The History of the Future of Breakfast Cereal

Disclosure: I am not a big cereal fan. Indeed, the association of breakfast with cereal was long something that made the morning meal one I didn't particularly care to eat. On its own, cereal is fine, I suppose. But once you add milk (something else I don't really enjoy), it turns into a mushy mess. And no amount of sugar or "surprise inside!" can convince me otherwise. (Indeed, the best thing you can do with cereal, in my opinion, is douse it in Worcestershire sauce and butter and bake it with pretzels and nuts. The second best thing is to cover it in melted chocolate and peanut butter. But I digress.)

I rarely ate cereal growing up, even though, as we owned a grocery store, I'd sometimes ask my dad to bring home a box of a particular brand if it hawked some cool "toy inside!" during Saturday morning cartoons. In theory, I liked those single serve variety packs of Kelloggs cereals — but in practice, really only the Cocoa Krispies and the Apple Jacks. The rest of the boxes would sit in the pantry unclaimed and uneaten.