The 5: Bizarre Breakfast Cereals

This Week on The 5: Breakfast Cereals That Made No Sense 

When it comes to breakfast cereals, there are the classics. The ones that will always be with us, like Cheerios, Frosted Flakes and Lucky Charms. But then there are those breakfast flash-in-the-pans. Those cereals that try to capitalize on a popular gimmick of the time or something else successful. Cereals like that never last too long on the super market shelves. Not much thought seems to go into shape, taste or longevity. They’re gimmick cereals. And here are 5 that are pretty embarrasing.

• Dunkin’ Donuts Cereal.  The thought of a child eating a box of donuts sounds horrifying. But wait, what if it was a breakfast cereal that looked liked donuts!? That should ease a mother’s conscience. Long before they went into the coffee business, Dunkin’ Donuts tried to make another inroad into the breakfast market with Dunkin’ Donuts Cereal. Donuts had a cereal looking shape, so they must have thought this made sense. And Dunkin’ had a built in mascot with Fred the Baker with his catchphrase “Time To Make The Donuts”. Dunkin’ Donuts cereal came in 2 flavors, Glazed and Chocolate. But what they didn’t realize is that people were already eating donuts for breakfast.
• C3POs Cereal.  There wasn’t a part of the galaxy that George Lucas wasn’t trying to invade with marketing. His breakfast idea, a cereal named after C3PO. Not exactly the most popular Star Wars character. C3PO wasn’t even Star Wars’ most popular droid. But he had a non-threatening gold face that could be put on the front of a kid’s cereal box. The cereal was not only silly, it really didn’t make much sense. The shape of the pieces looked like it was suppose to be C3PO’s spare parts. It’s always fun for a kid to eat his robot friend. And it was basically as dull as C3PO. A honey flavored mix of corn, oats and wheat. Like a less exciting Honeycomb cereal. And prizes included a Luke Skywalker mask that you could cut out of the back of the box. Boring. Where’s Darth Vader for breakfast!?
• Pop-Tarts Crunch.  The attitude here is if something is good, it will be better smaller and crunchier. Kellogg’s must have really been out of ideas. They started cannibalizing their own products and came up with Pop Tarts Crunch cereal. Advertised as being “Crunchy Inside and Out”, but there wasn’t never a public outcry to make our Pop Tarts crunchier. Pop Tarts Crunch came in 2 classic Pop Tart flavors, Brown Sugar Cinnamon and Frosted Strawberry. They basically had the look of a tiny sugar coated fried wonton. It wasn’t long before Kellogg’s realized Pop Tarts belong in the toaster and not the cereal bowl.
• Urkel-O’s Cereal.  In 1991, ABC had a hit with the show “Family Matters”. And the show had a breakout little nerd star called Urkel. The network realized they had another Fonzie on their hands and they weren’t going to waste the opportunity. Let’s get this kid on lunchboxes, board games and ….a breakfast cereal? The gimmick was that Urkel had invented his own cereal. The flavor was a hideous combination of artificial strawberry and banana. The hope must have been that kids everywhere in America would want to do “The Urkel” dance and eat his cereal. That was a silly slight miscalculation. Kids didn’t want to be nerds. They wanted to beat them up.
• Cracker Jack Cereal.  This was suppose to make breakfast like a day at the ball park. They made a huge deal about a surprise being included in their cereal box, but breakfast cereals had been doing that for decades. Cracker Jack wasn’t going to be able to thrill a cereal-eatin’, toy wantin’ maniac kid with this premise. Probably worst of all, is how bad the it looked compared to the original. It wasn’t a delicious bowl of sweet popcorn and peanuts. Cracker Jack Cereal was a pile of unattractive caramel flavored and colored puffs. The only good surprise inside would have been a box of actual Cracker Jacks.

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