Don’t get me wrong, I’m as disgusted with the millennials’ addiction to technology as you are.
But before there was this:
There was this:
As a youngster, I devoured the back of cereal boxes with as much enthusiasm as when I plowed through their sugary deliverances. I loved the games: serpentine mazes, simple word searches, even the confusing games of tic-tac-toe with Cheerios.
At the time I wasn’t aware the back of the cereal boxes were primarily a way for marketers to keep consumers engaged kids enslaved to their brand. And for this reason, cereal boxes are great cultural artifacts; they provide a snapshot of what advertisers of a given age think children of a given age want to see.
So, as I’m sitting in the kitchen waiting for my children to bum-rush the set, I thought I’d take a closer look at the cereal boxes in my house.
Let’s start with Posts’ Honeycomb.
The front of the box is straight-forward. While shopping, though, I noticed nearly half of the cereal boxes are yellow. And that’s definitely no accident.
The font takes its cues from the rounded letters of old school street art, with COMB looking a lot like BOMB. I can’t front, I like the idea of a honey bomb. I wonder why, though, they felt bound by grammar conventions and included a hyphen between honey-comb (which is one word, Honeycomb), when they felt free to flout the rules of capitalization?
Now, let’s turn to the back of the box.
RU Honeycomb 2 UR Core? Again, I’m confounded by their arbitrary adherence to grammar conventions. IDK about U, but I never conjoin RU. Who does that? And if RU means “Are You” then doesn’t UR mean “You are?” By attempting to speak in a youthful vernacular, they’ve confused the shit out of us all.
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT’S HOW YOU MAKE IT YOURS. Solid. I can live with this tag line.
MAD ABOUT MUSIC? I think they’re using “MAD” as slang for “CRAZY” which is slang for “DEEPLY INTERESTED” which is “GROOVY” if not 20 years outdated.
ARE YOU A GAMING GURU? No, I’m 8 years old and I don’t know what a GURU is but I do know what a desperate attempt at alliteration looks like!
LIVE TO SKATE? You know it. Why do you ask? Seriously. What does my interest in skating have to do with the taste of your cereal? If you’d provided a maze on the back of the box, at least I could’ve pretended to be skating my way through the labyrinth. But this here reeks of pandering, as does the picture of the skater who needs a haircut, badly.
And what would heavy handed marketing material be without a call-to-action?
SHARE YOUR VIDEOS, PHOTOS AND IDEAS SHOWING US WHAT MAKES YOU AN ORIGINAL LIKE HONEYCOMB.
I sent this.
Sincerely,
Big Brown Dad