Cereal marketing

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Bobby_Jim

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It occurred to me that some of the finest creative minds and wonderful artistic talents have gone into marketing sugary breakfast cereals to kids. In that spirit I offer up three classic commercials for a cereal commercial crunch-off. To me there is a clear winner but I wonder what the rest of the world thinks.

Note I didn’t include the likes of Captain Crunch or Tony the Tiger on purpose. These are all examples of using characters or personalities that are famous apart from their cereal incarnations, as opposed to characters invented specifically to push cereal.

Here are YouTube links to the competitors:

Honeycombs Hideout featuring Andre the Giant
youtube.com/watch?v=H07HaGX1PJM

Teamin’ up with Mr T
youtube.com/watch?v=JOptQ0Ye1NU
**
Smurf Berry Crunch**
youtube.com/watch?v=2jRZImL5yxs
 
Bobby_Jim said:
Note I didn’t include the likes of Captain Crunch or Tony the Tiger on purpose. These are all examples of using characters or personalities that are famous apart from their cereal incarnations, as opposed to characters invented specifically to push cereal.
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I choose the Andre the Giant commercial because it’s actually the only one you have that perfectly fulfills your requirement. The others are kinda so-so (more along the lines of marketing ala merchandising).

That said, it’s a class tactic and it works. 👍 Thanks for the thread. I needed something to help kickstart my own ideas. :o
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
I choose the Andre the Giant commercial because it’s actually the only one you have that perfectly fulfills your requirement. The others are kinda so-so (more along the lines of marketing ala merchandising).

That said, it’s a class tactic and it works. 👍 Thanks for the thread. I needed something to help kickstart my own ideas. :o
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I choose the Andre the Giant commercial as well, but that’s because it just has too much cool stuff going on. Besides Andre the Giant clearly having some fun (and seemingly playing off his role in the Princess Bride, rather than his wrestling career), It has an awesome fort, and a see-saw, and a robot that goes cuckoo for Honeycombs before measuring the cereal with a ruler (almost 1 full inch!), and a catchy jingle, and the Giant sends the robot flying, all in 30 seconds!

And to give an idea of how great that jingle is, I was inspired to look the Honeycomb commercial up because my kids came home from Vacation Bible School with a DVD of songs, one of which went something like “Our God’s Big, Yeah Yeah Yeah”, and I thought wow, they ripped that off from a cereal commercial. And what’s more, it’s from a cereal I never liked that much, and haven’t even thought about in probably 25 years. So that’s what I call powerful marketing.

I also like the whole concept that the cereal is marketed based on its size - taste is secondary. I can imagine the Honeycombs executives sitting around a table saying “Fruity Pebbles have nothing on us! Those tiny bits of rubble just turn to sludge in the milk. Even Cap’n Crunch can’t measure up. We’re almost one full inch! How do we get that message across, that our cereal is big!” “I know, let’s show a robot measuring it with a ruler! And make up a whole song that’s catchy as anything, and reinforces the message that it’s big.” “Yeah, yeah, and let’s get some big guy to be in the commercial. Can we get Michael Jordan?” “No, he’s booked up with Wheaties and he’s only 6-foot-6. We need someone bigger. GIANT even!” and a classic was born.
 
I have to say too, I must have some false memories of the other two, that is to say, I couldn’t find examples on YouTube (and thus must not have really happened) of Mr. T saying “I Pity the Fool who don’t eat my cereal!”, and the Smurfs saying “Papa Smurf, Papa Smurf, Gargamel just smurfed all our smurf and I’m so smurfy I could smurf a smurf!” “Don’t worry my little smurfs, I’ll smurf something smurfy!”

But I do love that Smurf Magic Berries came with a free bag of Gummi Smurf candy. Like the cereal wasn’t sugary enough, we have to throw in a bag of candy too. Part of this smurfy breakfast!

I have to say the Mr T song is kind of lame, like they went to the music department and said “do something that sounds like that song from Rocky! And make sure it hits our core value of teamwork! And plus work in the the crispy corn with a taste of brown sugar!” and they’re like, “ok, we can work with that.” and 15 minutes later they lay down the track in one take.
 
Mary_Gail_36 said:
The Flinstones (and the Rubbles) have been marketing mascots for Post Pebbles cereal since I was a child.

youtube.com/watch?v=nugby8JPts4

youtube.com/watch?v=y1Hw1-NGOKw

I’m pretty sure I had the dinosaur coin.
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Wow, those are interesting. Fred freely shares the Pebbles with Barney. All the “Pebbles” commercials I remember must come from the '80s, and it was always Barney devising some ploy to pilfer the Pebbles from Fred, and when Fred catches on, he becomes enraged and cries out, “Barney, MY PEBBLES!” and Barney is forced to flee.

