Bowl Games

CEREAL MILK IS THICKER THAN WATER

“Hello everybody. Welcome to Birds With Friends.”

I love hearing those words leading off the Philadelphia Eagles podcasts for The Athletic, only partly because it’s my son Bo who is saying them. I know that the four participants—Sheil Kapadia, Zach Berman, Marissa Morris and Bo—will be far more interesting than the team they are tasked with discussing, and you can sense that they are making a real connection with their listeners and YouTube viewers, many of whom share their frustrations with the season thus far.

It goes beyond saying how proud I am of our oldest son, who took up sports journalism just like his mother and I did. But while our jobs mostly had to do with words, his requires not only writing, but also entertaining, and he does both with an ease that I marvel at. It helps that the cast has genuine chemistry and the willingness to let their audience see the different sides of their personalities. They also know far more about football than I ever did—and it’s kind of nice for this 70-year-old to learn about a game he sometimes covered, or pretended to.

They do, however, regularly touch upon a subject for which I do have some expertise. One of the regular sponsors for BwF is Magic Spoon cereal, which bills itself as “The High-Protein, Keto-Friendly, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Soy-Free, Wheat-Free, Naturally Flavored, Totally Delicious, Childlike Cereal for Grown-Ups.” It comes in colorful boxes to match its many flavors: Salted Caramel, Peanut Butter, Apple Cinnamon, Cinnamon, Fruity, Blueberry, Cocoa and Frosted.

Fruit Loopy

As I am typing this, I have a bowl of the Salted Caramel beside me and the box in front of me. There’s a great logo on the side, a hand wrapped around a spoon with the slogan: Hold on to the Dream. And I must say, the cereal is a nuanced reminder of the old days, a pinot noir to the sangrias in those Kellogg’s Snack Packs—you know, the ones with the perforations that allowed you to pour the milk right into the little wax-protected cartons.

There has always been a visceral and slightly viscous relationship between cereal and sports. What better pre-game meal for a child than a milky bowl of Trix or Kix, Wheat Chex or Rice Chex, Sugar Pops or Sugar Smacks, Fruit Loops or Fruity Pebbles. I was one of those kids, and so were all four of our children, each of whom ended up with careers in sports. Hmmm.

But I also have a professional interest in the subject, born of an assignment I received from Sports Illustrated editor Robert Creamer back in 1982. Bob, who wrote the definitive biography of Babe Ruth, often dealt with outside contributors, and one of them had submitted a rather dry treatise on the history of Wheaties in sports. Bob thought I could supply the milk and the sugar.

The result was “The Famous Flakes of America”, the subhead for which read: “For 50 years the Breakfast of Champions has been the Champion of Breakfasts, a sporting staple of all the country’s kitchen cupboards.”

I have to say, I had a glorious time writing the piece. I visited the General Mills corprorate headquarters in the Twin Cities, the Wheaties production plant in South Chicago and the Texas ranch of Bob Richards, the Olympic pole vaulter and decathlete who had been the Wheaties spokesman for years. I also learned a lot about the making, promoting and selling of cereal. I can remember sitting in my studio apartment in Greenwich Village (an apartment one of my daughters now lives in) and counting the number of flakes in a 12-ounce box of Wheaties. I found 3,450 flakes and the lead for my story:

https://vault.si.com/vault/1982/04/05/famous-flakes-of-america

I also found the history of Wheaties to be particularly fascinating. After all, that orange box changed the world. Back in 1937, a young sportscaster for WHO in Des Moines asked his cereal sponsor for $300, half the cost of a trip to California so to that he could cover the Chicago Cubs in spring training. He got the money, and while he was out there, he passed a screen test at Warner Brothers. The sponsor was Wheaties, of course, and the broadcaster was Ronald Reagan, of course.

Among the other things I learned:

• It all started back in 1924 when a health clinician named Minniberg accidentally spilled a batch of bran gruel on a hot stove. He tasted it, thought it delicious, and took the idea to Washburn Crosby, one of four mills that merged to form General Mills.

• It was named in a contest won by Jane Bausman, the wife of a Washburn Crosby employee, edging out Nutties and Gold Medal Wheat Flakes.

• It really didn’t catch on until Christmas Eve, 1926, when a quartet made up of an undertaker, a businessman, a bailiff and a printer sang the Wheaties jingle over WCCO in Minneapolis.

