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“It’s Edible!” The Origin of Breakfast Cereal, Part Two · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. This is part two of
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Speaker 1: a continuing history of Breakfast Cereal, So if you have
0:39
Speaker 1: not heard part one, you might not be totally lost,
0:42
Speaker 1: but you will enjoy this on a deeper level. Uh,
0:46
Speaker 1: I think that's fair to say. Always. Yeah, Ben, I
0:50
Speaker 1: have to tell you, Um, I'm Noll by the way,
0:52
Speaker 1: and you're Ben. The first part of this series, you
0:55
Speaker 1: opened the show by asking Max and myself whether we
0:59
Speaker 1: had eaten cereal for breakfast or you know, any kind
1:02
Speaker 1: of breakfast cereal. I come to you today having not
1:05
Speaker 1: eaten breakfast cereal exactly, but I did eat French toast sticks.
1:10
Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone's familiar with this innovation. They
1:12
Speaker 1: come in sticks now pre sticks, and uh you just
1:15
Speaker 1: pop them in the ove him and boy howdy are
1:18
Speaker 1: those things delightful and they don't feel for some reason
1:21
Speaker 1: the stick for makes it feel as though it's not
1:24
Speaker 1: as heavy as either regular French toast, which maybe just
1:28
Speaker 1: a complete Jedi mind trick. But as we'll find out today,
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Speaker 1: cereal is full of those breakfast foods is an industry,
1:37
Speaker 1: you know, from Bacon on down. Big shout out to
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Speaker 1: our super producer, Mr Max Williams. Max or French toast
1:45
Speaker 1: sticks new to you. I mean I don't really eat
1:47
Speaker 1: anything breakfast at all. I mean I've had them before,
1:49
Speaker 1: but I mean they're cool invention. The only breakfast I
1:52
Speaker 1: will eat is bagels and locks. That's about it. It's
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Speaker 1: pretty great. Yeah, I'm it's it's amazing. I'm on the
1:57
Speaker 1: road and I almost got some almost at a bagel
2:01
Speaker 1: and Locks when I got in when I blew into
2:05
Speaker 1: town at a twenty four hour gets hype place. But it, uh,
2:10
Speaker 1: I think I might have a new like rule for myself.
2:13
Speaker 1: I don't think I should get bagels at like two
2:16
Speaker 1: am from a place that's open, not exclusively as a diner.
2:22
Speaker 1: They were selling lots of stuff, you know. You speaking
2:25
Speaker 1: of diners, By the way, do you know what the
2:27
Speaker 1: criteria for a diner is. I just found this out recently.
2:30
Speaker 1: It just has to have like an open kitchen and
2:33
Speaker 1: a bar with seats, and mainly they're known for serving
2:37
Speaker 1: breakfast food all day. But specifically that's the main criteria
2:42
Speaker 1: for something being considered a diner. Then that explains why
2:45
Speaker 1: a lot of things could be called diners in general.
2:49
Speaker 1: You know, there was that kind of a there was
2:51
Speaker 1: that fad where you would see people go to juice bars,
2:56
Speaker 1: like juice diners and oxygen gin bars. Um. Yeah, now
3:02
Speaker 1: that that seems like a good grift, but it still
3:06
Speaker 1: has nothing on cereal. When we left off in our
3:09
Speaker 1: previous episode, we teased one of our favorite, um weirdest
3:15
Speaker 1: aspects of the modern breakfast cereal game, which is of
3:19
Speaker 1: course the marketing, the merchandizing, the mascots. You know, it's like, look,
3:24
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff became geared for children and
3:27
Speaker 1: started out often as a food of convenience or even
3:32
Speaker 1: more importantly, a purported health food, and then they started
3:37
Speaker 1: realizing that if you wanted to get the sale done,
3:41
Speaker 1: if you wanted to get that box into the shopping
3:44
Speaker 1: cart and into the into the household kitchen, you needed
3:48
Speaker 1: the kids on your side. This is something that old
3:51
Speaker 1: dirty Bastard would point out famously in Wu Tang, Right,
3:56
Speaker 1: Wu Tang is for the kids, and breakfast cereal is
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Speaker 1: for the kids if you want to make a profit.
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Speaker 1: And that's why, uh in nineteen o nine Kellogg's that
4:06
Speaker 1: we talked to a lot about Previously, they introduced the
4:09
Speaker 1: first ever Cereal Box prize, and this happened at the
4:14
Speaker 1: same time that the the covers of these boxes were
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Speaker 1: getting more and more interesting and marketing increasingly towards children.
4:24
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember Cereal box prizes? That that was
4:28
Speaker 1: the only time I would like hang with Cereal as
4:32
Speaker 1: a kid, because I knew there was stuff at the
4:34
Speaker 1: bottom of the bag. Yeah, And it was always one
4:37
Speaker 1: of those kind of like disappointing kind of things where
4:40
Speaker 1: like it was more about the expectation than it was
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Speaker 1: about what you actually got when you got to the bottom.
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Speaker 1: And then they started doing this clever thing, or maybe
4:47
Speaker 1: it was the other way around, where you wouldn't actually
4:50
Speaker 1: get the thing in the box. You'd get like you'd
4:53
Speaker 1: have to mail in box tops or there'd be some
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Speaker 1: kind of little coupon. It reminds me of like the
4:58
Speaker 1: Dakota Ring and Crackers acts, you know from from a
5:01
Speaker 1: Christmas story. He didn't actually get the thing right away,
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Speaker 1: he had to mail in a bunch of like box
5:06
Speaker 1: there was a ton actually to get the Dakota Ring,
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Speaker 1: and then it was all just a marketing ploy in
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Speaker 1: and of itself, which has I think we talked about
5:15
Speaker 1: that in an episode of Ridiculous History. I'm pretty certain,
5:17
Speaker 1: um basically about ovalte. Yeah, that's right, that's the chocolate
5:21
Speaker 1: e mineral based drink. And again, you know, let's go
5:24
Speaker 1: back to our buddy John Harvey Kellogg, who initially, you know,
5:28
Speaker 1: was trying to promote healthy, clean living, and then his
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Speaker 1: brother kind of took that whole concept and ran with it, besmirching,
5:36
Speaker 1: honestly the legacy of his brother by you know, having
5:40
Speaker 1: kind of sugary cereals. Originally, serial companies like Kellogg didn't
5:45
Speaker 1: really see the value in marketing directly to kids, but
5:48
Speaker 1: then it became pretty clear, relatively quickly, like I think
5:51
Speaker 1: by the early nineteen hundreds, uh, that this was absolutely
5:55
Speaker 1: the way to go. This is the play. I mean,
5:58
Speaker 1: they also did. Let's let's talk about that first prize
6:04
Speaker 1: for kids in Cereal. You had to buy not one,
6:07
Speaker 1: but two boxes of corn flakes. And like you said, no,
6:10
Speaker 1: they had to prove they had purchased these, either through
6:13
Speaker 1: sending something in the mail or going directly to the
6:17
Speaker 1: grocery store where they bought these. And if you could
6:20
Speaker 1: prove you bought two boxes of corn flakes. You got
6:23
Speaker 1: a book like a pamphlet called the Funny Jungle Land
6:27
Speaker 1: Moving Pictures Booklet, And this this is something that all
6:33
Speaker 1: other cereal makers paid attention to. By the time you
6:36
Speaker 1: get to the middle of the twentie century, especially in
6:39
Speaker 1: post war years, you see that advertisers have kind of
6:43
Speaker 1: taken parents out of the equation. Parents are a footnote.
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Speaker 1: They're relegated to something like this is part of a
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Speaker 1: balanced breakfast, or this is nutrition. The rest of the
6:55
Speaker 1: ads are all gonna be about look at these great
6:59
Speaker 1: bears get big yellow on the corn pops, or look
7:02
Speaker 1: at this really creepy clown who wants to sell you
7:05
Speaker 1: sugar crisp. That was especially traumatic. Yeah, he just showed
7:10
Speaker 1: it to to Max and I, uh, first thing in
7:12
Speaker 1: the morning before we recorded, and I think we were
7:15
Speaker 1: both somewhat sugar. Can we hear a little clip of
7:16
Speaker 1: this monstrosity and just picture the absolute creepiest clown you
7:21
Speaker 1: could possibly imagine, emerging from a chicken coop kind of that.
