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Wheaties

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circa 1950
circa 1950

Wheaties is a brand of General Mills breakfast cereal. It is well-known for featuring prominent athletes on the exterior of the package, and has become a major cultural icon. Primarily comprising a wheat and bran mixture baked into flakes, it was introduced in 1924.[1]

History

A scale model of a Wheaties box to commemorate the opening of Glory Road on the UTEP campus, November 29, 2005. 1966 NCAA basketball championship team members Willie Worsley and Nevil Shedd, are pictured on the box, cutting down the hoop net.

Creation

Wheaties was created in 1922, as a result of an accidental spill of a wheat bran mixture onto a hot stove by a Minnesota clinician working for the Washburn Crosby Company (later General Mills). By November 1924, after over 36 attempts to strengthen the flakes to withstand packaging, the process for creating the flakes had been perfected by the Washburn head miller, George Cormack, and the cereal was named Washburn's Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes. Soon after, the name was changed to Wheaties as a result of an employee contest won by the wife of a company export manager, Jane Bausman. Other names passed over included "Nutties" and "Gold Medal Wheat Flakes".

Wheaties began to be advertised on Minneapolis' WCCO radio station on December 24, 1926, with the first-ever commercial jingle.[2] Its lyrics were sung to the tune of the then-popular "She's a Jazz Baby":

"Have you tried Wheaties?
They're whole wheat with all of the bran.
Won't you try Wheaties?
For wheat is the best food of man.[2]

Early sports association

Wheaties began its association with sports in 1927, through advertising on the southern wall of minor league baseball's Nicollet Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the contract, Wheaties sponsored the radio broadcasts of the minor league baseball team, Minneapolis Millers, on radio station WCCO and Wheaties was provided with a large billboard in the park to use to introduce new slogans. The first such slogan on the new signboard was penned by Knox Reeves, of a Minneapolis advertising agency. When asked what should be placed on the sign for Wheaties, Reeves sketched a Wheaties box on a pad of paper, thought for a moment, and wrote "Wheaties-The Breakfast of Champions".

Throughout the 1930s, Wheaties increased in popularity with its sponsorship of baseball broadcasting, and by the end of the decade, nearly a hundred radio stations carried Wheaties sponsored events. During these events, athlete testimonials about Wheaties were used to demonstrate that Wheaties was indeed the breakfast of champions. Also in the early 1930s, athletes began to be depicted on the packaging of Wheaties, and the tradition is continued today. See List of athletes on Wheaties boxes.

The heyday of Wheaties came in the 1930s and early 1940s, as testimonials peaked from nearly every sport imaginable. Among the many testimonials included were: baseball stars, managers, and trainers; broadcasters; football stars and coaches; circus stars and rodeo; livestock breeders; a railroad engineer; horsemen and jockeys; a big-game hunter; automobile racers; an aviator; a speedboat driver; an explorer; and parachutists.

Wheaties maintained brand recognition through its definitive association with sports, and its distinctive orange boxes. It became so popular that in the 1939 All-Star Game, 46 of the 51 players endorsed the cereal. In the months following, Wheaties became a sponsor of the first televised commercial sports broadcast. On August 29, 1939, NBC presented the baseball game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers to approximately 500 television set owners in New York City, while Red Barber was the inaugural play-by-play broadcaster.

A measure of the product's familiarity is the reference in the 1941 baseball song Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, performed by Les Brown and his orchestra during DiMaggio's record hitting streak. In the song, Joe D. gets a clutch base hit, and the band awards him "a case of Wheaties".

Tagline

  • The Breakfast of Champions

Ties with Ronald Reagan

Wheaties radio broadcasting in the 1930s touched the early career of Ronald Reagan, who was at the time a sports broadcast announcer in Des Moines, Iowa. He was asked to create play-by-play recreations of Chicago Cubs baseball games using transcribed telegraph reports; his job performance in this role led to his selection in 1937 as the most popular Wheaties announcer in the nation. He was awarded an all-expenses paid trip to the Cubs' spring training camp in California, and while there he took a Warner Bros. screen test. This led to his eventual film career, thus the Wheaties claim of perhaps leading Reagan into show business, and later politics as governor and 40th President of the United States.

Changes and children's promotions

Due to increasing costs in the 1940s of sponsorship of broadcasting, Wheaties began simple commercial sports testimonials on television or radio. These were less effective than the overall sponsorship (especially in the case of television), yet also greatly reduced costs for advertising of the product.

