessful and were discontinued in 1994.

As the Gone But Not Forgotten Groceries blog notes: "All cereals can be eaten by hand if you don't add milk."

Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 08, 2022 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Cereal, 1990s

Follies of the Madmen #523





Source (pages 10 and 11).

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 05, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Aliens, Advertising, Comics, Cereal, 1950s

Raisin Bran keeps you regular

Trapeze artists discussing bowel movements doesn't conjure up good images.

Lincoln Star - Apr 1, 1938



Possibly relevant, this Snopes article: Did a Trapeze Artist with Diarrhea Defecate on 23 People? (The answer is no)

Posted By: Alex - Thu Aug 05, 2021 - Comments (3)
Category: Advertising, Cereal, Excrement, 1930s

Germs pick out the weak ones

The theme of this 1920's ad campaign was that if your kid didn't eat Ralston Purina breakfast cereal, then he/she was going to die.

A child's life is a fight! Danger Days are always ahead. Danger Days — the days when little lives hang in the balance — may come next year, next month, or perhaps — tomorrow. Your children must meet these Danger Days. Are they ready? Will they win?

Fitchburg Sentinel - Jan 3, 1928



Pittsburgh Press - Nov 1, 1927

Posted By: Alex - Thu Nov 19, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Health, Advertising, Cereal, 1920s

Krinkles the Clown

Clown mascot of Post's Sugar Krinkles cereal during the 1950s.



source: Mr. Breakfast

Posted By: Alex - Sat Jun 13, 2020 - Comments (3)
Category: Cereal, 1950s

Instant Bananas



Scott Bruce and Bill Crawford offer some context in their book Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal:

[In 1964], Kellogg signed Jimmy Durante to launch Corn Flakes and Instant Bananas with an update of one of his standard songs. Seated at the piano, the old vaudevillian belted out, "Yes, we now have bananas…" Sales were brisk for a few months, then dropped like a rock, as store owners like I.J. Salkin complained that the product tasted like "cardboard discs in a box." Burnett commercial director Rudy Behlmer agreed. "Those little banana wafers looked like holy communion wafers. When you put milk on them, they started to look dark and mushy."

In 1966, Kellogg pulled the plug on Corn Flakes and Instant Bananas. "We tested the market carefully, we tried, we failed, and we're getting out of the market," Kellogg's Ken Englert told Consumer Advertising magazine. Without informing the star of their decision, Kellogg decided to move Durante over from Instant Bananas to Kellogg's main line, Corn Flakes. "Everything was kept quiet until Carl Hixon [a Burnett writer] and myself went to New York to shoot him in a couple of commercials for Kellogg's Corn Flakes," recalled commercial director Rudy Behlmer. "Suddenly he looks at the [story] boards and he says, 'Where are da bananas?' and we said, 'Well, Jimmy… this is without bananas,' and he said, 'No bananas, no Durante.'"


Wisconsin State Journal - Mar 24, 1965

Posted By: Alex - Thu May 07, 2020 - Comments (3)
Category: Cereal, 1960s, Bananas

Shreddies vs. Shredded Wheat



Source of ad.

The Wikipedia entries for Shredded Wheat and Shreddies fail to explain the overlapping existence of two identical cereals from the originator, Nabisco. Much investigation needs to be done. Was one more for the Canadian market?

Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 24, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Advertising, Cereal, 1940s, North America

Kream Krunch

The Kream Krunch man definitely deserves a place in our ongoing series of strange corporate mascots.

Kellogg's introduced Kream Krunch cereal in 1965. The gimmick was that the cereal included chunks of freeze-dried ice cream. The chunks were supposed to stay crunchy in milk, but reportedly they quickly dissolved into a gooey mess, which made the cereal a commercial failure that was soon discontinued.

However, the cereal is most widely remembered today for the creepy, anthropomorphized ice cream cone that served as its official mascot. Wikipedia notes: "The character was never officially named, referred to by historians simply as the Kream Krunch Cone, although it has been called Mr. Scoop Head in popular culture."

More info: MrBreakfast.com, History's Dumpster

image source

Posted By: Alex - Wed Apr 22, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Corporate Mascots, Icons and Spokesbeings, Cereal, 1960s

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