Let’s Get Cereal

If I’m an expert on one thing, it’s cereal. I never tire of the endless varieties of a refreshing bowl of cereal. Raised on Kix and Honey Smacks, my horizons rapidly expanded as my taste buds ventured into the slightly more mature world of Special K and Apple Jacks. Whether breakfast, lunch, dinner, or often desert, cereal seems to find its way into at least one of my meals every day. Despite the great tastes, my favorite part of the cereal experience is and always has been the box. Every morning as a kid I would scrutinize the box from front to back and even the sides.

For some reason a cereal box always seemed to contain some of the most interesting and captivating information around, not to mention the games on the back. I wish I could say I’ve grown out of this, but to this day I can’t eat a bowl of cereal without the box in front of me. And why is that? Possibly because cereal boxes are some of the most colorful and artistic things on the shelves at the grocery store. I always get so excited when I turn my cart down this aisle with the perfect lines of boxes and fluorescent colors nearly bounding off the shelves into my cart. The rainbow cereal itself and the gigantic rabbit on the front of the Trix box practically guarantee a plethora of games on the back just waiting for me to partake. Toucan Sam and his rainbow beak offer to take me on a tropical adventure in the Froot Loop world. Sometimes I spend half an hour  trying to pick the perfect cereals for a given week.

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but a cereal box truly is a work of art that turns me from an ad-skeptic (for let us not forget that the cereal box is not exempt from the influence of the advertising world) to a hungry consumer, ready to get through the maze, find all of the hidden items, or solve whatever riddle awaits me on the back of the box. Cereal box designers have a way of captivating my attention and bringing to life what could be just another dry and boring breakfast food in a box despite the fact that I’m probably too old to be eating Trix (they are for kids).

Maybe I’m wrong, thinking this is art, but when I look at this picture of a cereal aisle, it reminds me a lot of photographer Andreas Gursky’s photography.

Gursky has a wide body of work, but this photograph of a 99 cent store captures, in a way, the essence of my love for cereal. It’s so vibrant and colorful, while also maintaining a strict linear order. Something about it just really strikes me, it provides a sense of wildness in the midst of conformity. Art doesn’t have to be complex, it can be as simple as the color red. I like to try to see the art in every day life and there really is art everywhere you look; if you’re like me, this includes the back of a cereal box.