The question of how long it takes American corporations to give people what they want has been answered. It’s 85 years. General Mills has announced that at long last it will start packaging at least some of its breakfast cereal line, specifically the iconic Cheerios brand which was first introduced in 1941, along with the Honey Nut Cheerios variation, in resealable Ziploc bags.
The announcement comes much to the delight of Cheerios aficionados who for decades have employed various methods of repackaging the round delight, a beloved oat-based morning lifesaver floating in milk, that like all such products went from fresh to flat faster than a Tesla goes from zero to 60 once the inner bag had been opened. Be it resealable bags, Tupperware containers, or some kind of clip fighting an invariably losing war against the wax bag, Cheerios buyers have long faced two options: buy the smaller box, which was far more expensive per serving, or bring home the bigger box with the understanding that before long its contents would be staler than a liberal politician’s promise to serve all the people once the polls have closed.
Cheerios have long been a personal favorite; perhaps odd given my Godzilla-sized sweet tooth, thus my predilection toward heavily sugared delights such as Lucky Charms. While Cheerios have a touch of sugar in them, it’s not a lot. It does keep the aforementioned sweet tooth satisfied, but it is not overbearing. It’s satisfying. Honey Nut and other strongly flavored versions are, of course, much more angled toward the sweet tea side of things.
Cheerios and variations thereof are, of course, insufficient to supply all of a person’s nutritional needs. Not that this in any way stops us. We are, after all, adults. Therefore, we will proudly eat whatever junk we want. While we’ve all seen the ads featuring our beloved cereal of choice alongside assorted fruit, meats, and whatnot as “part of this nutritious breakfast,” who are we kidding? In America, breakfast is not a production number. That bowl of cereal is your entire breakfast, simultaneously slurped down with coffee before you, armed with CCF (caffeine, Cheerios, four hours of sleep tops), charge out the door ready to either take on, or be taken over by, the world.
Longtime foods also naturally evoke a certain nostalgia, memories of multiple generations consuming the same item unchanged for decades even as we change and inevitably watch the ones we love leave this dusty orb. Sometimes the connections are direct; how clearly I remember my mother immediately repackaging Cheerios and every other cereal she brought home in large Ziploc bags … and then carefully labeling the bags so we’d know which cereal was which, as obviously being able to see the cereal inside the clear bag was insufficient for proper identification. I strongly suspect this was my mother’s tacit admission that she dropped my siblings and me on our heads once too often during our respective infant periods. Sometimes the connection is more historical: who can see the market introduction year for Cheerios (1941) and not think about how, if they had a family member they grew up with who was alive at the time, said family member told them where they were and how they heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked?
Back to the present day. Congratulations to General Mills for saving the Cheerios champions among us a step. We salute you. We thank you. We pound down your product in honor of you. Or because we’re always running too late to eat anything other than part of a nutritious breakfast. That’s on us.