Ads We Hate: Frosted Mini Wheats' spelling bee

Posted Jul 7th 2006 8:58AM by Adam Finley
Filed under: Print, Television, Ads We Hate

This ad for Frosted Mini Wheats begins with a young girl at her school spelling bee. She begins to spell "aardvark" incorrectly, but her little edible pal, a Frosted Mini Wheat who is perched on the microphone stand, gives her a bit of coaching and helps her spell the word correctly. It's a cute idea, and it has nothing to do with my mild dislike for the commercial. I too have relied on talking food to help me out in school, and if it weren't for a talking pan of Rice Krispies treats I never would have passed freshman algebra. No, my problem comes later in the commercial, when the announcer states that Frosted Mini Wheats won't cause kids to "be distracted by mid-morning hunger."

Okay, the statement is true, but it applies to breakfast in general, not just Frosted Mini Wheats. If you eat a decent breakfast, you won't be hungry come mid-morning. It doesn't really matter what you ate. It's like those old Snickers commercials where people talked about how satisfying the candy bar was and how it really filled them up. Right, because that's what food does. The whole commercial could be summed up with, "eating makes you not hungry anymore." Fair enough, but what the heck does that have to do with Frosted Mini Wheats, specifically?

Reader Comments

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1. Doesn't it bother you that the move the kid makes in the Bee isn't allowed? You can't restart a word - once you screw up, it's out there. That annoys me the most about this ad.

Posted at 2:24PM on Jul 7th 2006 by Paul

2. Actually, there are foods that do a better job of keeping people from feeling hungry for a while. In my own personal experince, shredded wheat does do that for me better than other cereals (Grape Nuts is the one that works best for me in that regard).

Let's face it, lazy folks like me who eat cereal for breakfast aren't going to the trouble of actually eating that ideal "Balanced Breakfast" that cereal makers are obliged to picture in their ads. So, I want my cereal to (a) fill me up and (b) not leave me feeling empty around 10 or 11am.

and - yeah - the whole spelling bee thing is fudged up bad and probably annoys the "bee" fans out there more than the ad appeals to other folks.

Posted at 8:06PM on Jul 7th 2006 by Tim in Augusta

3. I concur with Paul. The fact that the girl starts spelling "A, R...", then stops, then starts over and spells "aardvark" correctly, which is the bee equivalent of running from third base back to second, really really annoys me. You just _know_ that countless elementary-school kids will be whining at their school spelling bee next year: "But that girl in the _commercial_ was allowed to start her word over when _she_ messed up... waaaaaahhhhh..."

Posted at 12:05AM on Jul 20th 2006 by Warren

4. I have been looking for this commercial/video - any idea where I might be able to find it? Thanks:)

Posted at 2:26PM on Aug 12th 2006 by Redilocks

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