Hot Slut Of The Day!

Quaker Oats’ Halfsies Cereal!

Mr. Breakfast says that in the late-70s, there was a “sugar backlash,” and people were backing away from food products filled with sugar, including breakfast cereals. Why do I have a feeling that this “backlash” was made up of Sweet’n Low executives in angry parent drag chanting about how real sugar is Lucifer’s dandruff while saccharin is a totally healthy gift from the Gods? But whatever the case may be, the sugar backlash led to Quaker Oats making Halfsies cereal, which they claimed had half the sugar of cereals like Lucky Charms. But apparently to kids, it also had half of the deliciousness and was buried in the Breakfast Cereal Cemetary a few years after its debut.

Halfsies came out in 1979 and was marketed as the “first children’s cereal with half the sugar” of other sugar-coated cereals. It was a corn and rice cereal that was compared to Cap’n Crunch. A less sugary Cap’n Crunch that is. BORING! Mr. Breakfast says that even though Halfsies bragged about being filled with less diabetes-inducing granules than other cereals, it still had 18% sugar.

The cereal was described on the box as “a lightly sweetened cereal fortified with 9 essential vitamins and minerals – 1/2 the sugar of most sugar-coated cereals.”

Unfortunately, the cereal still contained 18% sugar. The public seemed to see Halfsies more as a ploy to profit from sugar concerns than a novel new cereal.

One of Halfsies ingredients was also NutraSweet (aka aspartame). And its mascot was the King of the Land of Half, where everything is halved. In other words, the Land of Half was a nightmare world for those who dread hearing the words, “Let’s go halfsies!”, on a date.

Halfsies’ Wikipedia page says that Quaker Oaks got rid of the cereal in the early-80s because of low sales. Halfsies may have been ahead of its time, because my mom, who rarely let us have sugary shit, would have probably bought it for us. But still, I don’t think Halfsies could ever compete with my favorite cereal growing up: a cup of sugar I snuck from the kitchen cupboard with a handful of Grape Nuts on top. Listen, sugary stuff being banned from my house turned me into the MacGyver of children’s cereals.

Pic: Quaker Oats