BUFFALO, N.Y. — Here’s a little quiz for the breakfast table: What is the most popular cereal brand in American grocery stores? Hint: It’s been General Mills’ top name since 1951.
Another hint: If you’re a parent, you’ve vacuumed it from the minivan and under the high-chair cushion by the cupful.
The answer, of course, is Cheerios.
The iconic cereal, known by its distinctive yellow box, is 70 years old this year and still a force on the breakfast cereal market. One out of every eight boxes of cereal to leave the shelf in America carries the Cheerios name.
“They’ve been around since the beginning of man, right?” said Kathy Scott in Cape Coral, Fla.
To make Cheerios, balls of dough are heated and shot out of a “puffing gun” at hundreds of miles an hour, according to General Mills. Carolyn Thompson, The Associated Press