7:26
Speaker 1: Then he stands up and rips through this backdrop made
7:29
Speaker 1: of paper, uh, and then proceeds to sit down at
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Speaker 1: this little table and give us the spield take us
7:35
Speaker 1: from Corincle. That's the best breakfast under the Big Top
7:40
Speaker 1: is post sugar rice corrinkles so correctly, so delicious, so different.
7:46
Speaker 1: Each grain of rice and sugar rice wrinkles. It's currinkled
7:49
Speaker 1: with honey and sugar. So what you could what if
7:55
Speaker 1: we walk you through this? Yeah, you can see the
7:58
Speaker 1: guy burst through the uh the weird paper screen and
8:03
Speaker 1: he's got what Stephen King is called double zero kind
8:07
Speaker 1: of serial killer eyes all all, there's no real pupil iris.
8:12
Speaker 1: They just kind of suck you in his makeup because deadlights, Yeah, deadlights,
8:16
Speaker 1: just makeup. Because it's a black and white ad spot.
8:21
Speaker 1: It all looks like his face is white and black
8:24
Speaker 1: and I don't know, it looks like he if he
8:28
Speaker 1: opened his mouth and just held it open, blood or
8:31
Speaker 1: ichor would seep out of it. It's it's weird. It's
8:34
Speaker 1: because of the the you know, honestly, it's it's beautifully
8:37
Speaker 1: filmed in a lot of ways, but because of the
8:39
Speaker 1: contrast of those blacks are so black and the whites
8:42
Speaker 1: are so white, and then the separation from the foreground
8:45
Speaker 1: the background are really well done. But you're right, because
8:48
Speaker 1: of how black the makeup like around his mouth is
8:50
Speaker 1: it looks like how you think of like blood and
8:53
Speaker 1: like psycho or something. And we're from the post gay
8:57
Speaker 1: sy world, so our that's the film troll and uderstanding
9:00
Speaker 1: of clowns is way different. Anyway, people loved all these mascots,
9:04
Speaker 1: aside from I know we went out of our way
9:06
Speaker 1: to show you the spooky Why we're gonna talk about
9:08
Speaker 1: some more, but when we um, when we're talking about commercials,
9:13
Speaker 1: I want to give a shout out to Sugar Crisp.
9:16
Speaker 1: This commercial was a game changer. It's the first animated
9:19
Speaker 1: TV commercial in the world of Cereal and as three bears, Handy, Dandy,
9:26
Speaker 1: and Candy, and years later these guys would all be
9:31
Speaker 1: kind of consolidated into the singular sugar Bear. Uh. Yeah,
9:37
Speaker 1: I think I made the slightly of off color comment
9:41
Speaker 1: that sugar Bear looks like he's maybe a little under
9:44
Speaker 1: the influence. Um most definitely did that, Yeah, but I
9:49
Speaker 1: think I took it a little further, like he's he
9:51
Speaker 1: looks like you would kind of picture some sort of
9:54
Speaker 1: jazz junkie, you know, Like I mean, he's just got
9:57
Speaker 1: these like really barely open eyes, but he doesn't seem
10:01
Speaker 1: like high on on jazz cigarettes. He seems more like
10:04
Speaker 1: he's on on the on the stuff. Oh I remember
10:08
Speaker 1: this guy. Yeah, yeah, very lack of jasicle, you know,
10:13
Speaker 1: like always wearing long sleeves. I'm saying, no, no, no,
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Speaker 1: bear sleeves. That's not true. You can't find pictures of
10:22
Speaker 1: him in more of a chill T shirt summer outfit.
10:25
Speaker 1: But but if you you know, we're applying adult mindsets
10:31
Speaker 1: to these cartoons, and in many cases, when you're a kid,
10:35
Speaker 1: these just seem really cool. You're buying the idea as
10:39
Speaker 1: much as you're buying the food. Uh. There was I
10:42
Speaker 1: think it was cookie crisp, I want to say had
10:47
Speaker 1: right there. It was a cop there's a cop and
10:50
Speaker 1: and a rabid dog kind of and yeah, and then
10:54
Speaker 1: there was of course, we know all all the big
10:57
Speaker 1: ones named the monster pant On with Chocola and Frank
11:02
Speaker 1: and Barry and um yummy mummy is that one of them? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: And now that's the thing that they released for the
11:08
Speaker 1: nostalgia play, you know, right around the right around the
11:12
Speaker 1: spooky seasons. Yeah, just like what do you call it?
11:16
Speaker 1: Just like Ecto plasma coolers when those got re released
11:20
Speaker 1: by High Sea or something we also see that Sugar
11:24
Speaker 1: Crisp is a pioneer and focusing on children. Roy Rogers,
11:31
Speaker 1: who had this very popular TV show in his day,
11:34
Speaker 1: started telling cutting parents out of the equation almost entirely
11:40
Speaker 1: and talking directly to kids in his TV show. He
11:43
Speaker 1: would say, ask your mom to get a package of
11:45
Speaker 1: our favorite cereal post Sugar Crisp. They were moving boxes
11:50
Speaker 1: and other other companies didn't want to be left behind.
11:53
Speaker 1: Kelloggs makes corn pops in nineteen fifty two, they come
11:57
Speaker 1: back with frosted flakes. Trick is way older than I
12:01
Speaker 1: had thought it was. It's from nineteen fifty four, and uh,
12:07
Speaker 1: you know, it's weird because we talked a lot about
12:09
Speaker 1: the role of sugar in you know, it's insidious in
12:13
Speaker 1: the modern West. But I wasn't aware of this back
12:16
Speaker 1: in the day in the nineteen fifties. Especially the amount
12:21
Speaker 1: of sugar in these things came was advertised as a bonus.
12:24
Speaker 1: It was a plus, like you don't have to add sugar.
12:27
Speaker 1: We had talked about that kind in the last episode.
12:29
Speaker 1: It's just I think the research just wasn't there, you know,
12:32
Speaker 1: on some of the long term health effects of eating
12:36
Speaker 1: too much sugar, not to mention with children, and then
12:40
Speaker 1: we start to see you know, rising cases of things
12:43
Speaker 1: like childhood diabetes, and I bet you could draw a
12:46
Speaker 1: line directly to you know, among other things, you know,
12:49
Speaker 1: like sugary snacks and such, but to breakfast cereals and
12:53
Speaker 1: on all this marketing that we're talking about. Um, you know,
12:56
Speaker 1: this obviously continued and just kind of kept at at
12:58
Speaker 1: a fever pace up until today. I mean, I guess
13:01
Speaker 1: we don't really Most of the cereal mascots that we
13:05
Speaker 1: see today are some future iteration of a legacy one,
13:09
Speaker 1: you know that kind of started in this golden age
13:11
Speaker 1: of cereal mascots. You don't see a lot of new
13:13
Speaker 1: cereals launched. It's usually some new flavor of rice crispies,
13:17
Speaker 1: it's got some movie tie in, or you know, I think, uh,
13:19
Speaker 1: what what is it? Frosted Flakes has like an Avatar
13:22
Speaker 1: tie in, where like Tony the Tigers like went dressed
13:24
Speaker 1: in Avatar gear, but they didn't make him blue weirdly.
13:27
Speaker 1: But we also see some kind of more drastic, let's say,
13:30
Speaker 1: evolution of some of these mascots. In the seventies, Uh,
13:34
Speaker 1: Lucky Charms was wrapped not by Lucky the lepre con
13:38
Speaker 1: but by Waldo the Wizard um and the the famous
13:43
Speaker 1: catchphrase they're magically delicious wasn't a thing. Waldo referred to
13:47
Speaker 1: Lucky Charms as being you see, if I can't even
13:49
Speaker 1: do this able dibibble delicious delicious about that? That's a mouthful.
13:56
Speaker 1: That's like a super califragilistic Crinkle's territory. Man, I don't
14:00
Speaker 1: mean I don't love it. Are we surprised that didn't
14:03
Speaker 1: catch on? Uh? It's still wubba lubba dub dub dub.
