Why Kellogg’s and Post Cereals Eliminated the Word ‘Sugar’

The 1960s was the decade of the sugary cereals. SUGAR, SUGAR, SUGAR was being pushed on us in the stores, but especially on TV.

It seems like all the major cereal companies were bombarding us every week with some new sugar-coated cereal with cute animal mascots adorning bright colorful cereal box covers. And it worked.

Most of the kiddie TV shows of the time were sponsored by anything with sugar in it: cereals, pop, candy, gum...anything that would make mothers not want to drag their kids along to the grocery store. Cries of “I WANNIT! I WANNIT! I WANNIT!” echoed through just about every store.

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With all this sugar kids were intaking, the bubble had to burst...and it finally did – kind of – in the early 1980s.

Cereal companies said they were going to reduce the amount of sugar in these cereals, in hopes of appealing to those parents who were more health conscious. So what happened? Well, at least they removed the word “sugar” from the cereal.
Sugar Frosted Flakes became ‘Frosted Flakes’.
Sugar Crisp made one last push with ‘SUPER Sugar Crisp’ before axing ‘sugar’ and turning the name into ‘Golden Crisp’.
Sugar Smacks was changed to ‘Honey Smacks’ and then just plain ‘Smacks’.
Sugar Pops added the word ‘corn’ to make it ‘Sugar Corn Pops’, but it wasn’t enough. It soon became just plain ‘Corn Pops’.

Other cereals with “sugar” in the name just called it quits altogether.

Replacing the word "sugar" with "honey," "frosted," "golden," etc. Made them sound less sugary. As for me, I would rather see the word “sugar” back on the box rather than dehydrated “high fructose corn syrup” or saccharine, glucose, sucrose, cyclamates, or any other kind of faux sweetener.

If a cereal box says “frosted” on it, we know it’s not talcum powder, or cocaine, or anthrax.
We know it’s sugar.
Just say so.