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00:00It's a $50 billion global market with more than 5,000 different brands to choose from.
00:07Cereal is the funnest aisle in the grocery store and I love it.
00:10I was raised on Cap'n Crunch and Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms.
00:14This is what happiness is to me in a box.
00:16But just 70 years ago, the cereal aisle looked very different.
00:21The primary innovation is simply adding sugar to existing breakfast cereals.
00:27The fun in all the colors hasn't quite arrived yet.
00:32Until a new generation of cereal tycoons rewrite the rules of breakfast.
00:37There is one flavor that no one has tapped into yet.
00:42Chocolate.
00:43Imagine how earth-shattering the first chocolate cereal is if you've never had a chocolate cereal before.
00:50Suddenly it changed the way a cereal could be built.
00:54Candy.
00:54He decides what they need is interesting shapes and colors for these marshmallows.
00:59It's the Willy Wonka-fication of cereal.
01:02They're Lucky Charms.
01:04And they take extreme measures to win over the hearts and stomachs of a new generation of kids.
01:11According to our surveys, kids strongly prefer foods that are crunchy.
01:15Moment of truth.
01:19Not only did they make the product taste great, but they made it fun.
01:23Captain Crunch.
01:25These are the slogans we remember, the mascots we remember.
01:28I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
01:31It's so deeply ingrained in my DNA.
01:34So woven into the culture.
01:37Always have to be Lucky Charms.
01:39That it created brand loyalty for a lifetime.
02:04In 1957, cold cereal is a breakfast staple in America.
02:09And it's come a long way from its turn-of-the-century beginnings.
02:13Cereal's origins were essentially part of a health fad.
02:18Because of the problems Americans are having with general digestion, cereal was introduced as a promise to address health issues.
02:27Over the next five decades, cereal grew in popularity as Americans look for a convenient and healthy option to start
02:35their days right.
02:38The idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day really stems back to a marketing campaign by
02:44Kellogg's in the 19-teens around this idea of driving people to buy and consume more cereal.
02:51Made from wheat, corn, rice, or oats, cereal was generally bland and unsweetened.
02:57But in the 1950s, the industry leans into an ingredient aimed squarely at kids.
03:06Basically, the name of the game was sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, and sugar.
03:10Kids needed to eat a quick and healthy breakfast and adding sugar to it was a way to appeal to
03:16this demographic.
03:17A lot of the new products coming out had sugar literally in the title because they wanted kids to eat
03:24it.
03:24Post comes out with sugar crisp and sugar crinkles.
03:28General Mills launches sugar smiles.
03:31And Kellogg's releases sugar corn pops and sugar smacks.
03:36Those early cereals are really just about adding sugar.
03:39So you have corn flakes, they become frosted flakes.
03:42Corn puffs become sugar puffs.
03:44But even as cereal got sweeter, brands still clung to its image as a wholesome start to the day.
03:51Instead of sort of giving up the health food label, they're still going to advertise it as a healthy food.
03:56And they were able to get away with this because the American view of sugar was very different.
04:01Sugar was considered a good thing.
04:04Sugar is associated with energy and healthfulness and children need energy.
04:11The image of cereals as healthful was extremely important to appeal to parents on behalf of their kids.
04:19So really their innovation is really sort of locked down and muzzled in a lot of ways during this period
04:25of time.
04:27But in 1957, General Mills President Charles Bell is determined to make his mark with a new idea.
04:36Charles Bell is the son of the founder of General Mills, James Ford Bell.
04:40Tell the board that we have some very exciting products in development.
04:45He's an ambitious guy and he was working at General Mills for decades before he took over as company president.
04:51Well, they're not quite ready to be shared yet, but they're close.
04:55And he's trying to meet, if not beat, his dad's legacy, but he has a lot to live up to.
05:03His father, James Bell, grew General Mills from a flour mill into a breakfast empire with a variety of hit
05:11cereals earning half a billion dollars in annual sales.
05:15They've got Wheaties, they've got Kix cereal, Cheerios, and then they've got Trix.
05:21General Mills takes the formula of Kix and transforms it into a fruity version.
05:27But they're still a long way from being the biggest name in cereal.
05:32Kellogg's was the king of the cold cereal aisle.
