Frosted Cheerios
General Mills took its wholesome oat O's and dusted them with sugar frosting — a mid-90s bid to win over kids who found plain Cheerios a little too grown-up.
Cheerios began in 1941 as CheeriOats, General Mills' puffed-oat cereal shaped like a little solid ring; the name was shortened to Cheerios in 1945 after the Quaker Oats Company claimed rights to the word "oats." For decades the plain version was the wholesome default — exactly the reputation Frosted Cheerios set out to sweeten.
Introduced in 1995, Frosted Cheerios kept the familiar O shape but coated it in sugar frosting, sitting somewhere between the health-halo of the original and the candy-sweet cereals kids actually begged for. It joined a crowded mid-90s shelf as General Mills extended the Cheerios name in every direction.
The frosted version never eclipsed the plain original or the juggernaut Honey Nut Cheerios, but for a stretch of '90s mornings it was the compromise cereal — Mom saw "Cheerios," you got the sugar.
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