• The slogan, “Breakfast of Champions,” was also part accident, part genius. General Mills spooned out $10,000 for the broadcast rights to Minneapolis Millers baseball games, and as part of the deal, it got a billboard in center field of Nicollet Park. They needed to put something on the billboard, and Knox Reeves, the advertising man for Wheaties, came up with “Breakfast of Champions.”

• Two sluggers drove it home that same year. Babe Ruth began plugging the cereal on radio, and Joe Hauser of the Millers hit an incredible 69 homers that season. Because Wheaties offered a case of the cereal to every Miller who homered at Nicollet Park, and because Hauser hit 33 at home, he ended up with 792 boxes of Wheaties. (Joe was 82 and living in Sheboygan, Wis. when I contacted him for the story. “I gave most of them out to my teammates,” he said. “Not that I didn’t like them—still eat Wheaties.”)

• Of the 51 players in the 1939 All-Star Game, 46 had contracts with Wheaties.

• Among the champions who ate it for breakfast were Jack Dempsey, Johnny Weismuller and the lion tamer daughter of Russia’s Mad Monk, Rasputin. Lou Gehrig endorsed a rival cereal called Huskies, which sponsored the Believe It Or Not radio show hosted by Robert Ripley. When asked by Ripley how he started his day, Gehrig revealed, “I usually start with a big bowl of Wheaties.”

• On the very first baseball game broadcast on television, Red Barber took out a bowl of Wheaties, added milk, sugar and a banana, and said, “Folks, this is the Breakfast of Champions.”

• Wheaties soon became a staple of television, lining up the likes of Ted Williams, Sam Snead, Bob Feller and basketball star Bob Davies, the real-life model for Clair Bee’s Chip Hilton series. They had an eye for talent, locking up Mickey Mantle when he was a rookie.

But because of dwindling sales, General Mills changed direction, going from Mickey Mantle to Mickey Mouse. When the dwindle became a downturn, the company decided to go back to sports. Their choice for a spokesman was Bob Richards, the Olympic decathlete and two-time champion in the pole vault. He was also a preacher, and he soon had American families following his sermons on nutrition and physical fitness.

He was the face of Wheaties for 14 years, until 1969, when General Mills arranged for him to jog and bike across the country. Sending him off on his farewell tour were two other Wheaties boosters, Art Linkletter and O.J. Simpson.

I visited the Reverend Bob at his Crossbar Ranch in Santo, Texas, a 10,000-acre spread that looked like a giant wheat flake, what with its butterscotch color and rollng contours. In the front yard was an entire pole vault ensemble, along with a discus, a shotput, a javelin, hurdles, a soccer ball, barbells and a bench for pressing. On the kitchen counter was an 18-ounce box of Wheaties. “I truly believe you are what you eat,” he said. “Why, last night I had Wheaties for dinner.” Yes, the Supper of Champions.

Bruce Jenner was then the box boy for Wheaties, and soon enough, Michael Jordan took over. When it comes to boxes, Jordan is still the GOAT—18 different versions. I just looked up the most expensive collectible Wheaties box. It’s not surprising that it has the face of Ted Williams on it. What is surprising is that it’s a one-ounce box from 1951, and it can be yours for $2,500, which is enough money to buy 700 boxes of the current Russell Wilson 15.6-ounce Wheaties. Or 250 7-ounce boxes of Magic Spoon.

The Kid’s Cereal

Yes, Magic Spoon is a little expensive. But so is health food, in general. Started by entrepeneurs Gabi Lewis and Greg Sewitz in April of 2019, Magic Spoon is offered direct to consumers. They found a sweet spot, so to speak, between the millennial nostalgia for the old cereal brands, which were lagging in sales because of nutritional concerns, and the desire for a healthier lifestyle. “People grew up,” Lewis told Fast Company, “but their cereal didn’t grow up with it.”

Instead of a toy at the bottom of the box, Magic Spoon puts an intricate maze on the back that can occupy your mind. And the advertising is equally irresistible. It’s hard to top, “Healthy Cereal That Doesn’t Taste Like This Box.”

That sure beats the “Eaties For My Wheaties” slogan that Wheaties tried for awhile in the ‘80s. They would film athletes like Daryl Dawkins, Ron Cey and Ed White proclaiming their allegiance with painful puns—White’s was, “Before I put on my little cleaties, I get my Eaties for Wheaties.” Bob Richards hated it, and White came to regret it—the Chargers guard heard it from the stands every time he left the field.

Then again, no breakfast food commercial will be better than this one from November 19, 1977:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxCUHjx7U7Y

To borrow Bo’s signoff, As always, thanks for listening. We love you.

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