History
The Food That Built America Recap for Cereal Killers
This week’s episode of The Food That Built America on The History Channel is titled Cereal Killers and dives into the history of some of America’s favorite cereal flavors.
Cereal was popular in the 1950s and was used for convenient, healthy breakfasts.
Soon, sugar was added to make it sweeter and more appealing, while still being considered a healthy meal.
Charles Bell of General Mills wanted to cash in on this and live up to his father James’s legacy. While he did like some of the ideas his team came up with, he suggested chocolate as another flavor for cereals…..something that would set the bar for cereal for years to come.
Charles decided to use Kix as a model and soon came up with a chocolate cereal that would also turn the milk into chocolate milk. Thus, Cocoa Puffs were born.
Quaker Oats also wants to get into the game and come up with an idea of their own. Donald Lourie works on some ideas with his team and before long, Life Cereal is born and becomes one of the best-selling cereals of all time…but in the beginning, sales fell flat.
Back in the General Mills company, Charles decides to use the cartoon ideas from Kellogg to advertise his own cereal, thus inventing cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Before long, it is a battle of the cartoon cereal campaigns, with the Trix Bunny and Toucan Sam entering the competition.
Not to be outdone, Quaker Oats comes up with the Cap’n Crunch mascot while inventing a cereal that stays crunchy in milk. There is a lot of trial and error, but it isn’t until butterscotch flavor is added to they get it to work….and also add a new flavor.
The cereal becomes a hit!
Charles wants to beat the competition and wants to top his Cocoa Puffs invention.
Thanks to one employee’s love of circus peanuts and the fact that he decided to add it to his cereal, we now have Lucky Charms.
It wasn’t an easy feat to create, but after a lot of trial, error and frustration, they decide to dehydrate the marshmallows and add them to the cereal…making it what we know today.
Back at Quaker Oats, Donald decides to continue to push Life Cereal by introducing Mikey the Life Boy! He appealed to children everywhere, so the cereal finally took off!
General Mills is now the top dog in the cereal game……thanks to all its iconic flavors known around the world.
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