05:35They've got things like Frosted Flakes and Rice Krispies.
05:39They are a monster of success.
05:43All right, let's see what the team's been working on.
05:45Charles Bell really wants to make General Mills number one, and he believes the way to do it is to
05:50find a new, bigger way to target the kids' market.
05:53In order to capture young audiences, they need a hook, something that will drive young people to want that cereal.
06:00New colors for Trix, sugar-frosted corn bursts, and sugar-charged Cheerios.
06:11So Bell's looking, it's like, listen, we're going to figure out a way to peel the kids in a way
06:15that no one's ever done before.
06:17And Bell has an unusual idea for a cereal unlike anything else.
06:23What about chocolate?
06:26Chocolate cereal.
06:27Chocolate is one flavor that kids love, that adults love, that no one has tapped into yet.
06:34Chocolate was what we ate for dessert, right?
06:36It wasn't something we would think of having for breakfast.
06:39Yet Bell's idea will one day give rise to a $5 billion chocolate cereal market.
06:46It will open the floodgates for the next wave in kids' cereal.
06:50And put General Mills on the path to being the number one cereal company in the world.
06:58But first, they'll have to figure out how to actually make a chocolate cereal.
07:06It's fairly easy to just add a sugar coating on the outside of cereals that have already been produced.
07:12But it's an entirely different animal to basically change the formula of the cereal that you're producing.
07:19Cocoa powder can absorb moisture like a sponge, so it can really destroy the texture of a puffed grain.
07:25It's not as easy as it is adding it to, like, a cake or brownies.
07:33And cracking the recipe isn't the only challenge.
07:39The machinery they had was really very specifically designed for the whole grain-based cereals that they had been producing.
07:48But cocoa tends to have some fat in it, which does not always play nicely with machinery.
07:54The cocoa powder ended up gumming up the machinery and being really difficult to clean.
08:00They weren't meant to handle an oily, dusty product like cocoa powder.
08:04After months of trial and error, the team thinks they have something good enough to present to Bell.
08:13They realize the corn could handle the cocoa powder a little bit better.
08:17And they could add cocoa powder to the dough before it was puffed.
08:21And they got a nice, stable product.
08:26Those are the chocolate Kicks.
08:28For the world's first ever chocolate cereal, Bell greenlights a chocolate version of their hit cereal, Kicks.
08:37Imagine how earth-shattering the first chocolate cereal is if you've never had a chocolate cereal before.
08:44Like, suddenly you're getting your candy and your cereal in one product.
08:48It was the first cereal that really turned your milk into chocolate milk.
08:52This is mind-blowing.
08:55But the obvious name isn't cutting it for Bell.
08:58Cocoa Kicks.
08:59Typically, if you had a cereal that was now the sugar version, they would just add sugar or frosted to
09:04the front to let you know it's the same cereal you know and love, just with a little bit of
09:08extra sweetener on it.
09:09So it would have been perfectly reasonable for them to call this cereal Cocoa Kicks.
09:13That makes it sound like a spin-off.
09:19They were going out on a limb and creating a whole new product, frankly, a whole new category.
09:26On August 14th, 1958, General Mills unveils a groundbreaking innovation in kids' cereals.
09:36It's the first ever chocolate-flavored cereal.
09:40And it goes by the name that will make everyone cuckoo for years.
09:46Cocoa Puffs.
09:47They blast out the newspaper ads.
09:49They start spending heavily on TV ads.
09:52Cocoa Puffs.
09:53Cocoa Puffs.
09:53Cocoa Puffs.
09:54Chocolate-flavored cereal.
09:56It's everywhere.
09:57They want people to know, like, hey, for the first time, you can have a chocolate cereal.
10:01I know you like the sweet stuff.
10:03You're going to love this.
10:04If you add chocolate to any cereal, of course, a kid is defenseless.
10:08They're just going to say, yes, I would like some of that.
10:11And that's what happened.
10:12They were starting to blur the lines between dessert and breakfast and when you eat sweets and when you eat
10:19chocolate.
10:211958 is a watershed year in cereal production.
10:24The adoption of chocolate-flavored cereals marks the shift between thinking about breakfast cereals as more of a health food
10:33and thinking about breakfast cereals as more of a fun, kid-oriented food.
