Jeopordy! champ Ken Jennings launched his blog in June (“I know there’s nothing groundbreaking about yet another nerd getting on-line and starting up yet another blog”) and in his latest entry, the trivia guru compares the mascots of Kellogg’s and General Mills cereals to DC and Marvel’s characters:
Kellogg’s mascots are the square DC ones. They’re total Boy Scouts. Helpful Toucan Sam always wants lost jungle explorers to find and sample his Froot Loops. Cheery Tony the Tiger thinks everything is “Grrrreat!” Snap, Crackle, and Pop are so dull they’re mostly interested in the sound that air bubbles make in their cereal. Whoo!
General Mills, on the other hand, is where Gen-Xers get the familiar Joseph Campbell cereal-commercial archetypes of their childhoods. These guys are the edgy Marvel anti-heroes, full of conflict and angst. The Trix Rabbit represents Trix, but can he even get a bowl of the stuff from a pair of spoiled, privileged children? He cannot, so he resorts to stealing, and still he fails. Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Fruit Brute, et. al., are scary and misunderstood. Anti-spokesperson Lucky the Leprechaun doesn’t even want you to eat his damn cereal. He’s hiding.
Sonny the Cocoa Puffs cuckoo is the worst. This guy is seriously jonesing. In fact, a lot of these mascots seem to crave their cereal unhealthily, and are willing to steal, if that’s what it takes, to get it. What weird marketing concept. The modern-day equivalent would be Audi choosing a carjacking junkie as their new spokesperson.
I hear that the Trix Rabbit and Count Chocula disagree on General Mills’ “whole grain” healthy cereal initiative … whose side are you on?
(Thanks, David!)
August 1st, 2006 at 8:30 am
Ironically, I think the one time I saw Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, he got a superhero question wrong. Seems like he confused Aquaman with Namor.
It’s funny to think that General Mills and Marvel both had their “horror” phase, though!
August 1st, 2006 at 10:42 am
I’m on Quaker Oat’s side – that’s straight indie.
Old school colonials with perverted smiles – you never know what his hands are doing behind the bowl, it’s a study on sexual repression in the 1600s. Makin’ it happen wit’ the Cap’n – the hip pirate several generations ahead of his time. Mikey digging on some Life cereal – that kid hates everything, nonconformist since birth – but he appreciates the simplicity and great taste of a bowl of Life – a cereal that’s good for your mind and health, not just your taste buds. Than you got your Kretschmer Wheat Germ which is the hardcore indie – they don’t need a mascot, you buy because there’s nothing more chic than saying you had a bowl of Kretschmer Wheat Germ for breakfast.
August 1st, 2006 at 11:26 am
Quaker Oats is so indie. I heard Dan Clowes just eats raw oats and hay in the morning. And Chris Ware wakes up at 5 A.M. and eats a bucket of sawdust. Those boys are hardcore.
August 1st, 2006 at 11:58 am
Yeah, I heard you can set your watch to Joe Sacco’s bowel movements – that’s how indie he is.
August 1st, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Tom B.’s wrong on the above; he’s recalling Alex Trebek mixing up Namor and Aquaman while interviewing Ken. Ken did miss, as I recall, a Final J! about comics, but it was so obscure and with so little associative info in the clue that I also missed it at home (basically, it gave a date in, I believe, 1971 and perhaps a quote which mentioned comics and you had to give the event that it refered to. Which was something like the first time Classic Comics shut down).
Ken’s a known comics fan, and even made a few posts on rec.arts.comics groups back in the ’90s. In fact, he recalled that I’d read questions to him back then at a Bay Area quiz bowl tournament since I’d worn a rec.arts.comics Suicide Squid t-shirt to it.
August 1st, 2006 at 10:53 pm
That’s a beautiful analogy. Especially since Kelloggs was pretty much at the forefront of the modern breakfast cereal industry with Corn Flakes. General Mills hopped on board later with Wheaties, of course, which are like Corn Flakes made with wheat.
Of course General Mills needed to be edgier. To stand out! Yes!
And now, of course, they have Cheerios, the Wolverine of breakfast cereals. Cheerios, though kind of bland, are everywhere. They’re my parents’ cupboard, in my Grandma’s Chex Mix, and they’re like the number one baby snack food in America! Everywhere!
July 11th, 2007 at 10:19 am
You all need a life, this is funny and that should be the end of it, all though it is exactly true.
January 17th, 2011 at 4:57 pm
To build credibility simply be proof of your own hype and give people value over and over again. Help others to achieve what they want to, and you become credible in their eyes.
May 14th, 2013 at 3:10 pm
The subsequent time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I really thought youd have something attention-grabbing to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could fix in the event you werent too busy in search of attention.