Our 10 Favorite Sugary Cereal Commercials
Yesterday, Disney announced that, as of 2015, junk food ads would not air during programming intended for children. This—obviously—includes candy and fast food, but it also extends to some juices and sugary cereals. For generations, Saturday morning cartoons and television advertisement techniques that exploit the formative minds of children for the purpose of selling large amounts of breakfast food with marginal nutritional value have lived in a happy marriage. Now that their days are numbered, here are some of the wonderfully persuasive cereal commercials many of us grew up on.
Trix. That silly rabbit has got to be friggin’ thrilled that he can finally stop trying to trick those kids. And, considering the amount of time and energy he’s devoted to trying to swindle some free cereal from those children, you’d think he’d have found a way to scrape up a few bucks to buy a box of his own.
Lucky Charms. He’s the one character in these commercials who already has his own cereal, and those greedy little brats have to swipe it from him.
Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Remember when they added the swirl? Revolutionary. How did we all function in a world in which you just had to trust that there was cinnamon sugar coating your cereal?
Fruity Pebbles. This commercial is so ’90s. Of course Barney Rubble is wearing bling and rapping. Totally logical for someone who uses his feet to push his car to work.
Cap’n Crunch. At one point, they came out with an all crunch berries version. That’s cheating. The whole idea of the crunch berries is to ration them. Everyone complains about younger generations. Maybe if they had normal Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries and had learned a valuable lesson about not squandering wealth, we’d be in better shape as a society.
Corn Pops. Jonathan Jackson would not have been able to go on to such a successful acting career, landing gigs in Insomnia and General Hospital had he not gotten his Pops. Crisis averted.
Smacks. Smacks commercials are pretty much the median of all cereal commercials. Talking animals? Check. Talking animals competing for the awesome sugary cereal? Check. Snark? Check.
Cookie Crisp. Why does everyone in these commercials have to steal their cereal? Maybe if they just went out and got a job and earned a paycheck and used a portion of that paycheck to purchase delicious, sugary cereal, they wouldn’t have such a tough go of it.
Cocoa Puffs. If this commercial won’t air on Disney anymore, does that mean we can officially abandon saying, “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs”? That would be wonderful.
Fruit Loops. Fruit Loops has to be the most boring of all of the sugary cereals, right? Toucan Sam isn’t terribly personable and, maybe it’s just because I have terrible allergies, but I wouldn’t follow my nose anywhere.