Cereal Straws
Kellogg's answer to a question every kid had already asked: what if the straw itself tasted like Froot Loops? Crunchy cereal tubes with a sweet milky lining that turned any glass of milk into dessert — gone in two years, mourned for a decade.
Kellogg's launched Cereal Straws in 2007 in the flavors of its icons — Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and Cocoa Krispies. The concept was gloriously simple: a crunchy straw made of cereal, lined inside with a sweet, milky coating, so you could sip your milk through it and then eat the straw. Commercials starring Toucan Sam pitched them as a way to eat cereal and drink milk all in one, and lunchboxes across America made room.
They didn't last. In the late 2000s, Kellogg's came under pressure from parents' groups and nutrition advocates over sugary foods marketed to children, and agreed to reformulate or drop products that exceeded new nutritional thresholds. Kellogg's never announced a reason, but Cereal Straws — essentially candy with a cereal pedigree — disappeared from shelves in 2009, without ceremony.
Then came the mourning period, and it was unusually well organized. A Change.org petition started in 2017 demanding the straws' return gathered more than 81,000 signatures, and in 2021 Kellogg's gave in: after what the company itself called "a 12-year hiatus," Cereal Straws returned in Froot Loops and Cocoa Krispies varieties. It remains one of the cleanest wins on record for the discontinued-snack lobby — proof that if enough millennials sign the same piece of paper, the milky straw comes back.
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