14:08
Speaker 1: But a big reason that Lucky one out was because
14:12
Speaker 1: of market testing. So like I mean, they're doing these
14:15
Speaker 1: characters in the same way that you know movies are focused,
14:18
Speaker 1: group tested and things like that. They actually get like
14:21
Speaker 1: kids in a room to respond to see which one
14:23
Speaker 1: they respond to more. And while Waldo went out of inch,
14:26
Speaker 1: you know, at first, Lucky came down and uh and
14:29
Speaker 1: destroyed him, totally erased him from history because of the stereotypes, right,
14:34
Speaker 1: who does good stereotype? That's a good point. Yeah, but
14:38
Speaker 1: been weirdly, you know, he's still around today. They've kind
14:41
Speaker 1: of you know, they don't really do as many I
14:43
Speaker 1: don't have cable, so I don't really know if if
14:45
Speaker 1: if I'm missing something, but I don't see as many
14:48
Speaker 1: Lucky Charms ads, you know with the leprechn Lucky the
14:51
Speaker 1: leprechn doing kind of a full, you know, stereotypical Irish lilt.
14:55
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, you know. The literally the only thing I've
15:00
Speaker 1: seen that references Lucky Charms at all in recent years
15:04
Speaker 1: is a parody from uh, from Rick and Morty from
15:08
Speaker 1: Interdimensional Cable, where they have a have a very not
15:13
Speaker 1: charming serial commercial and it's it's that's right. Yeah, I
15:19
Speaker 1: do remember that one. Well, is it okay? Is it?
15:22
Speaker 1: Is it cannibalism? Though now I want to I'll be clear.
15:25
Speaker 1: I'm not condoning the actions of those children, but is
15:29
Speaker 1: a leper con to be taken as human or is it?
15:33
Speaker 1: Or is it more like eating um a related promiscrats? Yeah? Well, actually,
15:39
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, which I do remember correctly, they're
15:42
Speaker 1: not actually eating the leper con, but they're trying to
15:44
Speaker 1: get the cereal out of the leprech, So it is
15:47
Speaker 1: not cannibalism. It's just I mean there's sex on there
15:51
Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah. Yeah, people listening to this right now,
15:58
Speaker 1: so you know, exactly gas. But I mean, you know,
16:07
Speaker 1: we have ones that we know, like Lucky the Leprechaun,
16:10
Speaker 1: Tony the Tiger, which actually debut Beckett in the early
16:13
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. And I'm just guessing here, but I have
16:16
Speaker 1: a feeling that Tony got buffer and buffer and buffer
16:20
Speaker 1: as time went on, as the original Tony was more
16:23
Speaker 1: like a tiger the tiger kind of slinky fellow. And
16:26
Speaker 1: then uh started started definitely juicing and uh we again,
16:32
Speaker 1: you know, there's still information about uh nutritional benefits for
16:37
Speaker 1: the parents who are going to read the back of
16:39
Speaker 1: the label or they're gonna see a splash that says,
16:43
Speaker 1: you know, with all your daily iron or fiber or
16:47
Speaker 1: potassium or whatever. It seems there was this trend for
16:50
Speaker 1: focusing on a couple of nutritional benefits. But this again,
16:55
Speaker 1: like we teased earlier, kind of goes to the wayside.
16:57
Speaker 1: Through the sixties, cereal boxes are tall can less about
17:01
Speaker 1: the benefits that were touted during the days of granula,
17:06
Speaker 1: and more about the taste, the fun, the flavor now
17:11
Speaker 1: with more berries, you know what I mean. And uh,
17:15
Speaker 1: they didn't need to convince people that you should eat
17:19
Speaker 1: cereal in the morning because that had already become part
17:22
Speaker 1: of culture, at least in the United States, so it
17:26
Speaker 1: was a foregone conclusion. People would say, Oh, yeah, it's morning,
17:29
Speaker 1: I've got a kid. I gotta get some milk. I
17:31
Speaker 1: gotta get some cereal. That's how we do things. And
17:35
Speaker 1: so now the now the industry is in this really cool,
17:39
Speaker 1: weird place where they can say, Okay, we know everybody
17:43
Speaker 1: needs cereal. Now we just need to help you figure
17:46
Speaker 1: out which one to buy, and we can add all
17:49
Speaker 1: kinds of bells and whistles for that purpose. Yeah, and
17:52
Speaker 1: and the message kind of pivoted away from nutrition and
17:56
Speaker 1: toward like pep, you know what I mean, Like it
17:59
Speaker 1: gives you energy. It gives you the energy to take
18:01
Speaker 1: on the day, even if you're a little kid. And
18:03
Speaker 1: you know you mentioned, uh. The idea of marketing these
18:06
Speaker 1: things is being fun as being like experiential, Like if
18:09
Speaker 1: you eat the lepre con cereal, you're basically a leprechn
18:12
Speaker 1: at this point, you know, eating frosted flakes is going
18:14
Speaker 1: to turn you into a cartoon tiger, at least from within. Um,
18:19
Speaker 1: it's like anamorphous kind of situation on swivel. It's an
18:22
Speaker 1: adventure to eat tricks because you gotta you gotta go
18:25
Speaker 1: quick and make sure that rabbit doesn't sneak around and
18:27
Speaker 1: try to pull a heist. Yeah, and that rabbits on
18:30
Speaker 1: drugs too. By the way, just for for the record,
18:32
Speaker 1: they're in some sort of magical fairy land. That I
18:35
Speaker 1: believe is that it's either the children have accidentally eaten
18:38
Speaker 1: some mushrooms that they shouldn't have in the woods, you know,
18:40
Speaker 1: and they're hallucinating this whole experience. That's just my uh,
18:44
Speaker 1: it's just my my back story. Um. But yeah, I
18:47
Speaker 1: mean think you started seeing things like, you know, coco pebbles,
18:50
Speaker 1: which were now we're Coco pebbles always tied in with
18:53
Speaker 1: the flint Stones because the flint stones are old. So
18:55
Speaker 1: I mean I kind of think that probably cocoa and
18:57
Speaker 1: fruity pebbles were always a television high end from the start. Yeah,
19:02
Speaker 1: the flint Stones did exist before, well before the Post
19:07
Speaker 1: Company started making pebble varieties of food like cocoa pebbles
19:11
Speaker 1: or fruity pebbles. But I also want to say, and
19:16
Speaker 1: I don't wanna, I don't want to flip any wigs
19:19
Speaker 1: over ahead of Barbara, but the Flintstones were always kind
19:22
Speaker 1: of sellouts, right, Like they did smoking ads back in
19:25
Speaker 1: the day. I can't remember which brand of cigarette it was,
19:29
Speaker 1: but they were all about it. Right. Early flint Stone
19:31
Speaker 1: cartoons were in black and white, and they occupied a
19:33
Speaker 1: lot of the same space as you know, those kind
19:36
Speaker 1: of like, uh, those craft theater kind of shows. You
19:39
Speaker 1: know that we're spotting that we're totally sponsored whole hog
19:42
Speaker 1: by a brand. And that was really the only reason
19:45
Speaker 1: some of these shows existed in the first place, you know,
19:47
Speaker 1: it was to sell the products. I mean, that's always
19:50
Speaker 1: kind of how television has been. It wasn't like, Okay,
19:53
Speaker 1: we're gonna put out amazing art and then maybe sell
19:55
Speaker 1: some ads. It's now, we're gonna sell some ads, and
19:57
Speaker 1: we have to put something around the ads. So we're
20:00
Speaker 1: gonna call that television, right, And so I looked it up.
20:03
Speaker 1: It is Winston Cigarettes. As they also did beer commercials
20:07
Speaker 1: as well, which is really kind of you know, it's
20:09
Speaker 1: kind of a jarred here system because we think of
20:11
Speaker 1: The Flintstones very much as a children's show, but it's
20:14
Speaker 1: like get your cigarettes and your beer. Well the parents
20:17
Speaker 1: were watching too, right, But also the flint Stones was
20:20
Speaker 1: kind of a cartoon um equivalent of like the Honeymooners.