Fred’s voice also sounds a little different from what I remember - I wonder if they got a different voice actor to impersonate the original Fred (who was based on Jackie Gleason, right?)

Do they still sell Pebbles? Reason I ask is that my wife bought some Flintstones vitamins recently, and my kids have no clue who the Flintstones (and the Rubbles) are. So I don’t know if they’re still a powerful marketing force. When I was a kid, the Flintstones were on heavy rotation in syndication on weekdays on UHF, and on Saturday morning on the networks. But I barely ever see the Flintstones on TV anymore, except maybe late at night on “Boomerang”. My kids have certainly never seen the original program. So they get a kick out of asking me which characters the little vitamin tabbies are, and they burst into laughter when I say, “That’s Bam-Bam,” or “That’s the Great Gazoo!”
 
Bobby_Jim said:
Wow, those are interesting. Fred freely shares the Pebbles with Barney. All the “Pebbles” commercials I remember must come from the '80s, and it was always Barney devising some ploy to pilfer the Pebbles from Fred, and when Fred catches on, he becomes enraged and cries out, “Barney, MY PEBBLES!” and Barney is forced to flee.

Fred’s voice also sounds a little different from what I remember - I wonder if they got a different voice actor to impersonate the original Fred (who was based on Jackie Gleason, right?)

Do they still sell Pebbles? Reason I ask is that my wife bought some Flintstones vitamins recently, and my kids have no clue who the Flintstones (and the Rubbles) are. So I don’t know if they’re still a powerful marketing force. When I was a kid, the Flintstones were on heavy rotation in syndication on weekdays on UHF, and on Saturday morning on the networks. But I barely ever see the Flintstones on TV anymore, except maybe late at night on “Boomerang”. My kids have certainly never seen the original program. So they get a kick out of asking me which characters the little vitamin tabbies are, and they burst into laughter when I say, “That’s Bam-Bam,” or “That’s the Great Gazoo!”
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They do still sell Pebbles cereal. I haven’t ever purchased it for my children, one of the ingredients last time I checked was partially hydrogenated oil.

My kids do get Flintstones vitamins on occasion, and I think have seen an episode or 2 on Boomerang.

As for the voices: Mel Blanc (who provided the voices for Bugs Bunny and other Looney Toons) was Barney.

The Great Gazoo was voiced by Harvey Korman of the Carol Burnett show.
 
randomuser said:
Where’s Life cereal? “Mikey likes it!” 🤷
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Ah but Mikey didn’t have a celebrity factor independent of Life cereal, i.e. he was invented to push Life cereal, much as Sugar Bear was created to push Sugar Crisp before they renamed it Golden Crisp. Even Mikey’s subsequent fame for having supposedly died (but not really) from eating pop-rocks and drinking Coke was a spinoff from the Life commercial fame, and not vice-versa.

In contrast, Andre the Giant’s career was mostly not related to cereal; invading the Honeycomb Hideout was a bit of a one-off for him. As another user pointed out, the Mr T and Smurfs cereal were really more exercises in brand extension for Mr T and the Smurfs. In fact I would suggest the Mr T cereal (which was basically Cap’n Crunch in the shape of the letter ‘T’) was a brand extension of the Mr T Saturday morning cartoon, which itself was a brand extension of Mr T himself, and also a ripoff of Scooby Doo.
 
Mary_Gail_36 said:
They do still sell Pebbles cereal. I haven’t ever purchased it for my children, one of the ingredients last time I checked was partially hydrogenated oil.
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it has ingredients other than sugar? Well our caveman ancestors required a high-energy breakfast fortified with vitamins and iron to supplement their hunting and gathering paleo diet.
Mary_Gail_36 said:
As for the voices: Mel Blanc (who provided the voices for Bugs Bunny and other Looney Toons) was Barney.

The Great Gazoo was voiced by Harvey Korman of the Carol Burnett show.
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I never would have known that Mel Blanc was Barnery. Not unless I watched the credits I suppose!
 
Apparently my memory of Mr T saying “I pity the poor fool who don’t eat my cereal” actually comes from Pee Wee Herman, as seen in this clip:

youtube.com/watch?v=ffD1RlO87O4

warning: some users may find this clip disturbing.
 
Bobby_Jim said:
it has ingredients other than sugar? Well our caveman ancestors required a high-energy breakfast fortified with vitamins and iron to supplement their hunting and gathering paleo diet.

I never would have known that Mel Blanc was Barnery. Not unless I watched the credits I suppose!
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I only found out recently after many years.
 
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