In the early 1950s, costs and strategy forced General Mills to redirect the Wheaties brand into a focus on children, alongside such noted brands as Cheerios, which had great success in this market. While initially seen as a growth measure, sales of Wheaties declined dramatically even after association with The Lone Ranger and The Mickey Mouse Club (and the development of their own mascot, a puppet character called Champy the Lion, produced by Bil Baird and voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft), mainly due to the adult cereal consumers dislike of a "children's cereal". More children did in fact eat Wheaties due to this association, but the gain was not enough to increase sales, much less stave off the decline of adult consumption.

Return of sports association

Because of the great decline in sales in the middle part of the 1950s, by 1958 General Mills was convinced that the sporting roots of Wheaties were its strongest selling point. In that year, the marketing strategy employed a three-pronged assault. First was the selection of the brand's first spokesman, Bob Richards, two-time Olympic pole vault champion. Second, Wheaties reentered the sports television sponsorship arena, while pioneering the concepts of the pre and post-game show, and third was the introduction of the Wheaties Sports Federation. The Wheaties Sports Federation promoted physical fitness, training, and participation in athletic events, through direct financial support of Olympic educational programs and the Jaycee Junior Champ track and field competition, and also through educational and instructional athletic films.

From the 1960s through the 1990s, Wheaties provided in-box promotions, but maintained a focus on athletic fitness and on-the-box sports figure promotions. Since the debut of the front cover depiction of Bob Richards, hundreds of athletes have been shown and promoted, including entire baseball, basketball, and football teams, while also highlighting Olympic successes (including regional Special Olympics editions). Wheaties also does not limit itself to current athletic stars, as special edition boxes have depicted baseball players from the early 20th century, and many athletes who were too early for Wheaties to cover (see Jim Thorpe).

Wheaties firsts and records

Spokespersons

There have been a total of seven spokespersons for the Wheaties brand since 1958, listed here with their date of selection:

Like many popular cereal brands from the early 20th century, Wheaties has had its share of spin-off brands. Also, several athletes featured on the cereal boxes of regular Wheaties are featured on these brands. These are the four brands which have been created in response to the popularity of Wheaties, along with their introduction date:

  • Honey Frosted Wheaties (Commonly abbreviated HFW) - 1996
  • Crispy Wheaties 'n' Raisins (Commonly abbreviated CWR) - 1996
  • Wheaties Energy Crunch (Commonly abbreviated WEC) - 2001
  • Wheaties Fuel - 2010

Pop culture

Another measure of the product's familiarity are satirical references. Clearly, this old joke was getting some mileage in the early 1970s:

"Welcome to "White" World of Sports, brought to you by Budweiser - Breakfast of Champions!"
  • The title of Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel Breakfast of Champions comes from a waitress who utters that phrase when she serves a martini.
  • In the script of Paul Auster and Wayne Wang's film: Blue in the Face, Bob (played by Jim Jarmusch) discusses giving up smoking with Auggie. He remarks: "..Coffee and cigarettes, you know? That's like "breakfast of champions." (Paul Auster: Smoke and Blue in the Face, Faber and Faber 1995, page 230, lines 9-10)
  • At the end of songs by Wesley Willis, he would often exclaim, "Rock over London. Rock on Chicago. Wheaties, breakfast of champions!"
  • A 1977 Saturday Night Live sketch parodied commercials for Wheaties, for a product called "Little Chocolate Donuts". Cast member John Belushi impersonated Bruce Jenner, stating that Little Chocolate Donuts has enough sugar to get him going in the morning. At the end, Marv Albert says "Little Chocolate Donuts, The donuts of champions!"
  • One-cent pieces that were minted from 1909 through 1958 have wheat ears on one side; hence, they are often known as "Wheaties".
  • In The Matrix, one character refers to a synthetic meal sludge as "The Breakfast of Champions."
  • Wheaties is referenced in the song "Wheaties" by Tech N9ne from the album "Killer"
  • In Dog the Bounty Hunter "Dog" Chapman refers to capturing criminals as "The Breakfast of Champions"
  • In Rocky 3, Rocky asks his son what Wheaties are, and then says, "The breakfast of champions!"
  • In Cool Runnings, the lead character tells a friend who refuses to be a part of the first Jamaican bobsled team, "You could have had your picture on a Wheaties box."

See also

References

  1. ^ "Wheaties Cereal History": The Great Idea Finder. 2007
  2. ^ a b Wojahn, Ellie (1988). "Choose a Partner". Playing by Different Rules. amacom (American Management Association). p. 19. ISBN 0-8144-5861-0. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
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