A strange trend has been at work in the supermarket aisles, particularly the cereal aisle and its ofttimes neighbor, the candy aisle. After so many years near each other, it seems there’s been a notable amount of after-hours fraternization, resulting in a new crop of cereals that wear their sugared unhealthfulness as a badge of honor.
The early history of breakfast cereals boasts more than its share of craziness. John Harvey Kellogg created Corn Flakes in 1894, during his quest to deliver bland foods (and plenty of enemas) to the patients of the sanitarium where he was superintendent. His younger brother Will, however, is the one who thought of adding sugar to the flakes, and it’s Will who started the company we know today as Kellogg’s. A former patient of the sanitarium, C.W. Post, created the rival, still-thriving Post cereal company.
In the years after, sugar and cartoon mascots took a larger role in the cereal business, and they ruled, unchallenged, for a long time. In a glimpse of the exciting possibilities of the American Dream Mall in the Meadowlands, the Mall of America in Minnesota actually featured “Cereal Adventure Land,” a fun park themed around breakfast cereal.
More recently, the makers of Trix, Froot Loops, and other cereals known for their high sugar content and questionable spelling tried a more health-conscious approach, but they now seem to have come to one conclusion, the same one Will Kellogg came to a century ago: people want their sugar.
I include myself among those having a refined palate—a refined sugar palate, that is. I’ve been a sugar cereal guy ever since my parents allowed me to “improve” Cheerios with the addition of a teaspoonful of sugar. (This was, and still is, to my mind, the definition of the term “heaping teaspoon.”) One of the best things about moving out as a young adult was the freedom to consume large quantities of Fruity Pebbles without guilt or other parental constraint, as my extensive collection of early 1990s dinosaur toy premiums can attest. My breakfast habits are only slightly better today, as I favor Special K Fruit & Yogurt or Kellogg’s Raisin Bran with Cranberries—both loaded with sugar, though I do add real fruit to each. But I always make it a point to sample the most outrageous new cereal offerings—to satisfy my curiosity, if not my taste buds.
New versions of well-known cereals are introduced all the time, often as “Seasonal Varieties,” “Limited Editions,” or, as I like to think of them, “Failed Experiments.” One recent example was Froot Loops Birthday Cake—that’s a cereal that tastes like birthday cake, not the other way around. The admission of limited (or at least limited-time) appeal is refreshingly honest, but also takes on the unsavory associations of product recalls and criminals getting out of Dodge before the sheriff gets word.
Over the past few years, the bar on outrageous cereals has consistently moved higher, to the point where calling these food products “cereal” is possibly the worst case of misleading advertising since the name “Grape-Nuts.” The standbys, like Frosted Flakes, have been turned into Chocolate Frosted Flakes, Cinnamon Frosted Flakes, Honey Nut Frosted Flakes, Banana Creme Frosted Flakes, and Frosted Flakes with Marshmallows. Even my once-beloved Fruity Pebbles added marshmallows—which only increased the sugar-to-calories ratio—and voilà, Marshmallow Fruity Pebbles was born. Adding marshmallows is the closest thing to a guaranteed win in the calendar quarter-by-quarter cereal selling game, and thus the practice is ubiquitous. The current situation recalls Obi-Wan Kenobi’s description of Darth Vader in “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” as “more machine now than man,” except that these cereals are more marshmallow than bran.
Sugared cereal has always targeted children, but perhaps never so shamelessly as today. In 1977 came proof that if you repeat something often enough, it will be accepted as truth—that proof being the idea that Cookie Crisp is cereal, and not just a bunch of little chocolate chip cookies in a box. Today, virtually every snack food that exists has been converted into cereal. There are plenty of cookie-inspired offerings, including Post’s Chips Ahoy! Cereal, Oreo O’s, and Nutter Butter Cereal. Keebler got into the action with Keebler Cereal (featuring real mini-chocolate chip cookies!), and General Mills teamed with Girl Scouts to produce Girl Scouts Thin Mints Cereal.
With food scientists as alchemists, turning sugar into gold, it was only a matter of time until the limits of good taste (in both senses of that term) were reached. The next stage of snacks-as-cereal featured Post’s teaming with Hostess to create Honey Bun Cereal and Donettes Cereal. Not to be outdone, Kellogg’s delivered Cinnabon Cereal and its own donut concoction, Donut Shop, as well as Pop Tarts Cereal. Kellogg’s put up Smorz Cereal, and Post countered with Honey Maid S’mores Cereal. Taste-wise, these products are all equally offensive; the best thing about them might be that after eating you’ll be immediately overcome by an overwhelming desire to brush your teeth.
Cookies and milk (or even Pop Tarts and milk) might seem a natural combination, but other products are decidedly unnatural. Case in point: Drumstick Cereal from General Mills, which despite the name, does not look to recreate the Thanksgiving turkey dinner experience. Rather, it aims to replicate the ice cream for breakfast experience, through a combination of sweetened corn and wheat. One of many ironies inherent to the product is that you’d be better off just eating ice cream.
The model of cereal-as-sugar-delivery-device is clearly successful—financially, if not ethically. It’s given rise to an arms race, with sugar as the weapon of choice. The latest invention from the cereal skunkworks is Post Sour Patch Kids Cereal, which has a powerful artificial aroma, but tastes kind of like Froot Loops with a mild sour aftertaste.
Candy-derived cereal isn’t completely new, with Reese’s Puffs, inspired by Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, around since 1994. But cereal companies have become increasingly brazen about flouting tradition, misleading consumers about sugar content by reducing the “standard serving size” on the nutrition facts panel and largely abandoning the flawed but entertaining pretense of showcasing their products in classic “part of this nutritious breakfast” staging, alongside milk, orange juice, bacon, eggs, fruit, pancakes, etc. Two new cereals, which were set to debut in late December 2019, might make cereal’s fall from nutritional grace complete.
Post is introducing Hostess Twinkies Cereal, which attempts to mimic the taste of a Twinkie, sans any actual cream filling. Hershey’s Kisses Cereal from General Mills features chocolate cereal that’s shaped like Hershey’s Kisses.
At this rate, it won’t be long before a marketing executive earns a promotion by opening up a bunch of Kit Kat or Twix bars, breaking them into tiny bits over a bowl, and pouring milk over the whole disgusting, delicious mess. And when they put that product into a cereal box on the supermarket shelves, I’ll be the first in line to try it.
Peter Dabbene is a Hamilton-based writer. His website is peterdabbene.com. His books can be purchased at amazon.com.
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