We'd rather have a bowl of Coco Pops!

Have you noticed how Kellogg’s is using one of their heritage cereal brands to introduce a variety of new chocolate flavoured cereal products all in the name of Coco Pops! Launched in the U.K. in 1961, Coco Pops was marketed as the ‘crunchy milkshake’. However, my generation will best recall the "We'd rather have a bowl of Coco Pops!” and no doubt hum the tune in their heads as they read this. In other parts of the world the brand is mostly knows as Choco Krispi(e)s but one thing is for sure; Coco Pops are made from rice and they are crispy and they ‘pop’!

Well, until recently that was! Because now the famous cereal also comes as flakes, wedges and balls (both hollow or filled) all under the iconic Coco Pops name, leveraging all the brand’s assets at FMOT, only it is a different product all together so look out for the subnomens – not brand name – to distinguish the products!  I might not even have noticed myself, had my daughter not pointed it out to me this morning, when I wanted to treat her to a childhood favourite. “I don’t like them anymore”, she told me, “they are not the same and the consistency is different”!  “Nonsense”, I told her . . . until I opened the box and only then, took a longer look at the packaging. Sure enough, I had bought the 'Jumbos' in total ignorance!

I remember back in 1998 when the British arm of Kellogg’s renamed Coco Pops to Choco Krispies in an effort to align the name globally. However, sales quickly declined and in the spring of 1999, more than 92% of one million votes showed that consumers wanted the name changed back to Coco Pops.

So, it is no wonder that Kellogg’s is taking care not to upset consumers, only they ARE upsetting consumers, because neither Chocos, Jumbos, Rocks, Munchers or Crunchers ARE Coco Pops!