Ever Notice That There Aren’t Any Female Breakfast Cereal Mascots?
LatestThis sunny, almost-warm Sunday morning, CBS put together a cheerful little slideshow featuring the most eccentric and, dare we say, demented breakfast cereal mascots. The slideshow featured retro iterations of Tony the Tiger, the homoerotic trio of rice-puffing elves, Snap, Crackle and Pop, Franken Berry, the Quaker Oatmeal dude Larry, King Vitamin, Toucan Sam, and Captain Crunch. Even Urkel and C-3P0, two of the universe’s most annoying nerds, were included. Notably absent were any female breakfast cereal mascots. Is that because the slideshow compilers at CBS are sexist assholes? No, of course not — there simply aren’t any female breakfast cereal mascots.
Maybe it’s not the greatest of patriarchal injustices that cockeyed the toucans, skateboarding frogs, and vaguely pedophilic white rabbits hawking sugar-blasted cereal to children are all male. Then again, kids love sugary breakfast cereal, and if their first experience of every morning in their young, bleary-eyed lives is to cozy up to a bowl of glazed cornmeal with their good pal Tony, they’re going to be conditioned to 1) not take nutritional advice from women, 2) expect tigers to not be bloodthirsty land mammals with a taste for child blood. Those are the lessons the cereal conglomerates of America have been teaching kids since merchandizing gave every pop culture icon a cereal, and every cereal an endearing mascot.