Cheerios are famous breakfast cereals with a distinctive ‘O’ shape made from puffed oats. They have been popular with children and adults since the 1940s. A US-based cereal company called General Mills owns the Cheerios brand and it is also marketed by Nestlé in up to 130 countries, including the UK. Cheerios has a variety of styles and flavors; is advertised as a nutritious and healthy breakfast.
Nineteenth-century breakfasts were typically made up of toast, fried eggs, bacon, and sausage. Healthy diet was not considered as important. However, some doctors had noted that their patients responded better to bowel and urinary tract problems, even mood swings, if they had a better balanced diet of grains and vegetables. Unfortunately, cereals turned out to be difficult to turn into convenient meals. Some experiments were carried out to produce bite-sized cereal nuggets.
In the 20th century, modern pressure cookers and food presses made it possible to use grain as a main ingredient. The first breakfast cereals, such as cornflakes and grape nuts, had amazing sales and encouraged other mills to develop their own cereal brands.
In 1941, Cheerios made with puffed oats were first released. Lester Borchardt and a team of people at General Mills who were the inventors of Cheerios tried to invent a machine that they could use to create puffed cereal like puffed wheat. After spending a lot of time and money on the technique with no progress results, Borchardt’s boss told them to drop the project. Borchardt was an intelligent man and he knew that the idea was good, he decided to continue with the development of the machine. After two months they were finally rewarded with success resulting in a new product for General Mills.
Cheerios’ marketing campaign was quite aggressive. It was marketed as Cheeri Oats but another company was already using the name. This erupted into a brief dispute and General Mills later agreed in 1945 to change the name to Cheerios. It has retained the name to this day. In the early 1940s, when the Cheerios brand was being advertised, a company called Cheeri O’Leary created a cartoon character that was the brand’s lucky charm. At that time, television was not very common, which is why the character was used in animated and print forms and was popular with children.
To compete with Kelloggs, which had deep pockets and a loyal following, required innovative thinking. General Mills, under the direction of James Bell, who owned the company, was inspired to sponsor a radio show aimed at children with a moral story for each episode. It was a happy coincidence that the creator of Lone Ranger wanted a sponsor to syndicate the show in the US beginning in 1949. The association with Lone Ranger continued for 20 years and helped Cheerios become one of the leading cereals for breakfast. .
Cheerios developed a new character in the early 1950s to replace Cheery O’Leary. Viewers were in such a mood that they favored the marketing of Cheerios on television. It exclusively resulted in Cheerios Kid and Sue going on the air.
General Mills invented more advertising innovations from the idea that Cheerios packaging need not contain just the cereal. General Mills’ marketing department successfully co-branded boxes of Cheerios with the Disney Company in the late 1940s and 1950s by offering exclusive discounts on comic books.
In the mid-1960s, the Cheerios brand was also used to good effect when its packaging was chosen as the primary source to promote a new social and charitable effort started by General Mills known as Project Head Start. Health-wise, Cheerios have been well received. General Mills has claimed that Cheerios provide all the necessary nutritional values of oatmeal. Cheerios is declared the only cereal capable of helping to reduce cholesterol in populations.