10:39Cocoa Puffs adds $20 million to General Mills' bottom line, narrowing the gap with Kellogg's.
10:48But Bell isn't alone in the race to be number one.
10:53Donald Lowry is a former collegiate football and track star.
10:58And he is a Quaker Oats company man, root to the fruit, moiled to the soil.
11:03He's worked his way up from the bottom at Quaker Oats to become CEO.
11:06And he really wants to make something of this company.
11:08He is really a born competitor.
11:10And he now finds himself facing a cereal aisle that is more competitive than what Quaker has faced in the
11:18decades before.
11:20Quaker Oats began as a consortium of mills in the 19th century.
11:24And they single-handedly turned oats into a breakfast staple for America for decades to come.
11:32At the start of the 20th century, Quaker Oats was the largest breakfast company in America,
11:37with $16 million in sales, the modern equivalent of $600 million.
11:43And everybody knows oatmeal. It's been around forever. This is a hearty breakfast.
11:48But since the 1950s, as sugar cereals swept the nation, Quaker sales have taken a $40 million hit, an 18
11:56% decline.
11:58They were first in the breakfast game, right? Oatmeal.
12:01But now, Quaker Oats had to watch pre-sweetened cereals come in and steal a big part of their market
12:06share.
12:07So Donald Lowry decides, I'm going to make a cereal for kids and return Quaker Oats to its one-time
12:15glory.
12:15He is determined to take Quaker into the cereal aisle and not just be competitive, but he wants to win.
12:29It's 1960, and Quaker CEO Donald Lowry is on a mission to reclaim the company's place at the head of
12:37America's breakfast table.
12:40Before the day and age of the readily available breakfast cereal in a box, oatmeal was incredibly popular.
12:48It wasn't very expensive, had myriad health benefits.
12:52Quaker has built its reputation on being the father of all oats.
12:57But while it's an American staple, they're certainly not on the cutting edge of anything at this time.
13:03Quaker oatmeal wasn't convenient. It wasn't speedy. Not only that, it was just sort of old-fashioned.
13:09Quaker Oats is in need of a revamp.
13:11They have some cold breakfast cereals, such as puffed rice and wheat.
13:15But they're a lineup of old-fashioned, healthful breakfast cereals.
13:19The Quaker food science team has been working on pre-sweetened versions of cereal staples.
13:27We got puffs.
13:29Crisps.
13:30Lowry doesn't just want to copycat what General Mills is doing.
13:34We got flakes.
13:35He doesn't want something that's loaded with sugar or crazy, like cocoa puffs.
13:41He felt that rather than just developing another gimmick that would appeal to children, they would try to appeal to
13:53parents.
13:59What's this one?
14:01We don't actually have a name for that one yet.
14:05It's got a unique shape.
14:07And it's unlike anything the cereal aisle has ever seen before.
14:21It's made with oats, but he finds a way to weave the fibers of the grains so that they'll be
14:27a little bit crunchy.
14:29While it's lightly sweetened, it has far less sugar than a typical kid's cereal.
14:33It felt like a treat, but it didn't have that tooth-aching sweetness.
14:39That's the one.
14:45Lowry believes they've got a cereal kids will love and the Quaker board will easily get behind.
14:51What you have before you is a cereal as wholesome as Quaker oats, made from the same healthy oats that
14:58made us who we are.
14:59Cereal had always marketed itself as being healthy with vitamins and with nutrients, and the sugar was energy.
15:10While General Mills and Kellogg's will use sugar and chocolate to lure children, we will appeal directly to their parents.
15:18And while Lowry believes kids will love the taste, he plans to market it based on a benefit oats naturally
15:25provide.
15:26Our healthy new cereal is full of protein.
15:31He wants to let parents know it's got the protein that they need.
15:35It's got the essential building blocks for life.
15:39Life cereal.
15:42One day, Life will rake in $180 million in yearly sales, becoming Quaker's number one cold cereal,
15:50and one of the top ten selling cereals of all time.
15:56But on its release in 1961, sales fall flat.
16:03There's no fun mascot.
16:05There's no fun slogan.
16:06They're not saying, it tastes great.
16:08I love it.
16:10I flip for life.
16:11No.