20:25
Speaker 1: So it really was kind of built around these very
20:27
Speaker 1: adult tropes and they were like, you know, marital disputes
20:31
Speaker 1: and things like that, only surrounded by like you know,
20:34
Speaker 1: animals that served as household appliances. Yeah, and so we
20:39
Speaker 1: see that the Coco Pebbles, which is kind of a
20:43
Speaker 1: new iteration of sugar crisp, is the first cereal that
20:48
Speaker 1: is made as a kind of merchandizing spinoff of a
20:51
Speaker 1: TV show. It's made from the Flintstones and the as
20:56
Speaker 1: We're Winston cigarettes Kitty Winston cigarettes not related. Flintston has
21:00
Speaker 1: just did a very poor taste add for them. They
21:02
Speaker 1: also said, look, kids, don't just think of our fun
21:05
Speaker 1: and frolick e mascots. Think of all the cool stuff
21:08
Speaker 1: we can do. It's cooler than the cereal that your
21:10
Speaker 1: frenzied at school. We can coat things with different bright colors,
21:15
Speaker 1: fruity pebbles. We can add freeze dried fruit or marshmallows,
21:20
Speaker 1: things that look like fruit. We can make them different shapes,
21:23
Speaker 1: you know, just like fruit snacks would be later with
21:26
Speaker 1: gushers and fruit by the foot and so on, And
21:29
Speaker 1: with the sugar thing because again, people didn't know how
21:32
Speaker 1: bad sugar could be. Uh, it gives you energy, so
21:35
Speaker 1: they're kind of advertising this thing that's a five hour
21:38
Speaker 1: energy drink, a red Bull um, a a rave aesthetic, right,
21:45
Speaker 1: and then it comes with a cool anthropomorphic animal cartoon
21:52
Speaker 1: that you can hang out with and will approve of
21:55
Speaker 1: you us. But it's like, on every level, this is
21:59
Speaker 1: really brilliant. Oh and then you participate the prices, you
22:02
Speaker 1: could win stuff, You could enter sweep steaks like we
22:06
Speaker 1: mentioned with wheaties, you could feel like you were in
22:09
Speaker 1: some way interacting with the celebrity or athlete that that
22:13
Speaker 1: you loved and looked up to. UM. And then we
22:17
Speaker 1: talked about grape nuts. I I feel like we should go.
22:19
Speaker 1: There were adult cereals. It wasn't all for kids. You
22:23
Speaker 1: mentioned grape nuts. That just reminded me to mention Sir
22:25
Speaker 1: grape Fellow, which is not a serial that's familiar with,
22:29
Speaker 1: but it was kind of in that same kind of
22:31
Speaker 1: marketed to children's product line. And by the way, last thing,
22:33
Speaker 1: cocoa pebbles and fruity pebbles were actually repurposed Rice crenkles. Yeah,
22:40
Speaker 1: this is fascinating, and you know we could spend know
22:44
Speaker 1: you mentioned we're before recording today, we could spend so
22:47
Speaker 1: much time just do eight episodes about individual cereal mascots.
22:52
Speaker 1: It's surprising how many might be unfamiliar to us today,
22:56
Speaker 1: but we're a huge deal in their time. There's this
22:59
Speaker 1: guy named Uh, Big Yellow whose job was just to
23:03
Speaker 1: sell you sugar corn pops. And if you look at him,
23:07
Speaker 1: he was in a lot of stuff. If you look
23:09
Speaker 1: at him, he's just a semi ridiculous blonde man with
23:13
Speaker 1: a big chin and a huge that looks to be
23:16
Speaker 1: a sixties seventy gallon hat and it kind of looks
23:20
Speaker 1: like the Curious George Dad. Yeah. Yeah, man with a
23:24
Speaker 1: big yellow hat. And it does appear that you can
23:26
Speaker 1: get Big Yellow as a funko pop figure. Yeah. It
23:31
Speaker 1: looks like kellogg is leaning into this nostalgia, you know, play,
23:35
Speaker 1: as they do with so many other things. And I
23:37
Speaker 1: believe that that sugar corn pops is maybe now just
23:42
Speaker 1: corn pops, and you dropped the sugar from the name,
23:45
Speaker 1: but it looks like the same little nuggets. Yeah, and
23:47
Speaker 1: then he got Big Yellow got Uh. His whole thing
23:50
Speaker 1: was he's so rich that he's core pops. I guess
23:54
Speaker 1: it looks like an oil magnetor yeah, like some sort
23:57
Speaker 1: of like he's got life on the range. He's like,
23:59
Speaker 1: I'm drilling, drilling for black gold. And then he got
24:02
Speaker 1: he got replaced, he get phased out and replaced with
24:05
Speaker 1: a porcupine. But maybe he's still out there doing things
24:10
Speaker 1: in a big yellow style. All right, we're working live,
24:14
Speaker 1: moving on. Uh. The the thing you need to know
24:18
Speaker 1: is that there were still healthy or there were still
24:22
Speaker 1: cereals marketing themselves as healthy wheaties, corn flakes, grape nuts,
24:28
Speaker 1: all kinds of things with brand in the title, and
24:31
Speaker 1: they talked about you know, you'd see diet fads reflected
24:35
Speaker 1: in cereal. So if you were counting calories, you'd see
24:38
Speaker 1: the advertisements coming out that said, uh, this has you
24:41
Speaker 1: don't just blank number of calories and all you need
24:45
Speaker 1: is and there's a lot of stuff about one bowl.
24:47
Speaker 1: One bowl contains of your daily you know, requirements of
24:51
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. Remember um, there's a great Saturday at
24:54
Speaker 1: Live commercial about that about the fiber the fiber pyramid.
24:58
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember that one? Now it's or colon
25:00
Speaker 1: blow Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's that's exactly it.
25:06
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, check out the Colon blow commercial if
25:09
Speaker 1: you want a sense of how far this. Oh yeah,
25:11
Speaker 1: I know you're talking about one of my favorite, uh
25:15
Speaker 1: in terms of just like the most bland sounding kind
25:18
Speaker 1: of adult cereals that are like meant so that's the thing.
25:21
Speaker 1: It's sort of fractured or there was not a backlash exactly,
25:24
Speaker 1: but they realize, oh, we can also sell this to,
25:27
Speaker 1: you know, to adults like we did in the early days,
25:30
Speaker 1: so that things like Basic four by General Mills. It's
25:35
Speaker 1: literally just like you know, oat flakes with nuts and
25:38
Speaker 1: vanilla clusters, and I almost guarantee you has the same
25:41
Speaker 1: amount of sugar in it as some of those kids cereals.
25:44
Speaker 1: It's all a grift, man, Oh I'm sure. Yeah. And
25:47
Speaker 1: then people said, you know, cereal doesn't always have to
25:50
Speaker 1: be a breakfast food. You could also be a snack
25:53
Speaker 1: you're on the goat, you're on a hike, you're on
25:55
Speaker 1: a trip with the kids, or you can make it
26:01
Speaker 1: more than just a meal by itself. You can use
26:04
Speaker 1: it in recipes. This was very clever because they wanted
26:07
Speaker 1: to get past that, they wanted to expand past that
26:11
Speaker 1: association with breakfast so you would see things like the
26:14
Speaker 1: Cheerios recipe booklet. Crushed them up, use them like bread crumbs,
26:19
Speaker 1: use them to bread pork chops or um what what are?
26:22
Speaker 1: They're all kinds of crushed cereal toppings in cakes and
26:25
Speaker 1: sweet snow too. Right, Yeah, I guess the one that
26:28
Speaker 1: comes to mind immediately is Rice Crispy Treats, because you know,
26:32
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, um, how Elmer's Glue has kind
26:36
Speaker 1: of like figured out how to rebrand to be not
26:39
Speaker 1: no longer really a glue company, but a slime making company,
26:42
Speaker 1: you know, so they sell all these kids that are
26:43
Speaker 1: literally just glue and glitter and like whatever the other
26:46
Speaker 1: ingredients you need to think it's some kind of soap
26:48
Speaker 1: to make the slime that the kids used to be
26:50
Speaker 1: super into. I don't know if that fat is still around,
26:52
Speaker 1: but yeah, Rice Crispy is you know how to figure
26:55
Speaker 1: it out? They they sold you like a family activity, right,
26:59
Speaker 1: making Rice Crispy treats with the kids, sort of like
27:02
Speaker 1: Jello jigglers. Remember those It was literally just jello that
27:06
Speaker 1: you cut out with a cookie cutter. Therefore, now it's
27:09
Speaker 1: a whole other thing they can market with the same
27:11
Speaker 1: exact stuff. But then you started getting pre made those
27:14
Speaker 1: cereal bar as you're talking about, and Rice Crispy treats,
27:17
Speaker 1: you know, pre packers. That's a little more of a
27:18
Speaker 1: modern innovation. We'll get to that. Yeah, And I gotta say,
27:22
Speaker 1: you know what, I just never got into Rice Crispy treats.
