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General Mills has unveiled its first new cereal brand in 15 years, and it's super on-trend. Tiny Toast is miniature, toast-shaped, and contains no high-fructose corn syrup or artificial flavors. In other words, it's meant to appeal to healthy-minded (wait for it) millennials.
Alan Cunningham, General Mills' senior marketing manager, told CBS News the company "recognized an opportunity within our portfolio and the category for a new offering with wholesome ingredients that appeals to young adults."
According to the company blog, work began on Tiny Toast more than a year ago. "Early on, the team considered a layered cereal. Mike [Evenson, product developer] says people were receptive to the idea in which the cereal pieces would sandwich either a cherry filling or a spread." That concept proved "too expensive and too dense" to pursue, so the company turned instead to toast sprinkled with fruit powders.
The powders (the company also refers to them as "flakes") create uniform coverage on the cereal, which executives say testers preferred over whole slices of fruit. Tiny Toast comes in two flavors: strawberry and blueberry — both admittedly a far cry from the trendiest of toasts: avocado. Of note, tiny, dollhouse-sized avocado toast would fit right into Daily Miniature, the collective of miniature enthusiasts on Instagram.
That General Mills is using words like "wholesome" to market its latest product isn't surprising. The company has actively sought to transform its brand into one that is seemingly health-minded, announcing plans to rid all its cereals of artificial flavors and colors by 2017. It isn't however, looking to join the fray of companies shunning genetically-modified organisms. In fact, General Mills is one of a group of corporations that spent millions to defeat a 2013 initiative that would have required GMO labeling.