More Food PR Gimmicks

On today’s Bullseye - just what is with these companies? It seems like almost every week there is another iconic brand that isn’t focused on their brand’s taste, or ingredients, or nutritional profile or REDUCING prices for shoppers - but rather focused on moving away from the food itself and trying gimmicks to get brand PR here, on social media and everywhere they can. I don’t know how much they are spending on this campaign, but I would love it if they took that money and just lowered their prices as consumers are constantly reaching out to us asking when food prices are going to come down or at least stabilize. The latest culprit is General Mills. Last Friday General Mill started selling their Mini Breakfast Bundle for $45. What’s a mini breakfast bundle you ask? Well, it’s not breakfast food - it mini toy kitchen accessories. Something you might see in a 5-year old’s doll house. There is a Cinnamon Toast Crunch Mini Fridge: a table-top fridge is perfect for storing all your mini breakfast essentials from cereal to your favorite choice of milk. Then a Trix Mini Utensil Set: This Trix-inspired cooking set features the tools you need to make mini Trix pancakes and waffles and who could forget the REESE’S PUFFS Mini Muffin Mold: A silicone mini mold makes it easy to bake our mini cereals into muffins. The cereal companies - all of them, not just General Mills, are committing Food Crimes: they are reducing the contents of their packages, renaming package banners from Giant Size to Family Size and other nonsensical marketing gibberish and in some cases actually making the box larger in height as they reduce the net weight. What do we have to do to get these brand managers and marketing folks to focus instead of looking for the high-profile cute gimmick. Really? I would expect better from the likes of General Mills.