27:26
Speaker 1: I don't have too much of a sweet tooth. But
27:28
Speaker 1: people love them, love them, I think to me, they've
27:31
Speaker 1: always just felt like a let down snack, like when
27:33
Speaker 1: you get a fruit cup and it's mostly melon, you
27:37
Speaker 1: know what I mean. You can't stand them. It's like, honey, dude,
27:40
Speaker 1: It's like, why is that one candle unservice to a party?
27:43
Speaker 1: It thinks they can bring his dumbass friend, honey do along.
27:46
Speaker 1: You don't get a plus one candle up? More like
27:48
Speaker 1: honey don't? Am I Right? But but we were, we
27:53
Speaker 1: were teasing the modern era a little bits, and you know,
27:56
Speaker 1: the things were kind of in flux, right, and then
27:58
Speaker 1: it all kind of even out, Like I only haven't
28:01
Speaker 1: been too many serial innovations that we could speak of
28:04
Speaker 1: or like again, new cereals, new exciting serial brands. A
28:08
Speaker 1: lot of it was just kind of repurposed and tweaked
28:11
Speaker 1: marketing campaigns for existing brands. But by the seventies and
28:14
Speaker 1: eighties they were really kind of playing against the whole
28:18
Speaker 1: sugar thing, like removing the words sugar from sugar pops
28:21
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, because we did start to see
28:23
Speaker 1: research and again this rise in childhood obesity and uh
28:28
Speaker 1: diabetes and things like that that were of concern. Um.
28:31
Speaker 1: And even in the early seventies, we had folks like
28:33
Speaker 1: dr Atkins, you know of the Afkins diet fame, talking
28:37
Speaker 1: about how carbs were bad for you, and what is
28:39
Speaker 1: serial if not just a big old bowl of carbs, right,
28:43
Speaker 1: just like just like the early days of the granula paste. Uh,
28:47
Speaker 1: this this stuff was this was kind of a reckoning, right,
28:52
Speaker 1: Those greens did not look as healthy anymore. People started
28:56
Speaker 1: to question some of the more out there health claims
29:00
Speaker 1: from cereals of yesteryear, and they started saying, hey, there's
29:05
Speaker 1: also just a uh, there's so much sugar in this
29:08
Speaker 1: that it might not look like a bowl of cake,
29:11
Speaker 1: but in some situations, am I feeding my kid and
29:14
Speaker 1: myself a bowl of cake? So healthy cereals doubled down.
29:18
Speaker 1: They say, we got all the vitamins, we got all
29:20
Speaker 1: the protein, the fiber, what whatever you are seeking my
29:24
Speaker 1: grocery store, sojourner, you have found it in this box.
29:28
Speaker 1: Sugar crisps gets renamed golden crisp. This is also what
29:32
Speaker 1: we see a lot of people pulling sugar out of
29:35
Speaker 1: the sugar corn pops corn pops now and because like
29:39
Speaker 1: you said, it used to be almost a selling point,
29:41
Speaker 1: so they wanted to highlight that, and now they kind
29:43
Speaker 1: of wanted to hide it. And they probably did, you know,
29:47
Speaker 1: reduce the amount of sugar from those early just you know,
29:50
Speaker 1: knock your socks off levels. But certainly sugar is still
29:53
Speaker 1: part of the equation because that's the whole point. It's
29:55
Speaker 1: supposed to taste good, it's supposed to taste sweet. And
29:58
Speaker 1: then we get to something very clever. This is very
30:01
Speaker 1: Edward Burnet's style. They know they're still there's still a
30:05
Speaker 1: viable market in selling sugar to kids in the morning, right.
30:10
Speaker 1: They know they can still sell that stuff all the time,
30:12
Speaker 1: and there might be some adults who are buying it
30:15
Speaker 1: just because they've been eating it themselves for years. But
30:19
Speaker 1: they knew they had to fight back against the sugar thing,
30:21
Speaker 1: the health concerns, which are very valid. This is where
30:24
Speaker 1: we see the introduction of the balanced breakfast or the
30:28
Speaker 1: complete breakfast that becomes the balanced breakfast. They say, okay,
30:31
Speaker 1: we can't just keep telling these people you can eat
30:35
Speaker 1: cinnamon toast crunch and you'll be absolutely fine, and that
30:38
Speaker 1: it's healthy for you to do that every day of
30:40
Speaker 1: your life. But we can say it's healthy as part
30:45
Speaker 1: of a larger breakfast orange juice, fruit, milk, maybe some eggs,
30:50
Speaker 1: if you throw a bowl of cereal in. The companies
30:52
Speaker 1: are still making money, but it also seems less egregious
30:56
Speaker 1: for the consumer. That's brilliant. And I imagine this around
30:59
Speaker 1: the same time we started seeing that trope of um
31:03
Speaker 1: of sitcom and movie fame where somebody walks down and
31:07
Speaker 1: they're they're like in a hurry to go to work
31:09
Speaker 1: or school, and there's this elaborate like a course breakfast
31:13
Speaker 1: and then some what what what do they always do?
31:15
Speaker 1: They take like a bite of a waffle or they
31:18
Speaker 1: are they grab a cup of coffee and they're like, thanks, Han,
31:21
Speaker 1: you gotta go. It's continental, though, Ben, it's continental. Love
31:25
Speaker 1: being incontinent. I love being incontinent. Uh No, it's true. Me.
31:30
Speaker 1: I do like I like sampling the mini muffins. That's
31:33
Speaker 1: always nice and you know, yeah, I don't want to
31:36
Speaker 1: be a food waster, but that's where they're MANI you
31:37
Speaker 1: can just try a few different ones. Let's see which
31:39
Speaker 1: ones you like. Do you know what I'm talking about though?
31:41
Speaker 1: With the trope of that huge breakfast and mean just
31:47
Speaker 1: like in the commercials and commercials always these platters, and
31:53
Speaker 1: that really is more like a European breakfast, like I mean,
31:56
Speaker 1: like in Germany and you know other countries in Europe
31:58
Speaker 1: a lot of times they'll eat a really heavy breakfast
32:02
Speaker 1: of like sausage and all kinds of crazy stuff. So
32:05
Speaker 1: that's probably to some degree where the inspiration came from. Um,
32:08
Speaker 1: I gotta ask, yes quick, this isn't in in the
32:10
Speaker 1: outline or anything we've talked about directly, but how do
32:12
Speaker 1: you feel how do you think that the introduction of
32:15
Speaker 1: like the food pyramid fit into all this? Because if
32:18
Speaker 1: I'm if I'm reading this correctly, I believe that wasn't
32:22
Speaker 1: really established until around the seventies, like as kind of, uh,
32:27
Speaker 1: you know, a response to a lot of this marketing,
32:31
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, fight marketing with marketing, but
32:33
Speaker 1: apparently the actual arrangement of the food pyramid isn't quite
32:37
Speaker 1: right and has changed over the years as well. Yeah,
32:39
Speaker 1: it's actually it's the food pyramid, or the basis of
32:42
Speaker 1: it is from Sweden, I believe, and you're right, it's
32:45
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. But I know, uh, there's been a
32:49
Speaker 1: lot of debate about trade groups and industries having having
32:56
Speaker 1: their thumb on the scale here because there will be like, um,
33:01
Speaker 1: there will be pushed back from maybe the meat or
33:04
Speaker 1: dairy groups, from lobbying lobbying interest in the US, and
33:07
Speaker 1: they'll say, hey, this is not a good representation of
33:10
Speaker 1: what we do. Or then there will be a health
33:13
Speaker 1: group that says, hey, you're playing down the link between
33:18
Speaker 1: you know, heart disease and eating nothing but hamburgers all
33:23
Speaker 1: day or whatever. So the food pyramid or healthy eating
33:27
Speaker 1: pyramid or wherever you call it can be pretty um,
33:31
Speaker 1: pretty divisive. Might be good for an episode two, I know.
33:34
Speaker 1: Right now, the food pyramid in the US I think
33:38
Speaker 1: has been replaced by something called my plate and my
33:43
Speaker 1: play a little more dynamic, maybe the like accounts individual
33:47
Speaker 1: body types and dies. Because the original food pyramid, the
33:50
Speaker 1: whole big, broad base of it is cereal read rice
33:54
Speaker 1: pasta six to eleven servings. There are folks that would
33:58
Speaker 1: heavily argue that's a bad idea. And then you got
34:01
Speaker 1: fruits and vegetables, But a lot of fruits contain a
34:03
Speaker 1: lot of sugar too, So sometimes probably best to favor
34:07
Speaker 1: the vegetables and eat the fruits maybe a little more sparingly,
34:10
Speaker 1: depending you know, on your dietary requirements. But I completely
34:13
Speaker 1: agree with you Ben that this had to be And
34:15
Speaker 1: also the food pyramid was introduced in Sweden in the seventies,
34:18
Speaker 1: but it wasn't introduced in the US until the nineties.
