Cereal: A Staple Big Business for Breakfast

Breakfast cereal is big business. In 2018, Americans alone consumed $8.5 billion in breakfast cereals. Nearly 90% of those sales are made by the Big Four: General Mills, Kellogg, Post Holdings (POST) and Quaker Foods. The majority of cereals are marketed towards children, with a surprisingly robust psychological marketing playbook which uses bright, colorful characters – for example Captain Crunch, the Trix rabbit, Tony the Tiger, the Flinstones & Snap! Crackle! & Pop! – to generate excitement for these products in the minds of consumers.

Adults in Western societies, who purchase ready-to-eat cold cereals for themselves and their families, have grown up with these cereal brands and characters, just as they have grown up with comics and comic book characters. So it should come as no surprise that comic artists sometimes homage or parody breakfast cereal products, using similarly bright and colorful characters poised over a bowl of powerful, sugary cereal.

(As an aside, check out the disturbingly scientific reasoning behind the positioning of the eyes of our beloved cereal mascots and the placement of specific cereals on the shelves at EurekAlert!.)

Source: Kiplinger