Breakfast cereal Oats Company made a candy-coated puffed cereal, a wheat-based product similar to Cracker Jack's candy-coated popcorn. Ranger Joe, the first pre-sweetened breakfast cereal, and little more than candy-coated puffed wheat or rice, was introduced in the US in 1939. After World War II, the big breakfast cereal companies—now including General Mills, who entered the market in 1924 with Wheaties—increasingly started to target children. The flour was refined to remove fiber, which at the time was considered to undermine digestion and absorption of nutrients, and sugar was added to improve the flavor for children. The new breakfast cereals began to look
Cereal box prize columnist Tom Harris of the West Virginia "Gazette-Mail" lamented the passing of the send-in box-top prize in place of the in-box prize. The column humorously noted the family battles over cereal purchases which the in-box prizes instigated. In late 1974, the Federal Trade Commission considered banning television commercials which promoted cereal box prizes as a means of selling cereal. In 1996, General Mills distributed the PC video game "Chex Quest" on CD in boxes of Chex cereal. It was a total conversion based on id software's DooM engine. Cereal box prize A cereal box prize, also known as a cereal