34:22
Speaker 1: If it's very, very weird, but I think you're right.
34:25
Speaker 1: It probably is a product of lobbying to a degree
34:27
Speaker 1: to have that big old foundation of cereal and bread
34:31
Speaker 1: and pasta, you know, and we're talking about companies with
34:34
Speaker 1: all these cereal companies that are old. They have a
34:37
Speaker 1: lot of influence. You know, they were first to market
34:41
Speaker 1: and they represent a lot of money, and a lot
34:43
Speaker 1: of lawmakers pay attention to money. Oh yeah, spoiler alert, folks. Uh.
34:50
Speaker 1: And then if we go a little bit further, we
34:53
Speaker 1: see something called the Nutrition and Labeling and Education Act
34:56
Speaker 1: of and this said that all products had to have
35:02
Speaker 1: that list of nutrition facts, which we're all familiar with. Now.
35:06
Speaker 1: That's why if you turn around one of these boxes
35:09
Speaker 1: of cereal, you see the ingredient list and you see
35:11
Speaker 1: the percentage of the stuff this product contains, and uh,
35:17
Speaker 1: this this was meant to help people see what they
35:22
Speaker 1: were putting in their bodies. Uh. This also helped cereal
35:26
Speaker 1: peak because people still thought of it as a as
35:29
Speaker 1: breakfast food up until and then apparently it's been on
35:34
Speaker 1: a bit of a decline since then. I wonder why.
35:37
Speaker 1: I was just what I can tell you, there's so
35:38
Speaker 1: many more options and we are just a more in
35:41
Speaker 1: general health conscious society. Um, whether that actually ends up
35:45
Speaker 1: in practice or not, I think marketers are hip to it.
35:48
Speaker 1: And you know, it's a lot harder to market dessert
35:53
Speaker 1: for breakfast kind of situations. So you really don't see
35:55
Speaker 1: much community commercials unless you're literally watching kids shows, but
35:58
Speaker 1: I think our kids channel. But even then, I'm pretty
36:01
Speaker 1: sure that a lot of that stuff has had to
36:03
Speaker 1: be paired down or they can't advertise certain benefits or
36:07
Speaker 1: whatever like they used to. There's one thing we missed
36:09
Speaker 1: just from the late seventies. UM, I just wanted to
36:11
Speaker 1: add you mentioned the whole idea of that balanced breakfast
36:14
Speaker 1: and all of that stuff. In ninety seven, Wheaties claimed
36:18
Speaker 1: they provided twenty five per cent of your daily vitamin needs.
36:23
Speaker 1: It also obviously paired that brand with famous sports players,
36:28
Speaker 1: sports sports ballers, you know, um, and that became again.
36:32
Speaker 1: We talked about that a little bit the last episode,
36:33
Speaker 1: sort of like a brand that you wanted to be
36:36
Speaker 1: associated with, because I mean, I think, of all the cereals,
36:39
Speaker 1: Wheatie's probably one of the better ones. But I think
36:43
Speaker 1: there's a little sugar even in wheaties, if I'm not mistaken.
36:46
Speaker 1: I mean, you eat a wheatie and I taste a
36:48
Speaker 1: little sweetness, kind of like clinging to those brown flakes.
36:53
Speaker 1: Four point one grams per point seven five cups. That's
37:00
Speaker 1: a lot. That's a lot. Let's also consider that serving
37:04
Speaker 1: size is tricky, okay, so we gotta introduce the bad
37:14
Speaker 1: things the good things, right, So cereals and a little
37:16
Speaker 1: bit of a decline, But there are other factors at
37:21
Speaker 1: play that are influencing this. For a long long time,
37:25
Speaker 1: I would argue this continues to day. Surfing size portions
37:29
Speaker 1: were not what we're sold on the box. You would
37:32
Speaker 1: get a box of you know, like candy or something,
37:36
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't know unless you looked at it that
37:39
Speaker 1: this was meant to be multiple servings of that candy
37:42
Speaker 1: and kind of cereals the same way. But this has
37:45
Speaker 1: changed due to something we're talking about off air. As
37:49
Speaker 1: the popularity of cereal declines a little bit, it's also
37:53
Speaker 1: becoming a prime example for an insidious packaging conspiracy called
38:00
Speaker 1: shrink flation. Shrink Flation is, uh, the shrink flation is
38:04
Speaker 1: where you're paying the same price for something, a product
38:08
Speaker 1: you've probably bought in the past, but you're getting less
38:11
Speaker 1: of it because of the way it's packaged. Like if
38:13
Speaker 1: you took this little coffee cup here, uh, and you
38:17
Speaker 1: looked at the bottom, then the bottom would be higher.
38:21
Speaker 1: You're paying the same amount for less coffee. And know
38:24
Speaker 1: you brought up a great point off air that this
38:26
Speaker 1: has happening a lot with cereal, right, or anything that
38:28
Speaker 1: needs air and its packaging. It's the perfect candidate because
38:32
Speaker 1: what's happening is the boxes are getting bigger. It'll be
38:37
Speaker 1: family size, right, I'll say that on the box. This
38:39
Speaker 1: is massive box, probably to fill out more space in
38:44
Speaker 1: the coveted cereal aisle. Again, I'm just kind of like
38:47
Speaker 1: you know, conjecturing here, but again it comes in a
38:50
Speaker 1: bag inside that is foot half full of air, and
38:53
Speaker 1: the actual you know, net weight of the cereal in
38:57
Speaker 1: that box, while it might be advertised as larger, if
39:00
Speaker 1: you look at it historically, it's getting smaller. And that's
39:05
Speaker 1: a very concerted effort on the part of on the
39:07
Speaker 1: part of these companies to save money. And they also
39:10
Speaker 1: we should talk about this. Grocery stores are built with
39:13
Speaker 1: the same level of consideration that goes into making casinos
39:17
Speaker 1: and uh, serial companies will pay premium rate uh to
39:23
Speaker 1: have their their boxes placed on certain shelves, you know,
39:27
Speaker 1: something maybe in the eye line of a six year
39:29
Speaker 1: old for instance, right absolutely. And you'll also noticed that
39:32
Speaker 1: like store brands, they don't come in boxes. They just
39:37
Speaker 1: come in bags straight out. So to even have the
39:40
Speaker 1: bag in the box is clearly an unnecessary marketing play
39:44
Speaker 1: in the first place, and it's kind of meant to
39:46
Speaker 1: disguise how not cute the actual cereal is a uh,
39:51
Speaker 1: and be how little of it there there might be.
39:54
Speaker 1: So at this point, UH, I want to give a
39:57
Speaker 1: big shout out to Harold ball Alzer, who is a
40:00
Speaker 1: food researcher. At this wonderful conversation with MPR and just
40:06
Speaker 1: kicks all these crazy facts. One thing he says is
40:11
Speaker 1: most people take about twelve minutes to eat in the
40:14
Speaker 1: morning time, and there are easier ways to do that
40:17
Speaker 1: than eating cereal. Because he's just talking through the mechanics.
40:20
Speaker 1: He's like, Okay, you have a bowl of cereal. Now
40:22
Speaker 1: you have a dirty bull you have to clean. Now
40:24
Speaker 1: you have a dirty spoon. You gotta clean this stuff.
40:26
Speaker 1: And a lot of times people are just kind of
40:28
Speaker 1: eating on the go. Uh. If you are sort of
40:31
Speaker 1: like Max or me, then you're one of the eighteen
40:35
Speaker 1: percent of Americans who don't eat breakfast. That's an increase
40:39
Speaker 1: from nine seventy seven when it was just six percent.
40:42
Speaker 1: And now people are eating like, you know, granola bars,
40:45
Speaker 1: cereal bars, fast food. Uh. And this has been addressed
40:50
Speaker 1: by the cereal companies as well. Now they have the
40:52
Speaker 1: little disposable, single serving cereal packs. I always thought of
40:56
Speaker 1: those as like airplane cereal. Those are fun. Remember you
40:59
Speaker 1: get the riety packs and we were kids, those were
41:02
Speaker 1: hugely popular. And maybe my mom wouldn't buy me a
41:04
Speaker 1: whole box of fruity pebbles, but she'd buy the variety
41:08
Speaker 1: pack that just had a couple of fruity pebbles mixed
41:11
Speaker 1: in with like the quote unquote more healthy cereals. Um.