16:12The most useful protein ever in a ready-to-eat cereal.
16:16The most useful protein ever in a ready-to-eat cereal.
16:20They hit the protein angle very hard.
16:23They compare it to things like milk and meat.
16:26Lowry's gone all in on the health values and the healthy reputation of Quaker Oats,
16:31and kids don't want their parents to buy it.
16:36It doesn't have the same pizzazz that all the other winners in the cereal market have.
16:41Advertising and marketing are as important or more important in the cereal industry
16:49in determining the success of a product.
16:52And television advertising is exploding, including advertising directed at children.
16:58By 1961, about 90% of American households own a television, a dramatic increase from less
17:06than 10% in 1950.
17:08They would make Saturday morning cartoons and then just populate it with commercials
17:13for cereals, for sugary products, all the things that appealed to a child.
17:18Kids start to have a much bigger say in what is happening in their households.
17:23You know, post-World War II, you've got the nuclear family unit living in the suburbs.
17:30We're much more child-focused than we used to be as a country.
17:35Kids actually have a surprising amount of purchasing power, and they get that because
17:41they're persistent.
17:42It's called the nag factor.
17:45A kid can be just annoying enough in the cereal aisle to get mom and dad to buy the cereal
17:50that he wants and not the cereal that his parents want.
17:53Life's lackluster sales tell Lowry one thing.
17:57His strategy isn't working.
18:00He finally realizes something.
18:02He's been marketing his cereal and its health benefits to the parents, but it's the kids
18:09who have all the purchasing power.
18:12Back at General Mills, the win from Cocoa Puffs has faded.
18:17Just months after Cocoa Puffs comes out to great acclaim, Kellogg's answers with Cocoa
18:23Krispies.
18:25Kellogg's never gives them a break for a second.
18:27Kellogg's is relentlessly on top of the competition every minute of the day.
18:35But Charles Bell has a plan to get kids' attention back by using one of Kellogg's signature tactics.
18:45Kellogg's has these little elves named Snap, Crackle, and Pop who represent Rice Krispies.
18:52They invent Tony the Tiger, talking about Frosted Flakes right there.
18:58The slogan was drilled into you from every time you're watching Saturday morning cartoons.
19:04These are not just pushing the cereals, they're pushing kind of a cartoon connection with them.
19:08So Tony the Tiger is almost as cartoon-like and lovable as Bugs Bunny.
19:13And so Bell is looking at this and he's saying, okay, we need our version of Tony the Tiger for
19:18Snap, Crackle, and Pop.
19:20It has to be something fun, something energetic, and something that captures the sheer craziness of having chocolate in your
19:28breakfast.
19:30I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
19:39Four years after its initial release, Cocoa Puffs relaunches with a new campaign featuring the mascot, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird.
19:48With the introduction of Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, they've now firmly established their power player in the cereal aisle.
19:54He would be, and it remains to this day, the Spokes Bird, I guess?
19:58I can't resist them!
20:01Hey! Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!
20:03I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!
20:05The kids were going nuts for it, the mascot was going nuts for it, and the parents, they were just
20:11kind of going nuts.
20:12Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!
20:14Within six months, General Mills' sales surge by roughly $5 million.
20:20It's astonishing when you consider that General Mills is able to accomplish this simply by the introduction of Sonny the
20:26mascot.
20:27And not surprisingly, around the same time, they also give their cereal, Trix, its own mascot.
20:32Who becomes as iconic as Sonny?
20:35With one of the greatest marketing hooks of all time.
20:38A wild bunny who always gets chastised? Silly rabbit!
20:42Trix are for kids.
20:44But the following year, Kellogg's claps back with a new fruity cereal to compete not just with Trix, but with
20:52Cocoa Puffs' new mascot.
20:54The competition now starts getting heated.
20:57They introduce Toucan Sam, another bird mascot on their cereal, Froot Loops.
21:05So that's really a shot across the bow of General Mills, and this really signals this power play arms race
21:15that is going to go on for the foreseeable future.
21:19Meanwhile, Quaker CEO Donald Lowry is changing course after sales of life pale in comparison to cereals like Cocoa Puffs,
21:29Cocoa Krispies, and Froot Loops.
21:31These other guys, they were on it. They knew the kid was their target.
