27: Meat Cereals

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Meat Cereals

Title text: Disgusting

Explanation

Randall parodies several real-world breakfast cereals (which typically consist solely of grains and sweet flavorings) by creating versions that contain meat (animal products). The cereals that appear to be parodied (clockwise from top-left) include Froot Loops, Rice Krispies, Honey Bunches of Oats, Apple Jacks, Frosted Flakes, and Cheerios. There does not appear to be a deeper meaning to this comic than that.

The Scrapple Jacks parody (the only slightly obscure reference) appears to be made with scrapple, which, according to Wikipedia, is a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour, often buckwheat flour, and spices. Real Apple Jacks ran an ad campaign in the 1980s and 1990s in which an adult or authority figure tasted the cereal and declared "these don't taste like apples!", thus missing the point of why kids liked the cereal. The slogan is parodied on the Scrapple Jacks box. Randall referenced this same slogan again in "38: Apple Jacks".

The title text, reading, "Disgusting.", apparently reflects Randall's opinion of his own creation.

Transcript

[A collection of fictional meat based cereals in bright colors with nice pictures on them.]

Pork Loops

Mice Krispies

Hammios

Frosted Bacon Flakes

Scrapple Jacks

Hey, these don't taste like Scrapple!

Honey Bunches of Goats

Trivia

• This was the 28th comic originally posted to LiveJournal.
  • The previous was 26: Fourier.
  • The next was 30: Donner.
• Original title: "Friday's Drawing - Meat Cereals"
• There was no original Randall quote for this comic.
• This comic was posted on xkcd when the web site opened on Sunday the 1st of January 2006.
  • It was posted along with all 41 comics posted before that on LiveJournal as well as a few others.
  • The latter explaining why the numbers of these 41 LiveJournal comics ranges from 1-44.
• One of the original drawings drawn on checkered paper.

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Discussion

Scrapple Jacks

Apple Jacks cereal have very little actual apple in them. That's why they don't taste like apples. Perhaps Scrapple Jacks has very little actual scrapple in it. Blaisepascal (talk) 00:53, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

While they may have little apple in them, I don't know that that's necessarily the reason they don't taste like apples (as I noted in the Apple Jacks comic itself, the wiki page for the cereal alleges they are supposed to taste like Apple and Cinnamon. Other candy or cereals that have fruit flavours (for example, the candy Runts) rarely have any of the actual fruit in them, but still have flavourings that are designed to taste like that fruit. The question is whether Kellog's used poor flavouring in their cereal, I suppose. TheHYPO (talk) 14:33, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps large food companies with massive advertising campaigns brand their products in ways that may make them appear healthier than they actually are. Iggynelix (talk) 14:37, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I came here to make a "Honey Bunches of Goatse" joke, but I feel it may be in bad taste. 76.106.251.87 18:26, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Cereal Meats

Many cereal based meat alternatives are marketed using parodies of meat product names. This is generally not considered disgusting, even by those not interested in vegetarian product lines.

Possibly Randall is exploring the difference by inverting the product and ingredient type. -- Eltimbalino (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

This is a real thing. — Kazvorpal (talk) 17:22, 21 April 2019 (UTC)