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Cheerios is a brand of breakfast cereal created in 1941 and marketed by the General Mills cereal company of Golden Valley, Minnesota, as the first oat-based and ready-to-eat without cooking cereal. In some other countries (including the UK), it is sold by Cereal Partners under the Nestlé brand. These products marketed as "Cheerios" differ from the US - for example, in the UK and Ireland, consisting of "four grains" (actually five, but four colours of 'O's): maize, oats, barley, wheat and rice. The cereal briefly had a mascot. It was an animated talking cheerio with eyes, arms and legs. For some reason they quickly dropped the character leaving the cereal mascotless.

History

The introduction of Cheerios on May 1, 1941, by the name of "CheeriOats" was marked by an aggressive production and marketing strategy that attempted to associate Cheerios with the American cold cereal breakfast. Its first mascot, Cheeri O'Leary, was introduced in 1942, though the mascot was short-lived and she was rarely seen after 1945. Successful marketing and association with The Lone Ranger led General Mills to sell approximately 1.8 million cases of the cereal in its first year alone, and in 1945, the name of the cereal was changed to Cheerios (to avoid confusion with a similarly named competitor brand), and its slogan was developed as "Cheerios: The First Ready-To-Eat Oat Cereal".

During the 1950s, continued association with television and radio allowed Cheerios to rank among the top breakfast cereals, and as General Mills' number one selling cereal product. It also underwent package changes, and for the first time in 1953 Cheerios was shown with a bowl of the oat cereal topped with strawberries, along with a singular Cheerio being used to dot the "i" on the Cheerios cereal box. New mascots named "The Cheerios Kid and Sue" were introduced in 1953 along with the package change, though again product association and in-box promotions generally kept the mascots of Cheerios from the limelight.

Health appeal

Cheerios' health appeal stems from its lack of artificial flavoring and coloring, low sugar, fat, and cholesterol content, and being a source of dietary fiber and folic acid. Beginning in 1996, Cheerios featured the American Heart Association's seal of heart and checkmark indicating it had met the AHA nutrition guidelines for its food certification program. This in part led to Cheerios being issued the first health-claim confirmation by the Food and Drug Administration that Cheerios, oatmeal, and oat products can lower the risk of heart disease in 1997, along with a medical journal study in 1998 indicating that Cheerios could in fact lower blood cholesterol levels when eaten as a part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol.

Recently, General Mills created an all-natural organic food version of Cheerios. While many companies such as Frito-Lay have created organic foods with the same brand name as the original, General Mills chose not to do this, to the dismay of organic food promoters, and used the Cascadian Farm brand in order to sell "Purely O's". The corporate decision was made so that consumers would not view the original Cheerios as somehow inferior to the organic Purely O's.

Marketing, promotions, and cultural association

Since its inception, strong marketing and association with cultural icons allowed Cheerios to achieve brand dominance through children. It has maintained a prominent position as a breakfast cereal since its creation, in the face of generic brand competition, largely due to its strategic association with American culture and its focus on advertising to youth. It is a common early finger food for babies.

Cheerios' association with The Lone Ranger was the longest of the Cheerios brand promotions, on radio from 1941 until 1949, and continuing with The Lone Ranger on television programs into the early 1960s. Encouraging children watching and listening to request for Cheerios cereal by name, the association was one of the most profitable in brand history. Other icons that have been prominently featured in association with Cheerios include Rocky and Bullwinkle, Scooby Doo, Star Wars characters, and NASCAR drivers. Also, General Mill's attempts to characterize the brand as a healthy breakfast have led many diet and health-conscious consumers to the cereal.

In the 1978 film The Movie, Martha Kent places a Cherrios box prominently in front of the camera (as if intended to be a movie tie-in) at the beginning of the scene where Clark Kent is out in the middle of the field watching the sunrise.

In the 1989 Disney movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the climatic scene involves one of the shrunken characters swimming in a bowl of Cheerios and almost being eaten by his regularly-sized father. This scene was one which was widely used in television ads for the film.

In 2000 in association with the United States Mint, General Mills included approximately 10,000,000 coins in boxes of all varieties of Cheerios. Year 2000 dated pennies were the generally included promotion, though every 2000th box included the first public release of the Sacagawea dollar coin. In specially marked boxes were included over $100,000 of pennies, $5,000 of dollar coins, and $227,000 in authentication certificates. Though it was not the first time Cheerios had been associated with numismatics (in 1954 Cheerios gave away in-box Confederate play-money), it was certainly the most successful.

In 2005, Cheerios was introduced to Australia through Nestle and has been marketed as a healthy cereal containing four whole grains; oats, wheat, corn and rice. It comes with the slogan "Four things are better than one."

Taglines

Throughout its history, Cheerios has changed slogans in response to market trends, and in recent years it has emphasized its health benefits. Most slogans were developed with the knowledge that product and corporate advertising would most likely overshadow the slogan itself, though they have played roles in most Cheerios advertisements.

  • "The Breakfast Food You’ve Always Wanted!" (1941)
  • "Cheer up with Cheerioats" (1942)
  • "Cheerioats: For Fighters on the Homefront" (1943)
  • "Cheerioats: The New Flavor King of Cereals" (1944)
  • "Look! An Oat Cereal All Ready to Eat” (1944)
  • "Cheerios: The First Ready-To-Eat Oat Cereal” (1945)
  • "The ‘Power’ Breakfast the Whole Family Loves” (1958)
  • "The Big G stands for Goodness" (in reference to the General Mills' G) (1962)
  • "Go with the Goodness of Cheerios" (1964)
  • "Nutrition: That’s the Cheerios Tradition" (1971)
  • "Oats, the Grain Highest in Protein" (1971)
  • "You're on your toes with Cheerios" (1980s)
  • "The Unsinkable Taste of Cheerios" (1984 - 1989)
  • "It's a good thing it's Cheerios" (early 1990's)
  • "The one and Only Cheerios" (1994-2004)
  • "Four things are better than one" (in reference to four whole grains) (2005)
  • "There's a whole lot of good in those little O's" In the UK (2005)
  • "Smiles all round" UK (2005/06)

Related cereals

In the late 1970s until the present, General Mills has introduced a succession of cereals that are spin-offs of the original Cheerios. These include along with their introduction date:

General Mills also markets several dozen other breakfast cereals under different names. See also List of breakfast cereals.

See also

Cheerios effect

External links

Breakfast cereals | General Mills brands

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Cheerios".

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