21:36Lowry came to that idea really slowly, but he did start to come to it.
21:44Rather than try to rebrand life, Lowry decides to start from scratch.
21:50Lowry knows if he fails at this, he's probably done.
21:55So he goes to an ad agency that knows how to deal with kids, and he partners up with them
21:59to develop a brand new cereal.
22:02According to our surveys, kids strongly prefer foods that are crunchy.
22:05They're dumping all this money into the marketing of this cereal before they even have a cereal.
22:10That's unprecedented. It's crazy, and it's not the way things have ever been done at Quaker Roads.
22:15You took the liberty of drafting a lockup.
22:19Lockup of what?
22:20Your next cereal.
22:24They begin to conceptualize the identity of this cereal.
22:29And they come up with a sailor.
22:32Not only just a sailor, but an officer.
22:35With a name that puts crunchiness front and center.
22:39Captain Crunch.
22:42Captain Horatio Crunch.
22:45He loves it. It's got gravitas.
22:47And so he decides to take 80% of Quaker's entire ad budget, and he's putting it all in on
22:54Captain Crunch.
22:55It's an enormous risk, but he knows that a big swing is necessary to force his way into the kids'
23:01market.
23:02Here's the problem.
23:04They now know what the mission is, and they now know what the mascot is.
23:08They now know what the name of the cereal is, but they don't have cereal.
23:15But the Quaker Oats team knows their mission.
23:18To create a kid's cereal that stays crunchy in milk.
23:25For breakfast cereal companies, coming up with a cold cereal that was going to stay crispy in milk was kind
23:33of the holy grail.
23:36Everybody who's ever eaten a cereal knows that there's a ticking clock from the moment you pour that milk on.
23:42Kicks and Cocoa Puffs, because of their puffed shape, actually stayed crunchy the longest, but even they eventually would get
23:50saturated and become soggy and mushy and unappealing.
24:03In the cereal industry, you call it bowl life.
24:05The moment you add milk, how long before the material is so soggy that nobody wants to eat it anymore?
24:26It's not crunchy.
24:29There's only so much we can do.
24:33I can't release this.
24:40Research team leader Rob Reinhardt has no choice but to go back to the drawing board.
24:50After weeks of experimentation, his latest concoction is more firm, but it still gets soggy in milk.
24:57The cereal is a combination of corn and oats, kind of made into a slurry or paste, extruded through a
25:05dye, and then puff-dried.
25:07But it still gets soggy in milk.
25:10It has to stay crunchy the longest, and he's not having much success.
25:18Meanwhile, in the flavor department, there is an incredibly talented culinarian by the name of Pamela Lowe.
25:27And they told her that they needed a flavor.
25:30I mean, it's crunchy.
25:31What is the flavor of crunch?
25:33So Pamela Lowe goes to a favorite flavor from her own childhood, butterscotch that her grandmother used to use.
25:42Butterscotch isn't a super common flavor, but it is a desirable flavor.
25:46And she takes this butterscotch with a little bit of vanilla and formulates it into an oil.
25:52She thought perhaps if we spray these cereal bits with this butterscotch flavoring that I used to love, that might
25:59be a hit.
26:08They think they've found their flavor, but without the crunch, they've got nothing.
26:15And he suddenly has an idea.
26:21And he realizes, wait a second.
26:25Oh, that could be interesting.
26:27Maybe this is the answer for the magical crunchiness.
26:37At Quaker Oats, while Robert Reinhardt struggles to make a cereal that stays crunchy enough for Captain Crunch,
26:45flavorist Pamela Lowe has invented a unique flavor for it.
26:49The flavor of Captain Crunch is actually butterscotch, even though that's never mentioned in the advertising.
26:55It's a flavor that people don't always recognize, but when they try it, they're like, that's really good.
27:01And it was amazing because you've just got a new flavor profile that you're bringing to your breakfast cereal.
27:11But the flavor oil does more than provide a delicious new taste.
27:15It could also be the solution to their biggest problem.
27:19Oil and water don't mix.
27:22Submerged in milk.
27:25Cereal flows to the surface.
27:32Moment of truth.
27:45By putting this butterscotch coating on in oil, the cereal now didn't want to absorb milk, and it made the
27:52cereal crisper for a much longer period of time.
