Golden Nuggets are a breakfast cereal sold in the UK and Ireland by Cereal Partners (under the Nestlé brand). It is made mainly from cereal grains, sugar and honey, formed into large yellow crunchy balls. It has a sweet, slightly honey-like flavour.[citation needed] The taste has been described as similar to the American cereal Cap'n Crunch.[1]
History
Golden Nuggets were introduced in the 1970s in the United Kingdom and the United States, manufactured by Nabisco. They were then withdrawn from the UK market in the late 1970s.
However, they were brought back to the UK in 1999 with a £1 million advertising campaign, perhaps in response to demand from people who had enjoyed them in the 1970s and now had their own children.[citation needed]
Marketing
The packaging features various cartoon characters (drawn by Gary Dunn): Klondike Pete (a gold prospector who mines Golden Nuggets), his mule Pardner, his enemies - two claim-jumpers named Plum Loco Louie and Boot Hill Bob (jointly "The Breakfast Bandits") - and a Golden Nuggets Bee.[2] The Klondike Pete character was also used in the 1970s to market the US version of the cereal, Klondike Pete's Crunchy Nuggets.[3][4] The box also sometimes features puzzles suited to the 7–12-year-old range.[citation needed] The cereal is marketed with the slogan "They taste Yeee-Haa!"[5] (Previously "They're honey-crunchin' good!").
In 2019, the Labour Party listed the cereal among its targets as deputy leader Tom Watson decried the use of cartoon characters to entice children to highly sugared foods.[6]
Imitations
Similar cereals have been manufactured as home brands for supermarkets in Britain. Asda had 'Golden Balls'.[7]Tesco had 'Multigrain Boulders'.[8]
^Tropf, Zach (4 March 2009). "A Tribute to Discontinued Cereals". Gunaxin. Retrieved 11 September 2019. Klondike Pete's Crunchy Nuggets (1972-1975) This one came in both a wheat and rice variety, and were actually just renamed versions of Rice Honeys and Wheat Honeys (which also went by the name Winnie the Pooh Great Honey Crunchers). The cereal was pawned off on kids by Klondike Pete, a bearded prospector who searched for gold with his mule Thorndike. In 1975, Klondike Pete's Crunchy Nuggets were discontinued and the cereal that had existed under various names was finally gone. But Pete wasn't gone. Apparently on a 25-year nugget hunt, Pete returned in 1999 for Golden Nuggets cereal after striking the motherlode in a new secret mine. Sadly, Thorndike had been replaced by a new mule sidekick, Pardner.
1 Currently manufactured by General Mills in the U.S. and Canada. Produced by Cereal Partners under the Nestlé brand elsewhere. 2 Brand owned by General Mills; U.S. and Canadian production rights controlled by Nestlé under license. 3 U.S. production rights owned by The Hershey Company. 4 U.S. rights and production owned by the Smarties Candy Company with a different product. 5 U.S. rights and specific trade dress owned by Nestlé; rights elsewhere owned by Associated British Foods. 6 Produced by Cereal Partners, branded as Nestlé. 7 Produced by Cereal Partners and branded as Nestlé in the U.K. and Ireland. Produced by Post Foods elsewhere. 8 Philippine production rights owned by Alaska Milk Corporation. 9 Singaporean, Malaysian and Thai production rights owned by Fraser and Neave. 10 Used only in Indonesia, Thailand, and Cambodia. 11 Used only in the Philippines. 12 U.S. production rights owned by the Ferrara Candy Company. 13NA rights and specific trade dress to all packaged coffee and other products under the Starbucks brand owned by Nestlé since 2019. 14 Brand owned by Mars, sold by Nestlé in Canada. 15 Produced by Froneri in the U.S. since 2020.
