Have a breakfast soda with your blue oatmeal, or start the day with more
frosting than any human being should. This is what it was like to eat like a kid in the '90s.
"Milk's favorite cookie" was literally drowning in the stuff when Post's Oreo
O's cereal hit stores in the late '90s, and got flavor upgrades over time. In 2001,
Oreo's signature cream filling was coated onto the O's to make them taste even more like the cookies.
A year later, "Extreme Creme" Oreo O's introduced marshmallows — and people were all about it.
This is why Oreo O's sudden disappearance in 2007 was a shocking disappointment to
its legions of devotees. Sadly, the cereal got lost in the fold when Post and Kraft
parted ways that year. Fans the world over regarded Oreo O's as a fond memory — well,
except for one part of the world that never stopped selling them: South Korea,
where distribution rights persisted due to complicated corporate ownership of brands.
"Post Oreo O's"
And no box was too stale or overpriced for nostalgic
Americans who love shopping on the internet.
Ten years after taking a hiatus, Post revived Oreo O's. The breakfast
favorite returned to cereal aisles in the summer of 2017 and is still going strong;
in 2019 they even brought back those freeze-dried marshmallows.
Kellogg's had a wild, exclamation point-filled notion back in 1997
when they launched Wild! Watermelon Pop-Tarts.
"So. You like watermelon, huh?"
The flavor marriage between toaster pastry and watermelon proved to be
short-lived. Wild! Watermelon Pop-Tarts were branded as a limited edition offering,
but the exclusivity didn't do much to boost sales. As the '90s drew to a close,
so did Watermelon's misfit presence in Pop-Tart's rotating flavor selection. But it wasn't Kellogg's
last attempt to present us with the idea that heated watermelon jam paste could be appetizing.
In 2015, the neon green-on-pink frosting returned with the release of Frosted Watermelon Pop-Tarts.
Consumers noted that watermelon Pop-Tarts mostly just tasted like sweet and sour
candy. Kellogg's refused to believe that candy wasn't for breakfast and resurrected
the watermelon Pop-Tart for a third time in 2017, through a limited collaboration with
Jolly Rancher. Before long, Jolly Rancher Pop-Tarts also disappeared from stores.
The '90s trended hard toward brightly colored, sugary cereals, many of which were mascot-driven.
Waffle Crisp by Post brought the sweetness factor, but instead of excitable cartoon characters,
they originally riffed off of actual breakfast food and grandma's homemade waffle recipes.
"Whoa! It's a whole secret granny factory!"
Waffle Crisp's simplicity worked. First sold in 1996, these cute, waffle-shaped morsels packed a
big punch of maple. The TV commercials showed a team of devoted grandmothers baking Waffle Crisp
piece by piece. By the early 2000s, the grannies were replaced by a cartoon mascot named Waffle
Boy, who was also part of a couple of online games at the now-defunct Post Cereal website, Postopia.
Waffle Crisp had a strong run but was discontinued in 2018. Shoppers were quick to notice its
absence, and the public outcry was heard by Post, which made the disappearance of Waffle
Crisp short-lived. In 2022, Post re-released the popular cereal, along with Waffle Boy.
There are people who shamelessly drink soda in the morning, but Pepsi went the extra mile by trying
to celebrate this questionable habit. Beginning in 1989, Pepsi began test marketing Pepsi A.M.,
which was basically a super-charged version of Pepsi that contained about 25% more caffeine.
In 1988, Pepsi A.M. was an attempt to infiltrate the coffee industry's stronghold
on morning-time beverages. Diet Pepsi A.M., the one-calorie version of the breakfast cola,
was also introduced. Both sodas were sold under the tagline "The All-Night Cola",
a nod to the night owls and soft drink enthusiasts of the younger generation.
The marketing strategy flopped. Pepsi A.M. sales were poor right out of the gate and
by October of 1990, both the regular and diet versions of Pepsi A.M. disappeared for good.
The idea of allowing kids to unleash their creativity by drawing on instant oatmeal with
a little packet of jelly seemed cute, but it also had the potential to get a little out of
hand. You could use your General Mills Oatmeal Swirlers to write a nasty message to a sibling
who was on your bad side, or let your breakfast get cold because you were perfecting a portrait
of the family dog. This kitschy breakfast item was just one example of the playful,
kid-centric food culture that was alive and well in the '90s.
"Fun to make. Fun to eat. Six great flavors. Oatmeal Swirlers."
Marketing instant oats to kids was no small feat, but the intrigue of Oatmeal Swirlers didn't last.
They tried to play up the sweetness factor by introducing maple sugar and chocolate swirlers
alongside the fruity flavors, but upping the sugar content in breakfast foods was
a tactic that steadily lost its appeal as the '90s continued. General Mills would go on to prove that
they had plenty of other breakfast tricks, but Swirlers would not live to see another decade.
