It's a quiet time in the cereal world. Maybe everyone's too busy preparing for the Holidays?
Quaker announced today new Life Vanilla Yogurt Crunch cereal, which features classic Life cereal with cruncy oat clusters covered with creamy vanilla flavored yogurt.
Just in time for Thanksgiving...
The New York Post reports that a man threw his mother's pit bull out of a window to it's death because the dog ate his oatmeal.
I hope the Internet doesn't come to a screeching halt with everyone hitting this site once I tell you about it, but here goes anyway:
While introduced earlier this year, this is the first that I've come across Liquid Cereal.
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drinks
In Canada, Kellogg has introduced an innovative cereal meal replacement for kid's called Tony's Turboz. It's designed to be a complete nutrititional meal in a bowl, rich in vitamins and minerals, fiber, and protein from soy."Our response to our friends out there is that Cereality's defense of its intellectual property against copycats is, and will continue to be, aggressive," though he says that the company is shifting their attention away from an earlier defense of its pending patents and instead, focusing on the new expansion strategy. However, Roth adds that the company will closely monitor when competitors "put Cereality's brand components through a copy machine. Straight-out mimicry is just plain bad business and we have trademark protection for that sort of thing."
• In 1941, General Mills introduced Cheerioats as "The breakfast food you've always wanted." Four years later, the name was changed to Cheerios.
• One out of every 11 boxes of cereal sold is a Cheerios-type cereal.
• Cap'n Crunch's full name is Horatio Q. Crunch. The character was invented in 1963, before the cereal was created. Cap'n Crunch was made in response to a survey of kids who said they hated soggy cereal. Cap'n Crunch is the No. 1 pre-sweetened kids cereal in the U.S.
• Life cereal hit the market in 1961. The famous "Let Mikey try it" commercial aired from 1972 through '84. It was the longest-running commercial in television history.
• Quisp, the saucer-shaped corn cereal, was launched in 1965. It was reintroduced in 1999 to appeal to the baby boomers who ate it as kids.
• In 1937, Wheaties held a contest for most popular baseball announcer. Ronald Reagan won the contest and a trip to California. While there, he was asked to do a screen test for Warner Bros., which kicked off his movie career.
• Kellogg's Corn Flakes were accidentally invented in 1894 by Will Keith Kellogg. A Seventh-day Adventist and a vegetarian, Kellogg was looking for a way to improve the diets of vegetarian hospital patients. He dried softened wheat and it turned into thin flakes.
• In 1910, W.K. Kellogg bought a full-page ad in Ladies' Home Journal announcing the first cereal premium, a book called "The Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Book."
Not everyone is impressed with this bullying, or with the patent-madness that has overtaken some industries. FreeCulture.org, "an international student movement for free culture", has taken this cause on and have created a website project called "Cereal Solidarity". They believe that "If these patents are approved by the U.S. Patent Office, Cereality would have a complete monopoly on cereal bar business--just for being the first to put together the legalese necessary to describe mixing breakfast cereal." Ultimately, they believe it "isn't just about cereal. It's about whether or not people should be able to claim an exclusive right on mundane ideas that any eight-year-old could think of. And it's about the future of American enterpreneurship." Siemens has announced a new colour display screen so thin and flexible it can be printed on to paper or foil, and so cheap it can be used on throw-away packaging."
This would add a whole new dimension to "reading" the cereal box while eating breakfast!
Last month I reported on the latest chain of cereal bar restaurants: The Cereal Bowl.
Over the last few years Kellogg has done a brillant job of marketing Halloween-themed cereals. It is an excellent way for them to maintain distinctive brand identity and loyalty in the midst of increased competition, especially from generics.
