Shreddies

Shreddies

Product type	Breakfast cereal
Owner	Post Consumer Brands
Produced by	Post Consumer (Worldwide) Nestlé (UK)
Country	Canada
Introduced	1939; 82 years ago (1939)
Previous owners	Nabisco
Website	postbrands.com/shreddies

Shreddies are a breakfast cereal first produced in Canada in 1939 by Nabisco. The Shreddies brand is held by Post Consumer Brands in Canada and elsewhere,^[1] and Nestlé in the United Kingdom only.

Manufacture[]

In Canada, production began in 1939 at Lewis Avenue, Niagara Falls, Ontario. Shreddies were produced under the Nabisco name until the brand in Canada was purchased in 1993 by Post Cereals, whose parent company in 1995 became Kraft General Foods, which sold Post to Ralcorp in 2008 and is now Post Foods Canada Corp., a unit of Post Holdings, which was spun off from Ralcorp in 2012.^{[citation needed]}

In the United Kingdom, the cereal was first produced by Nabisco's former UK division, but is now made by Cereal Partners under the Nestlé brand at Welwyn Garden City.^[2] The factory opened in 1926 and began making Shreddies in 1953. The site was briefly owned by Rank Hovis McDougall in 1988, which sold it to Cereal Partners in 1990. Nestlé's site at Staverton started making Shreddies in 1998, and is where all production was moved in 2007.^{[citation needed]}

The cereal is marketed with the 'whole grain' symbol, as part of a marketing campaign emphasising the healthiness of the cereal. Wheat for Shreddies is sourced from over 500 different farms within the UK.^[3]

Sugared, chocolate and honey-flavoured versions of the cereal are available in the UK as Frosted Shreddies, Coco Shreddies, Honey Shreddies, and an orange-flavoured and coconut infused version of the Coco Shreddies. The former advertising slogan in the UK was: "Keeps hunger locked up until lunch".^{[citation needed]} The advertising slogan for the Frosted and Coco Shreddies was: "Too tasty for geeks".^{[citation needed]}

Flavours[]

Advertising[]

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Canada[]

• In the 1950s and 1960s, advertising used popular icons such as World War I and World War II planes, battleships, and topical references such as Herman's Hermits and lunar adventures
• In the later 1960s and 1970s, Disney items were a key element in advertising, including icons such as Herbie the Love Bug
• In the mid-1980s, a television campaign known as "Our Gang" was used to support Shreddies.
• In the late 1980s, the cereal has been known for many years by its musical jingle, "Good Good Whole-Wheat Shreddies" and the mascots of the cereal, Freddie and Eddie, two anthropomorphic (yet legless) pieces of the cereal.
• Around 1993, Freddie and Eddie's appearance changed to that of a more youthful age complete with baseball caps, and they also grew hair and legs. By the late 1990s, the characters were discontinued in all advertising and packaging. The cereal is now marketed as an "adult" cereal.
• In January 2008, the company launched a new ad campaign for so-called "Diamond Shreddies". The tongue-in-cheek ads claimed the cereal's shape had been changed to diamond, and presented the original square Shreddies, rotated 45°. Consumer reaction to the campaign has translated into a statistically significant sales increase, according to at least one media report on the campaign's success.^[4] The campaign won the 2008 Grand Clio Award for Integrated (i.e. multiple media) Campaign.^[5]

United Kingdom[]

• For many years in the UK, the Shreddies boxes featured Tom and Jerry. They regularly featured gifts in the boxes featuring Tom and Jerry, such as glow-in-the-dark stickers sets and puzzle books.
• For a few years, Shreddies' advertising campaigns featured an antagonist of a big teethed blue monster named Mr. Hungry^[6] who was a cartoon personification of "Hunger". His goal was to taunt hungry individuals by drumming on their stomachs with a pair of silver spoons after saying "Ha Ha! Hunger Strikes!" Mr. Hungry was then dispatched when the victim consumed a bowl of Shreddies, sealing him inside a shreddies cage. Despite his troublesome persona, Mr. Hungry was frequently used as a mascot for the cereal during this period.^[7] The message during this time was "Shreddies keep hunger locked up 'til lunch" and most ads ended with a box of Shreddies rolling up in front of Mr. Hungry, who then gets crushed between it and a box of Frosted Shreddies zooming in from behind him.
• For a while in the early 2000s, Frosted and Coco Shreddies were advertised as "too tasty for geeks". The advertisements featured "geeks" trying to eat a bowl of either Frosted or Coco Shreddies, but being overwhelmed by its taste by being launched into the air like a rocket, followed by a much cooler kid named Sure-Eddie being able to easily eat the Shreddies. In 2003, Coco Shreddies were coated with more chocolate.
• In 2005, Shreddies were advertised as school fuel. The advertisements showed school children being focused on their work at school after eating a bowl of Shreddies for breakfast at home. This TV advertisement was ordered to be removed by the ASA as it was held to provide an unfair comparison between school children eating Shreddies or eating nothing, rather than a similar cereal.^[8]
• In 2007, Shreddies' advertising centred on the claim that they are "knitted by nanas" with shots of a factory full of grandmothers knitting Shreddies. The ad was voted the seventh-favourite advertisement of 2007.^{[citation needed]} And from 2007 - 2011 the packaging was changed to include a photo, on the inner flaps, of the nana who apparently knitted the Shreddies for that specific box.
• In 2010, supporting the launch of a new "Scrumptious new recipe", Shreddies launched a promotion to find new nanas, using TV, digital and Facebook; this subsequently built a huge fan base on Facebook.^[9]
• In 2012, the Shreddies Knitting Nanas continued to be used to represent the brand. The campaign was launched on Facebook to the fans in a 1-month build up to the premiere, with the advertisement going live on TV weeks later in April. The campaign message in 2012 was "Helping you through 'til lunch" (a reference to the early 90s strapline)^[10][11]
• A new advert in 2014 replaced the message with "Shreddies ...AND YOU'RE READY!" The advertisement features the song "This Is How We Do It" by Montell Jordan.
• September 2015 marked the end of the knitting nanas with the ad featuring them singing and disappearing at the end of the song.
• In 2021, a new advertising campaign was launched featuring the television presenter Nick Knowles. This tied in with a redesign of the cereal's box that was rolled out towards the end of the previous year, and introduced the new slogan "Shreddie For Anything".

Collectables[]

In January 2012, boxes of Shreddies dating from the early 1970s were reported to be selling on eBay, after being discovered in a village shop. They were reported to have been selling for about £160 per box on eBay.^[12]

Slogans[]

See also[]

• Chex
• List of breakfast cereals

References[]

External links[]

• Official website