Staying with relatives who have small children is fun. One of the unexpected perks I discovered whilst staying with such relatives in Malaysia was that when you’re living with small children, there’s a good chance there’ll also be small children’s cereal around too. You know, the stuff you really ought not to be feeding to small children. Imagine my delight when I discovered that one of my all-time favourite tooth-destroying cereals was readily on hand. Then, imagine my horror at the discovery of what lay (or, rather, did not lay) inside…
Look closely. Do you see what’s missing? It would appear that the “blue” and “purple” froots so readily available elsewhere do not grow in Malaysia, perhaps due to its tropical climate, and are thus absent from Malaysian Froot Loops. Apparently, blue and purple weren’t added to the froot crops until the 1990s, so perhaps Kellogg’s took all their boxes of unsold Froot Loops from the previous decade and shipped them off to Malaysia. That, or blue and purple froots aren’t considered halal. I don’t know. You can’t tell by the picture, but the loops were also less sugar-encrusted than the Western variety, which, considering we’re talking Froot Loops here, is nothing less than sacrilege.
So this was a pretty rubbish update. To reward those who actually bothered to click on and read this far, here is a picture of the reverse of the box.
It’s in landscape orientation! Malaysia may be behind the rest of the world in many things, but when it comes to the cutting-edge world of cereal box design, they’re way ahead of the pack.