The Kellogg Company's Worst Cereal Failure: 1998-1999

I've written about Kellogg's and Kellogg cereals many times, including Michigan's most favorite cereal and Kellogg's discontinued cereals – the ones that just didn't have staying power with the public.

Possibly the Kellogg cereal that was the biggest failure was a line of four specially-packaged cereals under the banner name of “Breakfast Mates”. These packages came in four flavors: Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, Froot Loops, and Mini-Wheats. Each package also contained milk to slop over your cereal, a plastic bowl, and a spoon.

Breakfast Mates were an upgraded continuation of the old 'Kellogg's Snack Packs', where the mini boxes of single-serve cereals were perforated. The perforations allowed you to split open the box and pour milk into it, using it as a bowl. Breakfast Mates took that idea and added to it, not just giving you a (plastic) bowl, but the milk and spoon along with it. It was intended for kids to be able to take care of their own breakfast while mom and pop slept in. (Aside from the six-box 'Snack Pack', Kellogg's also had the ten-box 'Variety Pack', an adults-only six-box 'Request Pack', and an eighteen-box 'Jumbo Assortment'. Later, the Jumbo Assortment went up to thirty boxes.)

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In the summer of 1998, Breakfast Mates commercials inundated TV, with the company forking out over thirty million dollars for the campaign. Stores stocked the boxes in coolers to keep the milk cold, even though Kellogg's said it wasn't necessary – but who wants cereal with room-temp, warm milk? Blech.

The biggest problem was, aside from the thought of nasty warm milk, the cost was between $1.29 - $1.69 for the single-serve box (at the time it was considered too much for a box that small) which turned off consumers. Just a year later, in August 1999, Kellogg's withdrew Breakfast Mates from stores and put it to sleep permanently.

Lessons?
1) Don't overprice a new product.
2) Look at your product as if you were a consumer, not a corporate hack.