Cheerios
breakfast cereal
Cheerios is a brand of breakfast cereal manufactured by General Mills in the United States and Canada, consisting of pulverized oats in the shape of a solid torus. In Europe, Cheerios is marketed by Cereal Partners under the Nestlé brand; in Australia and New Zealand, Cheerios is sold as an Uncle Tobys product.
Cheerios were invented in the United States in 1941 by General Mills. The product's original name was Cheerioats, but General Mills changed it to Cheerios in 1945, following a trademark complaint from competitor Quaker Oats Company over the use of the term "oats."
"Cheerioats" (1941–45)
Cheerios were introduced on May 1, 1941, as "Cheerioats." The name was shortened to "Cheerios" in 1945, after the Quaker Oats Company claimed to hold the rights to use the term "oats"; Quaker had also introduced its "Quaker Oaties" ready-to-eat cereal in early May 1941.
An early 1942 U.S. newspaper advertisement—prepared and copyrighted by General Mills—listed the ready-to-eat cereal's ingredients: "Ground Oatmeal (75%), Corn Flour (10%), Tapioca (10%), Together With Sugar, Salt, Sodium Phosphate, Calcium Phosphate, Coconut Oil..." Vitamin content was listed as "Vitamin B1 (Thiamin)...Vitamin G (Riboflavin)...Iron, Phosphorous and Calcium...in full oatmeal amounts."
Cheerios history
Cheerios' production was based upon the extrusion process invented for Kix in 1937. The oat flour process starts in Minneapolis before being shipped to factories in Iowa, Georgia, and Buffalo, New York.
In 1976, 35 years after the cereal was first introduced, "Cinnamon Nut Cheerios" became the first alternate variety of Cheerios to be sold in stores. Nearly 3 years later, in 1979, "Honey Nut Cheerios" was introduced. General Mills sold approximately 1.8 million cases of Honey Nut Cheerios in its first year.
Since their introduction, Cheerios have become a popular baby food.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2425291. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1941, 1945, 1942 and 1937.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cheerios” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.