41:14
Speaker 1: All this leads me to to ask a question, Uh,
41:17
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you guys know the answer.
41:19
Speaker 1: I have a guess, but are people eating breakfast less
41:23
Speaker 1: in general? And is their research that maybe is determined
41:27
Speaker 1: that breakfast maybe isn't that most important meal of the
41:30
Speaker 1: day that we were always kind of sold. Yes, people
41:33
Speaker 1: are eating at least in the United States, people are
41:36
Speaker 1: eating breakfast less often in general, like we had that
41:39
Speaker 1: statistic we just mentioned with going from six percent of
41:44
Speaker 1: people not even breakfast in seventy seven to not eating
41:48
Speaker 1: breakfast at all today. As for the second part of
41:51
Speaker 1: the question, kind of honestly, it depends on your lifestyle.
41:55
Speaker 1: It depends on you know, do you live in an
41:58
Speaker 1: agrarian society idea where you're you're eating breakfast and you're
42:02
Speaker 1: going out and doing demanding physical labor from you know,
42:07
Speaker 1: until the sun goes down. In that case, then you
42:10
Speaker 1: probably do want something pretty hearty in the in the
42:13
Speaker 1: beginning of your day. But then if you're in a
42:16
Speaker 1: hurry to a place where you don't have a lot
42:17
Speaker 1: of demanding physical labor, and you can kind of take
42:20
Speaker 1: a break for a snack when you want. I don't know,
42:23
Speaker 1: maybe equation changes. I don't think a lot of people
42:28
Speaker 1: deify breakfast as much as they did in the past. Right,
42:32
Speaker 1: and and again, you know, this is the kind of
42:34
Speaker 1: statistic that would have been absolutely red meat for these
42:37
Speaker 1: serial companies. You know, breakfast the most important meal of
42:39
Speaker 1: the day. You gotta get your calories in, you know,
42:42
Speaker 1: first thing. Uh. And and now we're also living in
42:44
Speaker 1: a time where people are doing more like functional fasting
42:47
Speaker 1: as well, where they maybe won't eat until dinner like
42:50
Speaker 1: in that that that works for them. Um, So it
42:53
Speaker 1: really against depends on who you ask, depends on what
42:55
Speaker 1: your lifestyle is. Yeah, I mean I haven't eaten breakfast
42:58
Speaker 1: in years. I don't need to two pm every day.
43:00
Speaker 1: I do intermedi fasting. And your chipper is a daisy
43:05
Speaker 1: at all times. Chipper is at whatever you get what
43:07
Speaker 1: I'm get. Do you drink coffee max? I do I
43:10
Speaker 1: drink coffee black? Yeah? Okay, it looks like we died
43:14
Speaker 1: at the same conceptual breakfast club. But yeah, this is
43:18
Speaker 1: this is pretty interesting because now that we are at
43:21
Speaker 1: sort of the current the current state of Sereal. What
43:26
Speaker 1: we can tell you for sure is that it's probably
43:28
Speaker 1: not going to go away anytime soon. Nostalgia is a
43:31
Speaker 1: heck of a drug. Also, the marketing folks working for
43:36
Speaker 1: Cereal companies have a lot of skin in the game.
43:39
Speaker 1: They've got a lot of experience, they know what works,
43:41
Speaker 1: and they've shown a pattern of adjusting two different cultural
43:47
Speaker 1: moments in society. They're even space cereals. That's a real thing. Uh,
43:52
Speaker 1: it's the regular menu of NASA astronauts. I found that
43:57
Speaker 1: the they have five or six different kinds. The Cereal
44:00
Speaker 1: brand checks corn flakes, rice crispies. Oh and weirdly enough,
44:06
Speaker 1: they also have grits with butter. I don't know what
44:08
Speaker 1: grits taste like in space. I'm already kind of picky
44:11
Speaker 1: about them on Earth. I also don't know what grits
44:13
Speaker 1: tastes like without butter, and I don't want to know. Okay,
44:17
Speaker 1: I don't want to know. Um, have you heard about
44:20
Speaker 1: sugar and grits? I still that's a rubiciclon too far
44:22
Speaker 1: from me. Yeah, I can you know sugary buttery grits?
44:26
Speaker 1: I I could see the bed it's sort of like
44:28
Speaker 1: cream of wheat, you know at that point. Uh, And
44:31
Speaker 1: but no, to me, grits are always meant to be savory.
44:34
Speaker 1: I like shrimp and grits, you know, or cheese grits,
44:37
Speaker 1: things like that. The pimento cheese and grits, it's actually
44:40
Speaker 1: quite good. I'm a recent pimento cheese convert really well. Yeah, well,
44:45
Speaker 1: because it was just so orange, it always kind of
44:46
Speaker 1: weirded me out. And the texture is a little odd. Um,
44:49
Speaker 1: but man on a burger, you know, it actually melts
44:52
Speaker 1: really nicely. Fantastic. Um. Before we wrap this episode, Uh,
44:57
Speaker 1: can we talk a little bit about some like maybe
45:00
Speaker 1: more global breakfast foods and uh, you know, people that
45:03
Speaker 1: maybe aren't eating cereal. Um, they've got some fun ones here,
45:06
Speaker 1: and I think I think each of us also brought
45:08
Speaker 1: some surprises. Yeah what you got, Oh, well, we've got
45:11
Speaker 1: you know, the Egyptian breakfasts. In ancient egypts peasants and
45:14
Speaker 1: workers would drink some beer, eat some bread, and eat
45:18
Speaker 1: a soup um or even onions before they would they
45:23
Speaker 1: would head out to their slave labor, you know, building
45:26
Speaker 1: the pyramids or whatever. It's interesting because you know the
45:30
Speaker 1: concept of the modern American breakfast, or just the idea
45:34
Speaker 1: of breakfast foods in general, really is a construct of
45:38
Speaker 1: of advertising. Again thanks to our buddy Edward Burnet's Yeah,
45:44
Speaker 1: we also know uh that at one point some members
45:50
Speaker 1: of the clergy felt that breakfast was a sin. That's
45:54
Speaker 1: the holy breakfast, so you don't eat anything. Dominican priest
45:59
Speaker 1: Thomas at Unus said that you would be eating too soon,
46:04
Speaker 1: you would be committing the sin of prey propere. Uh.
46:08
Speaker 1: So this meant it was to him, was kind of gluttony.
46:11
Speaker 1: It's like, why why can't you wait? And he was
46:13
Speaker 1: he was telling people, you need to be like Max Williams,
46:16
Speaker 1: wait till two pm. That's what That's what he was
46:19
Speaker 1: saying in the in the thirteenth century. Um. But yeah, well,
46:23
Speaker 1: and then like in the industrial evolution, when uh, everything
46:27
Speaker 1: was determined by the workday and often you maybe wouldn't
46:30
Speaker 1: even get a lunch break, who knows. You had to
46:32
Speaker 1: kind of take your meals when you could, so loading
46:34
Speaker 1: up first thing was really kind of the only way
46:36
Speaker 1: to fly. Um. And they would eat things like anchovies
46:40
Speaker 1: and oysters, and of course drink tons of wine and ale. Um.
46:45
Speaker 1: This is all before eleven am. You know, so people
46:49
Speaker 1: were kind of getting getting blasted and then working in
46:53
Speaker 1: factories that were very dangerous. Wonder mortality rates were so huge. Also,
46:58
Speaker 1: water still wasn't as safe as it has become now,
47:03
Speaker 1: but yeah, there was. They were going hard before noon,
47:07
Speaker 1: which is still kind of that before noon or before
47:09
Speaker 1: five is still kind of an arbitrary rule. Right, Are
47:13
Speaker 1: you guys familiar with the famous Finnish breakfast known as
47:18
Speaker 1: blue Uru Blue Blue Roots, got the omlad over, the
47:21
Speaker 1: oh and the oh b l oh that I'm not
47:24
Speaker 1: familiar with. It is literally a cup of black coffee,
47:29
Speaker 1: a shot of vodka, and a cigarette. Oh wow, alright, yes,
47:36
Speaker 1: indeed there's a Reddit page with a picture of it,
47:38
Speaker 1: and it's literally like on a little sauce for all
47:41
Speaker 1: three of these items. You know, what I never understood is, uh, well,
47:45
Speaker 1: I've had it before just because I felt like I
47:48
Speaker 1: was it was a winning Rome situation. But the full
47:50
Speaker 1: Irish are the full English breakfast bangers and uh and beans,
47:55
Speaker 1: so much stuff. And it's so you could get tomatoes, beans, blood, sausage, bacon,
48:03
Speaker 1: probably some sausage links and eggs and then you'll have
48:07
Speaker 1: you usually have some toast. Oh you might have mushrooms,
48:11
Speaker 1: but that's the stuff I see that. It is a lot.
