Posted on 10/28/2026 10:39:53 AM PDT by Red Badger
The new packaging for Cheerios incorporating Ziploc bags. (Credit: General Mills)
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The question of how long it takes American corporations to give people what they want has been answered. It’s 85 years. General Mills has announced that at long last it will start packaging at least some of its breakfast cereal line, specifically the iconic Cheerios brand which was first introduced in 1941, along with the Honey Nut Cheerios variation, in resealable Ziploc bags.
The announcement comes much to the delight of Cheerios aficionados who for decades have employed various methods of repackaging the round delight, a beloved oat-based morning lifesaver floating in milk, that like all such products went from fresh to flat faster than a Tesla goes from zero to 60 once the inner bag had been opened. Be it resealable bags, Tupperware containers, or some kind of clip fighting an invariably losing war against the wax bag, Cheerios buyers have long faced two options: buy the smaller box, which was far more expensive per serving, or bring home the bigger box with the understanding that before long its contents would be staler than a liberal politician’s promise to serve all the people once the polls have closed.
Cheerios have long been a personal favorite; perhaps odd given my Godzilla-sized sweet tooth, thus my predilection toward heavily sugared delights such as Lucky Charms. While Cheerios have a touch of sugar in them, it’s not a lot. It does keep the aforementioned sweet tooth satisfied, but it is not overbearing. It’s satisfying. Honey Nut and other strongly flavored versions are, of course, much more angled toward the sweet tea side of things.
Cheerios and variations thereof are, of course, insufficient to supply all of a person’s nutritional needs. Not that this in any way stops us. We are, after all, adults. Therefore, we will proudly eat whatever junk we want. While we’ve all seen the ads featuring our beloved cereal of choice alongside assorted fruit, meats, and whatnot as “part of this nutritious breakfast,” who are we kidding? In America, breakfast is not a production number. That bowl of cereal is your entire breakfast, simultaneously slurped down with coffee before you, armed with CCF (caffeine, Cheerios, four hours of sleep tops), charge out the door ready to either take on, or be taken over by, the world.
Longtime foods also naturally evoke a certain nostalgia, memories of multiple generations consuming the same item unchanged for decades even as we change and inevitably watch the ones we love leave this dusty orb. Sometimes the connections are direct; how clearly I remember my mother immediately repackaging Cheerios and every other cereal she brought home in large Ziploc bags … and then carefully labeling the bags so we’d know which cereal was which, as obviously being able to see the cereal inside the clear bag was insufficient for proper identification. I strongly suspect this was my mother’s tacit admission that she dropped my siblings and me on our heads once too often during our respective infant periods. Sometimes the connection is more historical: who can see the market introduction year for Cheerios (1941) and not think about how, if they had a family member they grew up with who was alive at the time, said family member told them where they were and how they heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked?
Back to the present day. Congratulations to General Mills for saving the Cheerios champions among us a step. We salute you. We thank you. We pound down your product in honor of you. Or because we’re always running too late to eat anything other than part of a nutritious breakfast. That’s on us.
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slider bags have rendered ziplock bags obsolete: slider bags are far superior, and that’s all i use ... i guess it will take General Mills another 85 years to realize that ...
Now we’ll see how many tops of those bags can actually be torn off by hand
What too them so long? Nobody wants a wax paper bag all ripped open and subject to quickly becoming stale.
***Another example of a manufacturer refusing to listen to it’s loyal customers has to be with BELL POULTRY SEASONING.
I love Bell Poultry Seasoning and have used it off and on for over 40 years, but there is no way to reseal that paper box shut once you have opened it to use the finely ground seasoning.
No matter how I re-bag it, Bell’s Seasoning tends to leak in mists and powdery clouds. I can usually smell it before I ever open the box. Someone with BELL must have taken a vow never to change from using the paper box, no matter how many customers ask them to adjust to the times.
Maybe ziplock gave up on people figuring out how to fold the wax bag.
We don’t even use the bags. We throw the boxes and bags away. We have resealable storage containers for cereals................
What took them so long?
But they will come with an app you have to register for and a user agreement that charges a monthly fee to use the zip lock feature.
Maybe now both Peanut Butter and Mayo can be sold in tubs rather than jars...
👏 👏 👏 Now do the same thing for potato chips.
Anyone else here who remembers when it was originally marketed as CherriOATS?
Fold the bag use a clip save money
Ditto.
I can only assume that many people let them go stale and threw them away. So adding ziplocks would add cost and could potentially reduce sales.
Not around my house! It don’t last long enough to go stale!....... 😁
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