The Untold Truth Of Trix
Breakfast cereals come and go, but Trix cereal has been a staple in the kid's breakfast cereal market for over 60 years. When the cereal first hit the shelves, it boasted that "no sugar was needed." It's a good thing too, because it was already made up of 46 percent sugar as-is (via Seattle Weekly). The brand has tried reduced sugar versions, but those were pretty much a bust for obvious reasons.
The cereal's high sugar content, along with its cartoon rabbit, made the cereal an instant hit with the kiddos. These days, Trix is still one of General Mills' most-recognizable cereal brands, and the Trix rabbit itself remains a fixture with the breakfast cereal. However, the Trix of yesteryear isn't quite the same as the Trix you'll find on the store shelves today and neither is the Trix rabbit.
Pour yourself a bowl of this Saturday morning staple, and settle in for a history of one of breakfast's most iconic cereals.
The evolution of the Trix Rabbit was a slow one
Aside from the bright, fruity cereal itself, probably the most recognizable thing about Trix is its mascot — the Trix rabbit. The rabbit, of course, is always having his bowl of cereal swiped by some pesky kids who laugh in his face and tell him "Silly, rabbit, Trix are for kids!"
It actually took some time for the Trix rabbit to reach his final form, with some of those early versions of the rabbit on the box looking more like a stuffed animal than the cartoon rabbit we know today (via Twitter). The very first boxes of Trix didn't even have a mascot, but simply displayed the colorful cereal itself.
The internet seems to believe that, at one time, a flamingo was the Trix mascot, however, there seem to be zero images of this supposed mascot, nor any actual link to it through General Mills. What can be confirmed, though, is that prior to the Trix rabbit, both clowns and a top hat-sporting brown rabbit graced the box before the Trix rabbit came along in 1959 (via Cabinet Magazine).
Trix is a spin-off of another kid's cereal
Trix has been around for so long that it's probably fair to assume most people just think it was created as a standalone cereal. Not so. Trix was actually created as a spin-off of another already popular cereal of the time. Are you ready to have your mind blown? Trix is the sister cereal to Kix — yes, really (via Cartoon Research).
According to AdAge, Kix was General Mills' first puffed corn cereal that rolled into grocery stores way back in 1937 and nobody had the idea to add some fruity flavoring and create Trix until 1954. Those early ads marketed the new cereal as "the most exciting thing that ever happened to breakfast cereal" with "gay little sugared corn puffs in a happy mixture of colors — red, yellow, orange." How revolutionary.
Its classic shape returned in 2018
Breakfast cereals seem to be constantly evolving, and Trix is no different. We mentioned that its first incarnation had just red, orange, and yellow corn puffs, but the cereal later added blue, green, and purple. The shape of the cereal itself has also changed over time. Early versions of Trix cereal were sort of jagged-looking, before developing a more rounded shape. From 1991 to 2006, the cereal morphed into incredibly popular fruity shapes (via NBC Chicago).
Fans were bummed when those fruity shapes left, and over the years, some 20,000 customers demanded General Mills change it. They finally relented in 2018 and reinstated the vibrantly-colored fruity shapes. "Kids of the '90s can rejoice, their fruity shapes are back in Trix," General Mills marketing director Scott Baldwin said.