The Breakfast Cereal Identity

Added on 11 October 2010

We pretty much steer clear of ITV in our house - partly to avoid all the marketing dross, but principally because the ITV schedule is a vast lake of stinking excrement - however, the channel is unfortunately the home of a) the James Bond movie and b) the Champions League. And, of course, needs dictate that we watch Dave, for re-runs of all the old BBC shows we missed over the last seven years while we scraped a frugal existence in eastern Europe. So, unavoidably one stumbles across adverts for breakfast cereals that are clearly going to be a malign influence on one's children's digestive tracts.

And then, at some point you're walking around the supermarket, and you're going through one of those (extremely brief) moments of feeling well disposed towards your children, and you think, I'm going to be nice to them and buy them a packet of that revolting looking cereal that they're advertising on the inferior television channels at the moment. And so it comes to pass, that on a Monday morning in October there's a packet of Kellog's Krave sitting on the breakfast table, and when that happens it's a sure bet that your kids are going to eat them.

So. Kellog's Krave. The spelling's all to cock for a start.

The cover shows some Krave pieces and hazelnuts and bits of chocolate and milk and some golden sparkles all sorts of spinning around in a spiral. However, underneath it doesn't say Serving Suggestion, so one is not entirely sure what to make of this graphic. On the back there's a large piece of text proclaiming Taste Unleashed on Facebook. So, does that mean that you can taste the cereal if you go to its Facebook account? Is Facebook that advanced? And, well, now I know that there are two year-olds with their own Facebook account - by jings, there are probably sperm with a Facebook account - but nominally you are supposed to be thirteen after all. What thirteen year-old is going to want to be friends with a packet of breakfast cereal?

The sub-heading is: When you want a tasty breakfast, nothing hits the spot like chocolate.

How about: Fruit. Toast and marmalade. Toast and jam. Smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. Kedgerie. Kippers. Crusty French baguette. Croissant. Coffee. Nice cup of tea. Pancakes and maple syrup. A bacon sandwich. Sausages. Doughnuts...

Anyway, let's say you're weird and you want chocolate for breakfast. Kellog's Krave. As the absurd swirling graphic on the front suggests, it's pretty much small chunks of Nutella coated in breakfast cereal stuff. Kellog's are Kellog's and Nutella are produced by Ferrero, but I suspect that closer investigation might well reveal that both companies are owned by a much larger international conglomerate, such as the Vatican or Halliburton, and that they have a large quantity of Nutella to shift before it goes too far beyond its Use By date.

Surprisingly, both children in the house - we'll call them Test Subject A and Test Subject B - finished their bowl of Krave. They both started tentatively - a bit like a golfer taking an iron off the tea at the first - before accepting that they weren't going to be poisoned and acknowledging that thereafter it would be all right to use their large, aluminium-headed driver for the par 5's.

Test Subject B chipped in first with: They're not horrible.

Test Subject A followed up with: They taste kind of strange.

I merely mention this all, in case someone from Kellog's reads this and they're looking for some quotes for the cover of the box on their next run of Kellog's Krave. I think, They're Not Horrible! splashed in large letters beside the swirling front-of-box graphic might just counteract the initial thought of any right-thinking person who looks at it.

I tried one and I thought it was horrible, but then I'm not the target audience. I have no intention of being friends on Facebook with a breakfast cereal and, unlike children, my digestive system can no longer fully function by eating any old crap, and has sadly slid into middle-age necessity to eat adult cereals. I'll wait for the Kellog's Krave Prunes Limited Edition, which cannot be too far around the corner.