48:15
Speaker 1: But I will say this, and this is a thing
48:17
Speaker 1: that I learned from Gordon Ramsey not to every long ago.
48:20
Speaker 1: If you take tomatoes and mushrooms and you just put
48:24
Speaker 1: them in a pan on low heat, they kind of
48:26
Speaker 1: start to cook in their own juices and the tomato
48:29
Speaker 1: gets a little crinkly, not like sugar crinkles. But that's
48:32
Speaker 1: sort of the style of of preparing those for a
48:34
Speaker 1: full English breakfast. The tomatoes that are kind of charred
48:37
Speaker 1: and uh, really nice because it's like multiple bites. It
48:39
Speaker 1: is a lot. But I might also go the way
48:42
Speaker 1: of the sitcom and just eat a little bit here
48:44
Speaker 1: and there and kind of, you know, compose some perfect
48:46
Speaker 1: bites and then move on. I personally love a nice breakfast,
48:50
Speaker 1: but usually only on the weekend. You know. Yeah, I'll
48:54
Speaker 1: cook breakfast on on a weekend. But the way that
48:57
Speaker 1: I cook is very slow and considered and oh what
49:02
Speaker 1: do we have here? Very well? Uh so I'm usually
49:07
Speaker 1: if I start cooking breakfast, it's to be charitable. We
49:10
Speaker 1: called a brunch. One of my last breakfast shoutouts the Netherlands,
49:14
Speaker 1: there's this thing called hoggle slog Uh. It's a slice
49:19
Speaker 1: of bread that has chocolate sprinkles on it. Have you
49:23
Speaker 1: guys heard of this? No? Please, No, that's it. That's
49:27
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it. I thought they have butter so
49:31
Speaker 1: the sprinkles don't fall off. But yeah, that's it. That's
49:34
Speaker 1: literally it. And somehow it has less gramps of sugar
49:37
Speaker 1: with that somehow. Yes, but this is a I think
49:42
Speaker 1: we should also do an episode just about breakfast, because
49:45
Speaker 1: that is such a uniquely different thing. You know, it's
49:48
Speaker 1: it's always weird. Like you go to uh, you know,
49:51
Speaker 1: you just walk by different, um different like regionally specific restaurants,
49:57
Speaker 1: and you see that not all of them served some
49:59
Speaker 1: kind of breakfas this dish. Right, Like, the idea of
50:02
Speaker 1: what people in China might eat for breakfast isn't something
50:05
Speaker 1: that's really caught on in the United States, at least
50:08
Speaker 1: in the parts I've I've visited. And that's what kind
50:11
Speaker 1: of was getting out earlier. I sometimes like eat a
50:13
Speaker 1: bowl of ramen for breakfast with like a poached egg
50:16
Speaker 1: in it, you know, or just leftovers. I really I
50:19
Speaker 1: kind of resent being held to the standard of what
50:22
Speaker 1: is and is not a breakfast food or what time
50:25
Speaker 1: those types of food should be consumed. I like to
50:27
Speaker 1: to live live on the edge. Have you guys, Uh,
50:29
Speaker 1: last one for me? Have you guys heard of Welsh
50:33
Speaker 1: rabbit or Welsh rabbits y? Yeah? Yeah, it contains neither
50:38
Speaker 1: Welsh nor rabbits Um. It is a piece of toast
50:42
Speaker 1: with kind of a cheesy um gravy kind of melt
50:47
Speaker 1: concoction over it, often served with a poach egg. And
50:49
Speaker 1: anyone who's a Paul Thomas Anderson fan will remember that
50:53
Speaker 1: Daniel Lee Lewis's character from Phantom Thread orders breakfast with
50:57
Speaker 1: bacon SCons, butter cream jam, a pot of lap saying
51:01
Speaker 1: su chong t and some sausages and an order of
51:05
Speaker 1: Welsh rare bit with a poached egg not too running.
51:08
Speaker 1: The poached egg not too running. We are going to
51:13
Speaker 1: call it a day. They are all sorts of breakfast
51:16
Speaker 1: is that we want to talk about. And I think
51:17
Speaker 1: part of it is because, uh, outside of maximal, I
51:22
Speaker 1: don't know about you know, but I might be getting hungry.
51:23
Speaker 1: I might have a little bit of a nausha head.
51:26
Speaker 1: Get that daytime bagel, daytime bagel, No more two am
51:30
Speaker 1: bagels for me. Guys, this is the beginning of a
51:33
Speaker 1: whole new era, and we hope that you join us
51:37
Speaker 1: and give us your thoughts about breakfast around the world.
51:41
Speaker 1: This is when that's gonna be pretty exciting for us
51:44
Speaker 1: in the meantime. Thanks as always to our super producer
51:47
Speaker 1: and research associate for this week series, Mr Max Williams.
51:51
Speaker 1: Thanks to Jonathan Strickland. I actually talked with Jonathan just
51:55
Speaker 1: very briefly through uh through text. I was between so
52:00
Speaker 1: I was trying to prank text him and I didn't
52:02
Speaker 1: know if it was his number or if it was
52:04
Speaker 1: someone else on my phone, but it is his number.
52:07
Speaker 1: He sends his regards. I don't know whether they're warm
52:10
Speaker 1: regards or like cold sinister regards. He said he is
52:14
Speaker 1: looking forward to joining us soon, So the rumors are true.
52:17
Speaker 1: We are in contact. Don't tempt me with a good time,
52:19
Speaker 1: ben Okay. Well, Instead, what I'm saying is the Quister
52:23
Speaker 1: might show up. Yeah, We've been teasing that for for
52:27
Speaker 1: like a year. And where is he? Where is this Quister?
52:30
Speaker 1: I don't believe he exists anymore, And this would be
52:32
Speaker 1: the exact opportunity moment for him to pop up. If
52:34
Speaker 1: we weren't already an hour into this podcast, we wouldn't
52:38
Speaker 1: do that to you ridiculous historians. But yeah, I don't know,
52:42
Speaker 1: weld we tried. I mean really, I'm actually kind of
52:45
Speaker 1: blown away by how much there was to talk about
52:47
Speaker 1: regarding the history of cereal. But it also kind of
52:49
Speaker 1: makes so much sense because it's really tied in with
52:51
Speaker 1: a lot of different threads, you know, from history, in
52:54
Speaker 1: terms of like the kind of holistic health food movement,
52:58
Speaker 1: marketing too cartoon characters to breakfast foods, and I mean,
53:02
Speaker 1: it's just I don't know, it's a whole ball of ax,
53:04
Speaker 1: and it's been a pleasure discussing it with you fellas. Yes,
53:07
Speaker 1: agreed and likewise, So tune in next week, folks. We're
53:12
Speaker 1: gonna be exploring some even more bizarre, strange tales of
53:17
Speaker 1: yesteryear that won't have They won't be related to cereal,
53:22
Speaker 1: I think, but if they are, we'll bring some props.
53:26
Speaker 1: We'll eat some cereal while we do while we do
53:28
Speaker 1: our next episodes. Huge thanks to christophrostiotis here in spirit,
53:32
Speaker 1: Eves Jeff Coat gallivanting around this wide world of sports
53:37
Speaker 1: doing great work, and gosh, do you Max and and
53:40
Speaker 1: uh and of course to you Benjamin, Thank you mill
53:43
Speaker 1: and Jamin uh. And of course big thanks to all
53:46
Speaker 1: those wonderful Cereal mascots except for that Crinkles guy. We'll
53:50
Speaker 1: see you, nice set, folks. For more podcasts from I
54:00
Speaker 1: Heeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
54:02
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.