I promised a final Bookish Breakfast Cereal Contest wrap-up, and at long last here it is! As previously mentioned, Gareth and I narrowed the entries down to two finalists: Grape Nuts of Wrath (submitted by Erin McInnis, Nancy Mills and John Hamilton); and Robert Frosted Flakes (submitted by sflax and WouldBe).
From there I said we’d choose one winner, and we… sort of did. First, Gareth did sketches of the concepts we came up with for both cereal boxes. Those looked like this (click to view larger):
From there we tried to think like marketing pros and decide which cereal name we liked best, based on which really seemed like it would work as a cereal concept. (We basically took THIS approach because by any other approach we liked both suggestions equally!)
Thinking this way Gareth said he’d vote for Robert Frosted Flakes because he thought it was useful to have a mascot. (Obviously he parodied Tony the Tiger here, because Tony is, after all, the official Frosted Flakes mascot.)
Image-wise, I think the art Gareth created (milk being poured into a [dust] bowl) is funnier, but I would up voting for Robert Frosted Flakes too, but only because the marketing slogans/box text I coined for that one made me laugh harder than the ones I came up with for Grape Nuts of Wrath.
As you probably noticed above, for Robert Frosted Flakes, I thought Robert the Tiger (Tony’s long lost brother?) could be saying, "Whose bowl this is I think I know…"
For Grape Nuts of Wrath the best I could up with was "Put more than dust in your bowl!" or "Tired of dust? Fill your bowl with Grape Nuts of Wrath!" or "Turn your Dust Bowl into a Grape Nuts of Wrath Bowl!" Looking back maybe we could have just made Tom Joad the mascot for this cereal and had him spouting one of these little slogans, but… that seems almost more tragic than funny.
In the end, Gareth chose to do a cereal box design for Robert Frosted Flakes and spent about two hours attempting to create the art digitally, so that it would have flat color (like cereal boxes do) and look really, well, commercial and "cereal-box-like." What he got for his trouble is a lot of frustration — enough so that I wound up saying, "It’s not worth it! Just break out the watercolors!" WHICH he did, with these results:
Ta da!
Okay, maybe that wasn’t as fancy a finished product as you were hoping for, but I hope you’re still plenty entertained.
And now for some wacky cereal-related trivia… Do you KNOW who created the original design for Kellogg’s mascot Tony the Tiger? Martin Provensen!! WHO KNEW?? (Whoever wrote the Provensens’ entry on Wikipedia is who.) I stumbled on that fact while I was looking up something about Alice Provensen — AFTER Gareth had already re-designed Tony the Tiger as Robert. Weeeeeeeeeeird. Also weird is the fact that Tony once had a family. Yep. There was a Mrs. Tiger. AND a daughter named Antoinette. I hadn’t a clue.
And while we’re on the cereal subject, note that the deadline for the Cheerios Spoonful of Stories Children’s Book Contest is July 15, 2009. (Thanks to Fuse #8 for that link!) As the contest rules state, "One (1) Grand Prize of $5000 cash will be awarded. In addition to the cash prize, the Grand Prize winning story submission will be offered to a reputable Children’s Book Publishing company for possible future publication." The rules also state that publication is not guaranteed, but hey, when is it ever?
I know many of you have been sitting there coming up with some very creative marketing schemes and slogans for both Grape Nuts of Wrath AND Robert Frosted Flakes. Please entertain the rest of us by sharing them!
Great cereal boxes!! I love the milk pouring into the dust bowl, too. About the cereal contest, there is some fine print worth looking at: You also agree that if you are a Grand Prize or First Runner-Up Winner, your story becomes the sole property of General Mills, and General Mills reserves the right to edit, adapt, copyright, publish, transfer and use all or a part of your entry without further compensation.
Your really caught my eye with this one! And thanks for adding milk with the mention of the Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories contest!
I grew up reading about national parks on the back of my cereal box while I ate breakfast. Something positive and fun first thing in the morning is a great idea- Please, never again put missing children on breakfast food—unless, of course, it is part of a good fiction story!
What fun! I loved all this.
Alison – did you publish your book on Imposters? I found your post about it after looking for info on Rita la Fontaine – LOVED her ‘Disguised’ book, but it made me want to read yours, too.
Vicki, I’m still working on the book so I’m afraid you won’t find it on store shelves just yet. (But soonish, I hope!) I’m glad to hear you’re looking forward to reading it, though, and thrilled that you loved Disguised too!