All decisions are final.
When your Mum arrived home with a Kellogg’s Variety Pack, you always knew that one of three things was about to happen:
- Your parents were getting a divorce
- The whole family was going on holidays
- You and your siblings were staying at your Nan’s.
Regardless of your satisfaction with these arrangements, the excitement of a Variety Pack was enough to distract you from the impending dread of each outcome.
I can liken the childhood excitement of a Variety Pack to getting tax back, as an adult. That feeling of unbridled optimism is precisely on par.
But which cereal in the Variety Pack was most worth physically fighting your siblings for? Let’s rank them.
6. Corn Flakes
If Monday was a cereal, it would be Corn Flakes. If Roy Cropper was a cereal, he would be Corn Flakes. If a lingering head cold was a cereal, it would be Corn Flakes, etc.
In summary, Corn Flakes are absolute garbage and have no place in something as exciting as a Variety Pack. Of all the delicious cereals that Kellogg’s make, what absolute dry dick decided that Corn Flakes were worthy of Variety Pack status and how did they ever secure such an important means of employment?
Not once in the history of the world has a Variety Pack been introduced into the household and met with someone shouting ‘OOH DIBS ON THE CORN FLAKES’, except in Roy Cropper’s house probably. Corn Flakes can fuck off, your Dad will eat them when the rest of the Variety Pack has been consumed because that’s what Dads do. They cover for us pesky kids to prevent Mum from outlawing any future purchases of Variety Packs because “you didn’t even finish them all the last time”.
5. Multi-Grain Rice Krispies
Yeah because the name definitely sounds appetising. ‘DIBS ON THE MULTI GRAIN RICE KRISPIES’ – no child in the history of the world, ever.
Regardless of this cereal presenting itself in deeply exciting shapes such as stars, fish, trees and oddly shaped men, that still wasn’t enough to create any real competition between siblings for them. Snap, Crackle and Pop didn’t even seem particularly jazzed to be endorsing such a lacklustre product.
The main benefit of multi-grain cereal is that is provides more nutrients like protein, fibre, vitamin B, antioxidants, etc. But what normal child is concerned with their cereal providing such boring health properties? An absolute dork, that’s who.
Obviously you’d kick up a massive fight for Multi-Grain Rice Krispies if you and your siblings had to choose between them or Corn Flakes, but that is strictly the only circumstance under which such behaviour was acceptable.
4. Rice Krispies
As Multi-Grain’s slightly cooler but still a bit tragic cousin, normal Rice Krispies were just a bit boring for the childhood brain. ‘More like SHITE Krispies’, etc.
Once the exciting sounds of snapping, crackling and popping die down, you’re left with a pretty boring affair where you’re up against the clock to eat the Krispies before they turn into soggy milk-wielding puffs of disappointment. It’s 2017 and still nobody has invented a cereal robust enough to withstand the devastating soggy effects of milk. Weetabix, I’m looking at you.
There’s nothing wrong with a bowl of Rice Krispies, but when you’re up against such heavyweights as the rest of a Variety Pack, they’re firmly in fourth place until such time as all the best cereals are gone. At that point, it’s every snivelling child for themselves.
3. Honey Loops
Their main sell was the fact that they were quite a rare cereal. You’d seldom see a full sized box in the supermarket, so that made Honey Loops the shiny Pokemon trading card of the Variety Pack, however their taste really let us all down.
Tastewise, there was nothing revolutionary about them. There was only one box of Honey Loops in the entire pack so that obviously added to their appeal, but it didn’t make up for their boring flavour. The bizarrely sexy bee on the front of the box was luckily overlooked by most kids at the time, but in 2017, it’s a bit suggestive to look at and I’ll probably write 2,000 unnecessary words about it in the near future.
Honey Loops offered a glimpse into adulthood, where you could have sensible flavourings such as honey, rather than the standard 25kg of refined sugar per bowl. They were a more mature choice, usually begrudgingly accepted by the eldest sibling once all the good cereals were gone and to prevent any further ructions between the moronic younger kids.
2. Frosties
They’re Grrrrrrrrr-second best!
Only one word is necessary to describe Frosties, and that word is SUGAR. From the feeling of these frosted flakes in your hands, to the taste on your tongue, you really felt like you shouldn’t be allowed to eat them and they’d somehow slipped through your Mum’s strict regime of strictly disgusting (healthy) food only in the house.
Kellogg’s were clever enough to put two boxes of Frosties in their Variety Packs because they knew that such a delightful treat merited twice the volume of something as shitty as Corn Flakes. Many arguments were quelled thanks to the inclusion of Frosties in the pack, plus who doesn’t love an anthropomorphic tiger in a bandana giving them a thumbs up as they plough their tiny child body full of sugar?
There was always a small chance you could persuade your parents to buy a whole box of Frosties in the supermarket because they weren’t as glaringly unhealthy as Coco Pops, and the milk stayed a normal colour after the flakes soaked in it for a while (because sugar is also white). Overall, a very solid effort from Kellogg’s.
1. Coco Pops
MOTHERFUCKING CHOCOLATE FOR BREAKFAST AND CHOCOLATE MILK FOR DESSERT YES BOYS THIS IS LIT!!!
Man oh man it was like every Christmas, birthday and wealthy elderly relative’s reading of a last will and testament had come at once when you found not one but TWO tiny boxes of Coco Pops in the house. You’d ring your friends off the landline just to brag, feel compelled to tell the teacher at school for no reason and even gloat to your annoying neighbour who always sticks his head through the hedges to see what you’re doing in the garden.
Finally, your Mum had caved and decided to let you life your best fucking life for ten minutes. Thankfully, Kellogg’s had the good sense to include two boxes in the Variety Pack, so you could fight your siblings for a broader prize pool than usual. Finally, the odds were extremely in your favour, although upon completion of both boxes, it always sparked a heated family discussion about why you couldn’t just buy a big box of Coco Pops all the time like normal people.
Even if you were unsuccessful in securing a box of this pivotal conquest in cereal engineering, your next choice went to Frosties so it was still a very decent and powerful position to be in as a child.
Coco Pops are the Jeremy Corbyn of the cereal world and most definitely the Kings of the Variety Pack.
Images via Kellogg’s