27:55The oil on the surface actually makes it flow.
27:58It basically waterproofs all the different pieces of cereal.
28:03Lowry finally has a cereal that lives up to the Captain Crunch name.
28:08It's the crunchiest cereal in milk for the longest period of time.
28:12They've figured out the Holy Grail.
28:17In 1963, the first Captain Crunch ads hit the airwaves.
28:23Captain Crunch, delightfully sweet.
28:26The actor who was voicing over the cartoon just kind of said Captain Crunch instead of Captain Crunch.
28:31Everybody at Quaker Oats at this time was like, Captain seems a little more kid-friendly than Captain.
28:37The writers were like, all right, let's make it fun, and they'll remember these stories.
28:42And I still do.
28:43They took you on a little mini adventure.
28:44Captain Crunch has a whole bunch of shipmates and a whole bunch of backstory that Tony the Tiger doesn't have.
28:52Captain Crunch presents Breakfast on the Guppy.
28:56Morning already, Sea Dog?
28:58I was so invested in the adventures of Captain Crunch of Sea Dog.
29:04It hits.
29:05Overnight, it seems like Captain Crunch is everywhere.
29:09He's in commercials.
29:10He's in print advertisement.
29:11He's in breakfast tables.
29:13He's in cereal aisles.
29:14He's everywhere.
29:15It's so woven into the culture that it created brand loyalty for a lifetime.
29:21Captain Crunch popularity soars, ranking number one in the New York City and Chicago regions.
29:27You just wanted more and more Captain Crunch.
29:30So tasty, rich, buttery, crunchy, just so good in cold milk.
29:36The milk takes on that sort of vanilla-y, butterscotch-y sweetness, right?
29:41So it's some of the sweetest cereal milk that you've ever had in your life.
29:45Now, there's no definitive answer as to what that shape is.
29:50I used to think barrels when I was a kid, because you always used to see barrels on ships and
29:56cartoons.
29:57I always thought it was treasure chests, which I think makes sense in the context of him being an ocean
30:01-going explorer.
30:02But we're probably just infusing too much of our desire for logic and reason into it.
30:08It's probably just a random shape that a machine came up with.
30:10As Captain Crunch puts a dent in General Mills' sales,
30:16Charles Bell is determined to create a new kid's cereal that stands out.
30:21All we can do now is continue looking forward and come up with the next big thing.
30:27What's bigger than chocolate?
30:31That's the challenge.
30:40In 1963, Charles Bell is once again searching for a new kid's cereal
30:46that will make General Mills stand out among the competition.
30:50General Mills has failed to release a new hit cereal in the five years since Cocoa Puffs.
30:58They've launched Twinkles and Country Corn Flakes and Wheat Hearts,
31:03but they all kind of fall flat.
31:07The sad reality is most product launches cost a whole bunch of money,
31:12and a whole bunch of money is lost.
31:14And the more you invest, the harder it hits you when it fails.
31:17So Bell takes a more conservative approach at this point
31:21and decides, you know, we're going to cut costs.
31:25And he sort of puts down this edict that any new cereals
31:28have to be built using existing processes.
31:31It's really handicapping them.
31:33I mean, unless you can take the Cheerios or Wheaties base
31:36and do something revolutionary with it, you're screwed.
31:40But one product developer is desperate to find a way to deliver.
31:46So John Hollihan is puzzling over ways to come up with new products.
31:51And while he's messing around, he happens to be snacking on Circus Peanuts.
31:58Circus Peanuts, invented in the 1800s,
32:00they were a pretty popular penny candy in their day.
32:03They look like a peanut, they're orange in color,
32:06but they're actually a sweet marshmallow.
32:09Circus Peanuts are the worst thing you can get when trick-or-treating,
32:12except for a razor blade.
32:14They're America's worst candy ever.
32:17But John Hollihan, unlike many, was a fan of Circus Peanuts.
32:25And in this moment, the moment that the cereal gods
32:28must have shined down upon and smiled,
32:31he has one of the greatest ideas in the history of cereal ever.
32:36What if I put them in my Cheerios?
32:38And so he takes his Circus Peanuts,
32:41he cuts it up into little pieces,
32:43and he sprinkles it on his cereal.
