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 Cereal box prize A cereal box prize, also known as a cereal box toy in the UK and Ireland, is a form of advertising that involves using a promotional toy or small item that is offered as an incentive to buy a particular breakfast cereal. Prizes are found inside or sometimes on the cereal box. The term "cereal box prize" is sometimes used as a broader term to also include premiums that can be ordered through the mail from an advertising promotion printed on the outside of the cereal box. Cereal box prizes and premiums have been distributed in four