In June of 1992, Maxwell House sent out a press release which
announced that they had birthed a product that was
"...a completely new taste experience [...] for today's consumer,
including traditional coffee lovers, non-coffee drinkers,
and trend-setters looking for an alternative to carbonated and alcoholic beverages... "
It might seem like nothing new today, but their wonder product was a bottled iced cappuccino,
called Cappio, and it came in regular, cinnamon,
or mocha. The TV commercial featured a pseudo-Audrey Hepburn and some animated
beatnik percussionists grooving on some Cappio under the slogan
"New Cappio. The thrill is the chill."
But by April 1996, it was announced that sales had dropped 48 percent over the course of a year,
prompting Maxwell House to retire Cappio altogether. The Tribune also made mention
of a new bottled coffee drink being released by Starbucks under the "Frappuccino" name.
Could Cappio's fate have shifted if it had held out just a little bit longer?
Sure, the purple genie mascot looked like a Disney knockoff, but he definitely worked his
magic with Sprinkle Spangles cereal, with a little help from the tagline
"You wish it, I dish it."
Released by General Mills in the early '90s, Sprinkle Spangles was a delectable star of
sweet corn cereal covered in colorful, spherical sprinkles, like a sugar cookie. The eyes of '90s
kids lit up at the sight of a food-coloring rainbow, but as the decade chugged on, health
studies disagreed. Kids' breakfast cereals and other sugary foods were shown to contribute to the
rising number of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnoses in youth.
It wasn't scientific reports that hurt Sprinkle Spangles' sales though;
it was the fact that a lot of kids actually found the cereal to be too sweet. One parent remarked,
"Even my 6-year-old who loves sprinkles on everything, could hardly gag this one down."
It was sentiments like this that saw Sprinkle Spangles
discontinued before the 1990s were through.
Kellogg's insatiable desire to insert Pop-Tarts into every part of breakfast
culture was hardly subtle, and the food giant felt the need to go toe-to-toe with
the almighty Pillsbury Toaster Strudel in the mid-'90s. Enter Pop-Tarts Pastry Swirls:
the pre-packaged morning-time pastry for the more discerning palette.
"You're Pop Tarts? You think I was born yesterday? Outta the car."
The Toaster Strudel was essentially a classy Pop-Tart anyway, but was the Pop-Tarts Pastry
Swirl a high-end version of the Toaster Strudel? First off, they were plumper,
circular, and came in flavors like "cream cheese & cherry" that harkened back to its
Danish pastry roots. Pop-Tarts Pastry Swirls were also less high-maintenance than the competition.
Toaster Strudels come frozen so they have to be toasted, and once they've heated up you drizzle
the icing on yourself. Pop-Tarts Pastry Swirls stuck to what had been working for
them since the 1960s — a grab-and-go, pre-frosted breakfast goodie that can be eaten warm or cold.
So what went wrong with Pop-Tarts Pastry Swirls? Nothing really;
they just weren't as popular as regular Pop-Tarts so Kellogg's phased them out.
By 2001, Pastry Swirls was another part of Pop-Tarts' colorful past.
Burger King has been doing breakfast since the early 1980s but Cini Minis,
an adorable four-pack of tiny Pillsbury cinnamon buns with icing served on the side,
didn't enter the menu until 1998. Cini Minis were tasty and portable, which gave them a
presence on the morning rush hour scene. By the time the mid-2000s were upon us, Cini Minis
disappeared without explanation. The public felt slighted, and they made their grievance known.
A petition for Burger King to revive Cini Minis was launched, where impassioned fans gathered over
5000 signatures and sounded off with such sentiments like,
"Cini Minis were a large part of my childhood until
Burger King chicken-stripped them away from me."
Burger King heard the people's cries and did bring Cini Minis back in 2018 for a
limited time, breaking hearts once again when they vanished.
America embraced frozen waffles as a welcome alternative to breakfast
cereal as early as Eggo's debut in 1953, but they had company in the form of Downyflake,
a frozen waffle that was square and came in a plastic bag rather than a cardboard box.
Downyflake had long been used to playing second fiddle to Eggo, but they had staying power;
until the '90s that is. The Downyflake name was purchased by Pillsbury in 1995,
but the baking outfit made the executive decision to nix the brand entirely and sell
Downyflake waffles as part of its Hungry Jack line. For the remainder of the '90s, Hungry
Jack adopted Downyflake's signature square shape and insistence that its waffles were
more filling and a better value than those puny, round Eggos. Eventually,
even Hungry Jack would buy into the belief that frozen waffles are best served as circles and
all memory of Downyflake's former cultural impact on the world of waffles was lost.
There seemed to be no limit to General Mills' weird cereal ideas, and Hidden Treasures is no
exception. These unassuming corn squares came with the fun reveal of a fruit-flavored center — well,
some of them did. The rest were just plain corn squares, with no treasure at all.
The concept is clever and all, but the impulse to bite open each and every square and size up
their insides individually prevented a quick and efficient breakfast. Carefree consumers
likely enjoyed diving into a bowl of Hidden Treasures, but for those who counted their
fruit-filled squares and contemplated their gain, breakfast became a job.
There must have been too many hyper-organized children, because after debuting in 1993,
General Mills pulled the plug on Hidden Treasures in 1995.