Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Toonfomercial: Remember Kaboom cereal? (1969)

I tried a lot of breakfast cereals back in the day. General Mills' Kaboom wasn't one of them. Now, I'm more into Cheerios, Golden Grahams, Cocoa Puffs, Corn Flakes, and the like, but Kaboom wasn't my cup of wake-up food.

No, it wasn't because of the clown on the box. Psychologists are still trying to figure out why some people hate on clowns.

Anyway, General Mills had Kaboom on the shelves for 41 years (1969-2010) before retiring the brand in favor of expanding the Cheerios and Chex lines (they acquired Chex, along with Cookie Crisp, from Ralston Purina, a few years ago).

The clown in this ad sounds like a bad WC Fields impersonator. Scope.



Not the usual quality animation that General Mills ads usually have, which would explain why they stopped promoting the product on TV, because in my experience, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, Kix, and Monster Cereals & Cheerios lines got the bulk of the attention during the 70's and 80's.

4 comments:

Chris Sobieniak said...

Anyway, General Mills had Kaboom on the shelves for 41 years (1969-2010) before retiring the brand in favor of expanding the Cheerios and Chex lines (they acquired Chex, along with Cookie Crisp, from Ralston Purina, a few years ago).

I didn't even know Kaboom existed at all in the 80's nor seen it locally in my area. Sad I missed out on that I guess.

Outside the Ralston Purina brands they acquired, Several General Mills cereals are sold outside North America via a collaborated partnership with Nestle called "Cereal Partners Worldwide".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal_Partners_Worldwide
http://www.nestle.com/aboutus/overview/businesses/cereal-partners-worldwide

hobbyfan said...

Which would also explain the existence of something called Nesquik cereal at one point, Chris.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Pretty much, and from the looks of it, it has its fans who sadly miss buying it regularly here. Apparently import shops is all we have left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nesquik_(cereal)#USA_discontinuation

hobbyfan said...

I wonder what other lost cereals people crave.....