Retro Cereals

Retro Cereal Boxes

As I was staring at the enormous shelf of endless cereal options at Target, presented with the ever-difficult decision of choosing just one cereal, I couldn’t help but notice something odd about the cereal boxes. Then I realized they had gone retro!.

General Mills redesigned some of their cereal packages to look like 50’s and 60’s cereal boxes, so that the Honey Nut Cheerios’ honey bee was not all decked out in 3D highlights and the Lucky Charms leprechaun looked as if he came out of a storybook. Also making an appearance was a mysterious Moose in the regular Cheerios’ (with a notably absent heart as well), and the disappearance of Wendell, replaced by a smiling piece of mini-toast for Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Alas, the Trix rabbit was as silly as ever.

Of course I bought some Lucky Charms and ate all the marshmallows.

trix
lucky_charms
cinnatoast
cheerios_honey_nut
cheerios

It’s also a little ironic that some of these cereals were introduced much later than the time period on the package (Honey Nut Cheerios in 1979 and Cinnamon Toast Crunch in 1984). As a curious fact, Cheerios is the oldest, born in 1941, with Trix following in 1954 and then Lucky Charms in 1964. Just check Wikipedia for more yummy treasures.

Obviously a marketing move from General Mills, one has to wonder why they would target such a limited audience for such a short time, assuming most people aren’t design geeks. Of course, the Dieline (the greatest package design blog) has this covered, and Brandweek has some background behind the re-design.

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Posted on: Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Categories: design
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2 Responses

  1. woodstockfencerMarch 24th, 2010

    Personally I love the retro designs. And the fact that there are several blog posts and a good number of pictures featuring the designs is proof that they accomplished their goal: people are noticing them and talking about them.
    I also appreciate that you took picture of the modern look next to the retro look. Most pictures online only feature the retro one.

  2. retro clocksApril 26th, 2010

    Hey, found your site by accident doing a search on Yahoo but I’ll definitely be returning. As for your post… I must agree with a lot of what you’ve said

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