33:02And it tastes delicious.
33:03He creates the first cereal
33:05with pretty much straight-up pieces of candy sprinkled in it.
33:10And he thinks it's a pretty good way to appeal to the kids,
33:13you know, like, have candy with your breakfast.
33:19Hollihan quickly develops a sample to share with Belle.
33:24So Hollihan's got his invention.
33:26He knows he's on to something.
33:34What's the one thing kids like as much as chocolate?
33:41Candy.
33:43Hollihan presents his prototype.
33:46Cheerios with these little marshmallow bits
33:48that he calls...
33:50Marbits.
33:53This whole sugar cereal thing
33:55has just gone to a new level.
34:01What?
34:03It's gone bad.
34:14It's stale.
34:16The issue is,
34:18when you put the marshmallows in,
34:19it was great,
34:20but if you left the marshmallows
34:22in the presence of the cereal,
34:23there's moisture migration.
34:25This makes the entire bag instantly stale.
34:31As far as Belle is concerned,
34:32after all those months of research and development,
34:35they've got nothing.
34:42But rather than give up,
34:44Hollihan tinkers with the process
34:46until he lands on a solution.
34:50He realizes that the trick
34:52is dehydrating the marshmallows.
35:08And the result is a marshmallow
35:10that's a little more firm
35:11and more dense
35:12than a traditional marshmallow.
35:18The resulting marshmallow
35:19is perfect to package with dry cereal
35:21because now it'll all sit
35:23and it'll hold on a shelf.
35:24Nothing gets soggy.
35:25Then once you hit them with the milk,
35:27they start to rehydrate just a little bit.
35:29They get soft again.
35:30It works well.
35:31The dried out marshmallows
35:33not only rehydrate well,
35:34they're also easier to color and shape.
35:37Little bits of cut out marshmallow
35:39are great for taste,
35:40but they're not really good for visuals.
35:43Now it's just a matter
35:44of picking the right shapes and colors
35:46and figuring out a name.
35:49To Hollihan,
35:50the small, bright pieces
35:51are reminiscent of a current trend
35:54that has nothing to do with cereal.
35:57In the early 1960s,
35:59charm bracelets are the rage in Hollywood
36:02from people like Elizabeth Taylor
36:04and Grace Kelly
36:05and Joan Crawford and Natalie Wood.
36:08Women were wearing charm bracelets
36:10and they were records of their life.
36:12They got a charm when a kid was born.
36:13They got a charm when they graduated school.
36:16It's different.
36:17It's individualized.
36:18Everyone's got their own thing.
36:20One of the most popular charms, though,
36:21is a little four-way leaf clover
36:23because everyone loves having some good luck.
36:25Are these the new Marbits?
36:28They're not Marbits anymore.
36:30And you can sort of see
36:31where this is going, right?
36:33Hollihan's creation
36:34will one day sell more than a million boxes a week
36:37and bring in over $283 million a year.
36:42They're Lucky Charms.
36:49In 1964, on St. Patrick's Day,
36:54General Mills releases their new marshmallow cereal,
36:57Lucky Charms.
36:58They're magically delicious old cereal.
37:00The mascot is a leprechaun called Lucky.
37:04Unlike the typical leprechaun hiding gold
37:06under the end of a rainbow,
37:07he's got this marshmallow-laden cereal.
37:10Always after me, Lucky Charms.
37:12Pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars,
37:15green clovers, and blue diamonds.
37:19Lucky Charms, they're magically delicious.
37:22How do I know that?
37:23It's because of marketing to kids.
37:25Even now, as an adult,
37:27I still respond to a Lucky Charms commercial
37:29because I was indoctrinated in my youth.
37:32Kids went bonkers for it.
37:34Like, they just could not get enough Lucky Charms.
37:37This is the 1960s.
37:38Kids had never seen marshmallow bits in cereals before.
37:41This is literally straight-up candy in your cereal bowl.
37:45It had to blow minds.
37:46Even at the time when people were very used
37:49to sugar-loaded cereals and chocolate cereals,
37:52this one took the cake.
37:53It's kind of the Willy Wonka-fication
37:56of cereal at that point,
37:58that this is an experience where the sky's the limit
38:02in terms of what can be offered
38:03in your breakfast cereal bowl.
