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| How could any 7 year old resit having their mom buy this. |
I don’t eat breakfast. If he were here right now, 7-year-old me would say it was the most important meal of the day.
OK, full disclosure, 7-year-old me probably would have been as skeptical as I am now, but at least he ate it every morning.
I have often been told the importance of breakfast, and I’m sure that if there are moms or health nuts reading this, they too will speak volumes about how important breakfast is. I have never been convinced.
However, 7-year-old me always ate breakfast, not necessarily because it was important but for two major reasons -- he was told to by his mother, and breakfast was fun.
In the same way that we often hear TV characters use the phrase “I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast” to show their poor memory skills, my breakfast history is not something I have the greatest recognition of. I’ve a feeling this was the case for most of my peers. But there are some things I definitely recall from the bowls of cereal past, and all of it dealt with some of the most well-executed marketing of all time.
Aside from a great period of American economic wealth, I cannot think of another explanation for companies need to sell kids on breakfast food during the 1990s, but it worked. As a child, there are three distinct memories when it comes to breakfast, and they are Spider-Man cereal, a knock off Lucky Charms with marshmallows shaped like Spider-Man and co., a blue, “deep sea”-themed oatmeal treat and Cap’n Crunch’s “Oops, all berries,” which included only the “berry” balls of wheat and sugar. Each came with at least twice the recommended daily dose of sugar and yellow 5 and the 90s favorite tag line: “For a limited time only.” To a 7-year-old version of myself, it was a challenge I had to accept.
In addition to these various types of cereal that we just had to have because they were the perfect blend of colorful commercials and sugar, they all came with incredible extras the likes of which I wish were included with adult food. While many of the name brand cereals came with a cool prize or a mail away box tops to claim a cool item incentive (the best by far was Chex-Quest, a Doom knock-off video game where you fought gobs of goo as a gun-toting, Chex-themed crime fighter), the generics even had a puzzle on the back of the box to do while you were supposed to be getting ready for school. I wish packages of deli meat came with a puzzle or a cool fact about giraffes.
It isn’t that I’m opposed to breakfast today. I love a good bowl of Golden Grahams or Honey Bunches of Oats as the next guy (or the generic versions, “Honey Grahams” and “Honey Crisp Medley”) and I am known to eat eggs twice a day. It’s mostly a matter of not having any desire to be up early to make these things, and so one can often catch me only having breakfast when it was part of an elaborate morning plan in which someone else conceived or if I’m on a trip somewhere a McDonald’s just happens to be on the way before 11 a.m. (I am the worst kind of sucker for the ham-egg-and-cheese bagel). But by and large, breakfast, especially breakfast cereals, are one of those things I have allowed to fall behind the times and I only indulge in on the most random of occasions.
So to 7-year-old me, I apologize for not following the orders of my mother and partaking in breakfast everyday. It could be that I no longer need a bowl of shredded wheat to pass the big math test, or that I have graduated to drinking coffee while watching Batman.
OK, full disclosure, 7-year-old me probably would have been as skeptical as I am now, but at least he ate it every morning.
I have often been told the importance of breakfast, and I’m sure that if there are moms or health nuts reading this, they too will speak volumes about how important breakfast is. I have never been convinced.
However, 7-year-old me always ate breakfast, not necessarily because it was important but for two major reasons -- he was told to by his mother, and breakfast was fun.
In the same way that we often hear TV characters use the phrase “I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast” to show their poor memory skills, my breakfast history is not something I have the greatest recognition of. I’ve a feeling this was the case for most of my peers. But there are some things I definitely recall from the bowls of cereal past, and all of it dealt with some of the most well-executed marketing of all time.
Aside from a great period of American economic wealth, I cannot think of another explanation for companies need to sell kids on breakfast food during the 1990s, but it worked. As a child, there are three distinct memories when it comes to breakfast, and they are Spider-Man cereal, a knock off Lucky Charms with marshmallows shaped like Spider-Man and co., a blue, “deep sea”-themed oatmeal treat and Cap’n Crunch’s “Oops, all berries,” which included only the “berry” balls of wheat and sugar. Each came with at least twice the recommended daily dose of sugar and yellow 5 and the 90s favorite tag line: “For a limited time only.” To a 7-year-old version of myself, it was a challenge I had to accept.
In addition to these various types of cereal that we just had to have because they were the perfect blend of colorful commercials and sugar, they all came with incredible extras the likes of which I wish were included with adult food. While many of the name brand cereals came with a cool prize or a mail away box tops to claim a cool item incentive (the best by far was Chex-Quest, a Doom knock-off video game where you fought gobs of goo as a gun-toting, Chex-themed crime fighter), the generics even had a puzzle on the back of the box to do while you were supposed to be getting ready for school. I wish packages of deli meat came with a puzzle or a cool fact about giraffes.
It isn’t that I’m opposed to breakfast today. I love a good bowl of Golden Grahams or Honey Bunches of Oats as the next guy (or the generic versions, “Honey Grahams” and “Honey Crisp Medley”) and I am known to eat eggs twice a day. It’s mostly a matter of not having any desire to be up early to make these things, and so one can often catch me only having breakfast when it was part of an elaborate morning plan in which someone else conceived or if I’m on a trip somewhere a McDonald’s just happens to be on the way before 11 a.m. (I am the worst kind of sucker for the ham-egg-and-cheese bagel). But by and large, breakfast, especially breakfast cereals, are one of those things I have allowed to fall behind the times and I only indulge in on the most random of occasions.
So to 7-year-old me, I apologize for not following the orders of my mother and partaking in breakfast everyday. It could be that I no longer need a bowl of shredded wheat to pass the big math test, or that I have graduated to drinking coffee while watching Batman.
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