Berry Berry Kix

It has two "Berry"s in the title, and little berry shapes on the spoon, and I used to love it. Three things immediately come to mind when I recall Berry Berry Kix, the first of which being the tongue-twisting song in the old commercial: "I love those little very berry, those very berry Kix, a very very berry berry bunch!...etc." Secondly, I remember the commercials usually had these parent-whipped kids offering up fuzzy slippers and cleaning the garage just to get their parents to buy them some, and how that always seemed more geared toward the parents. I guess that's the way Kix was in general.

Just reading the Kix box as a kid could improve your vocabulary... from the slogan "Kid tested, Mother Approved" (which had a very adult-like "focus group" feel to it) to the "No Added Colors, No Added Flavors, No Artificial Preservatives." I could barely pronounce half those words, never mind understand what they meant. And it's not like that was the small print or something. That was practically their advertising slogan: "No Artificial Preservatives!" sprawled out in big letters on the front. Let's face it, the grups were feeding us starchy-sweet puff cereal by making our parents think we wanted it, which, I got to admit, worked for me. I liked Kix because they convinced me and my parents that "kids love it."

That said, at least Berry Berry Kix was more colorful and had these little berry-bunch-shaped pieces in there, so I guess they sort of had kids in mind when they came up with it. And just like I convinced myself to like it, I convinced myself that "reds" actually tasted like strawberries and the "purples" actually tasted like blueberries, but of course they were no different. I used to literally bite them off one by one. Sadly though, however fondly we may remember those berry-shaped pieces, they're most likely going to be confined to memory. The powers-that-be actually took the little things out in recent years. That's right. Pick up a box of Berry Berry Kix these days and all you'll find is Kix-shaped pieces colored red and purple! What sense does that make? How can it be Berry Berry Kix without the very berry bunches?