38:05As Lucky Charms sparks an industry frenzy
38:08for the next new thing,
38:12at Quaker, Donald Lowry decides
38:14to revisit an older product.
38:17There's still one product that he really believed in
38:21but couldn't quite make a success
38:22that he believes still has some life left in it.
38:25Life cereal.
38:28Now that Lowry has given Quaker Oats
38:30a significant degree of success in the breakfast arena,
38:33he realizes that his mistake was not in the making of it,
38:39not in making it healthy,
38:40not in how he flavored it,
38:42not in even naming it life.
38:44It was the marketing of it.
38:46And so he works with an ad agency
38:48to come up with a way
38:50to kind of backdoor appeal life
38:54into kids' imaginations.
38:56And they create an ad campaign
38:58that is so sticky and compelling
39:01that it just takes over everyone.
39:04In 1972, a decade after its initial release,
39:08life cereal is reborn
39:10in a groundbreaking commercial.
39:13I'm not going to try it.
39:14You try it.
39:15The commercial consists of two older boys
39:17and their younger brother
39:19trying a bowl of life.
39:21The kids are skeptical about it,
39:23and one of the older kids
39:24suggests to the other one,
39:26hey, let Mikey try it.
39:28And it's like,
39:28this is the healthy cereal.
39:29Mikey won't eat it.
39:30He hates everything.
39:32He likes it.
39:34Hey, Mikey.
39:35Mikey likes it.
39:36And suddenly,
39:38kids saw themselves in Mikey,
39:40saw themselves as the older sibling
39:43pushing the food on the younger brother.
39:45The remarkable thing was,
39:47what Mikey was,
39:48who Mikey was,
39:50wasn't a crazy flying duck type of thing.
39:52He was a real kid.
39:54It told mothers,
39:54guess what?
39:55Your kid's going to like it.
39:56He's going to eat it.
39:58And it told kids,
39:59hey, even Mikey likes it.
40:00Rather than appeal to just kids or parents,
40:03the ad appeals to both.
40:05Thanks to Donald Lowry,
40:08today,
40:08Quaker's top-selling cold cereal is life.
40:11With $180 million in annual sales
40:15and ranking in
40:16as the ninth most popular cereal
40:19across the entire industry.
40:22Ahead of Captain Crunch,
40:23which brings in sales
40:25of $120 million per year.
40:28Donald Lowry not only pivots the company,
40:32but he takes this iconic 19th century brand
40:36of Quaker oats
40:36and restores it to its former glory.
40:39Around the same time Quaker relaunched life,
40:44General Mills puts out the first cereal
40:46to blend chocolate and marshmallows.
40:50Count the chocula.
40:53Along with an entire line
40:54of monster-themed,
40:56flavored marshmallow cereals.
40:58Freakin' Betty, count the chocula.
41:00General Mills hits an immediate home run
41:03with the monster cereals.
41:04These were the cereals
41:06that I would insist my parents buy,
41:09and I love them to this day.
41:11The monster cereals for a 70s kid hit hard
41:14because we were the last generation
41:17that got to enjoy old-school Frankenstein,
41:21Dragula, Wolfman.
41:25Charles Bell was finally able
41:27to truly step out of his father's shadow
41:29and created a bold new legacy
41:32in the breakfast cereal market.
41:33Over the next two decades,
41:36General Mills will introduce
41:37Cinnamon Toast Crunch
41:38and Honey Nut Cheerios,
41:40which together bring in
41:42over $750 million a year,
41:45catapulting General Mills past Kellogg's.
41:48General Mills finally claws its way to the top.
41:52To this day, General Mills remains the leader
41:54in the cold cereal market.
41:55Through decades of competition,
41:58General Mills and Quaker
41:59pushed kids' cereal far beyond
42:01sweetened flakes and puffs,
42:04creating a $50 billion industry
42:07built on fantasy and fun.
42:10I think cereal is one of those magical dishes
42:13in any American kid's life.
42:15When we eat it as adults,
42:17it harkens back to times of youth.
42:20You can mention some of these
42:21iconic cereal brands
42:23to any given American,
42:24and they will have an immediate memory.
42:27To be continued...
42:29...
42:29You
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