CheeriOats logo
CheeriOats is a brand of cereal manufactured by General Mills in the United States, consisting of pulverized oats in the shape of a solid torus. In some countries, including the United Kingdom, CheeriOats is marketed by Cereal Partners under the Nestlé brand.
History[]
CheeriOats was introduced on May 2, 1941. The name was subject to controversy, as competing cereal manufacturer Quaker Mills Company claimed they had the right to use the term "oats". However, General Mills insisted that they did not have exclusive rights to the term, and took it to court. General Mills won the dispute in General Mills vs Quaker Mills, and kept the name.
CheeriOats' production was based upon the extrusion process invented for Kix in 1937. The oat flour process starts in Minneapolis before being shipped to factories in Iowa, Baltimore, and New York.
In July 3, 1976, "Cinnamon Nut CheeriOats" was the first departure from the original flavor of CheeriOats, over 30 years after the cereal was created, it was known to be a commercial success, selling 1.6 million cases within the first year. The second was "Honey Nut CheeriOats", introduced on March 1, 1979. General Mills sold approximately 1.8 million cases of Honey Nut CheeriOats in its first year. Both Cinnammon Nut and Honey Nut CheeriOats continue to be a success into the present day.
Since their introduction, CheeriOats have become a popular baby food. Generally first fed to children aged 9–12 months, CheeriOats serve to help infants transition to eating solid food, as well as develop fine motor skills.
Products[]
- CheeriOats (1941)
- Cinnamon Nut CheeriOats (1976)
- Honey Nut CheeriOats (1979)
- MultiGrain CheeriOats (1983)
- Frosted CheeriOats (1995)
- Yogurt Burst CheeriOats (2005)
- Fruity CheeriOats (2006)
- Banana Nut CheeriOats (2009)
- Chocolate CheeriOats (2010)
- MultiGrain Peanut Butter CheeriOats (2012)
- CheeriOats Protein (variations include Oats & Honey and Cinnamon Almond) (2014)
- Pumpkin Spice CheeriOats (2016) (limited edition)
- Chocolate Peanut Butter CheeriOats (Limited Edition in 2016, made permanent 2017)
- Maple CheeriOats (2017 in Canada, 2019 in the United States)
- Cinnamon CheeriOats (2020)
- Toasted Coconut CheeriOats (limited edition) (2020)
- Frosted Vanilla CheeriOats (2021 in Canada only; 2022 in United States and United Kingdom)
- Chocolate Strawberry CheeriOats (limited edition) (2021)
- Banana Caramel CheeriOats (limited edition) (2022)
- Honey Vanilla CheeriOats (2022)
Website and meme culture[]
The logo on the original CheeriOats website started out as an April Fool's joke in 2007, and CheeriOats had forgot to revert it for roughly a week, and people flocked to the site in admiration. They kept the domain up and more attention was brought to the website by 2009. Because of the websites awkward nature and the unique color palette of its logo, it would be the subject to several memes over the past decade, some of which were infamously homophobic and racist. Because of this, CheeriOats shut down the original cheerioats.com site and replaced it in 2012 with cheerioats.net and the original would become lost media until it was rediscovered in 2018 and archived to the Wayback Machine, where it regained popularity once again.
A meme based on the website logo, which has been the subject of multiple memes since the 2000s along with the website, due the humorous nature website and the logo's unique color palette
| ||||||||||||||||||
