Original subtitles

The first two titans of cereal

created a $398 billion industry

and revolutionized the most important meal of the day.

And now, in the 1960s,

they're gearing up to do it again,

with a new arsenal of innovations.

What would normally take someone hours to bake

was suddenly there, popping up in a matter of moments.

There was no product like this in stores.

It was almost a new category of food.

A rivalry is renewed.

I told you we needed to act now.

These guys have been duking it out

since the early part of the 20th century.

They'll channel the power of modern technology.

The first company to harness toaster technology

in the breakfast market

stands to make millions.

Completely reinvent how food is sold.

There's a way to reach consumers

in a way there never has been before.

Yabba dabba doo!

What was not to love?

It was an edible cartoon.

They taste like joy.

And revolutionize the way

Americans start their day.

Now, you have created a new breakfast category,

a new taste sensation, an innovation,

and something that will populate American breakfast tables

for years to come.

It's 1962, and for the past 70 years,

ready-made breakfast has been a battleground

between two major players, Kellogg's and Post.

Before then, most breakfasts were leftovers, meats, eggs.

Suddenly, there is this move to things like cereal,

and it's quick.

Since its inception,

Kellogg's has pioneered healthy cereals

like Corn Flakes, Special K, and All-Bran.

While Post has its flagship icon Grape Nuts,

they're largely following Kellogg's

with imitations like their version of Corn Flakes,

Post Toasties.

They've got Post Rice Krinkles,

sort of just the bad version of Rice Krispies.

People just said "No."

They looked at it and they was like,

"Oh, if I want Rice Krispies, I'll just get Rice Krispies.

I don't need to buy Rice Krinkles."

Post has always sort of been second fiddle to Kellogg's.

Now, Post Cereal has a new president.

C.W. Cook, he's clearly a very ambitious guy.

When he becomes president in '62,

it's almost like when, you know,

when Kennedy became president,

he was like, "We're gonna send man to the moon."

I think C.W. Cook, his own moonshot,

was, "We're gonna be number one in breakfast foods."

Cook wants to get there with innovation,

not imitation.

Post, they've been losing the big games,

and they wanna win a championship, finally.

Cook directs his top food technician,

Stan Reesman,

to create a product to lead Post into a new frontier.

He's a product development guy,

and he's tasked with coming up with,

really, food innovations.

Stan Reesman has been at Post for 20 years,

and he really wants to leave his mark.

Okay, Stan.

I'll bite.

What's with the dog food?

Reesman's unprecedented strategy

is to actually pivot Post away from cereal.

At the time, there's a popular product

that was a dog food called the Gaines Burger,

which was really innovative,

because you had a soft form of dog food

that didn't require refrigeration,

so you didn't have to worry about it spoiling

and getting a lot of bacteria.

The thing is, the process of making Gaines Burgers

was a process of dehydration.

Moisture is notoriously unforgiving

when it comes to bacteria, and pathogens,

and all kinds of stuff

that will send you running to the bathroom.

So, he was looking at that and thinking,

"Okay, what else can we make for breakfast

using this process?"

We're about to reinvent breakfast.

You gotta give him credit,

for a guy who looked at dog food,

and he sees maybe the future of breakfast.

Meanwhile, Kellogg's executive

William LaMothe has worked his way up

through the ranks of the cereal company

for the last 12 years.

William E. LaMothe is a true go-getter.

Straight out of Fordham University,

he goes to work for Kellogg's,

and immediately shows

an incredible aptitude for advertising,

so much so that he eventually gets promoted

to vice president of product development and marketing.

Under LaMothe's leadership,

Kellogg's has had success, starting in the '50s,

by leaning into a new demographic

who they believe is not looking for

bland, nutritious cereals.

Now, the sort of war years,

you saw sugar rationing and everything.

Post-war, you've got all those resources back.

You've also got all these people coming back from war,

all these kids being born.

Kids, of course, love sugar,

so that by the time you get into the '50s and '60s,

you've got an entirely new category of consumer,

consuming, believe it or not,

19 billion bowlfuls of sugary cereal per year.

That is a huge market.

Kellogg's sugary pioneers,

including Sugar Pops, Sugar Smacks, and Frosted Flakes,

have cemented them as the most popular cereal company.

But Kellogg's can't lay claim

to having the top cereal in the country.

That honor belongs to a bland, unsweetened, oat cereal

from a smaller company.

So, there's General Mills.

They had the number one cereal in America.

Cheerios, with power protein.

Kellogg's basically invented breakfast.

It drives LaMothe crazy

that they don't have the number one cereal.

LaMothe tried to capture the magic of Cheerios

with his own oat cereal.

Kellogg's new OKs.

But OKs cereal fails to gain traction,

and sales have been in a steady decline.

OK is not really a fun cereal.

K is not a really fun letter.

Why would you choose a name like OKs?

Why would you want to have a cereal that's just okay?

OKs is losing money,

but despite pressure from the Kellogg's board

to stop production,

LaMothe refuses to admit defeat.

LaMothe is the kind of guy that,

if he had 10 successes and one failure,

he would obsess about that one failure.

Gimme another month.

LaMothe is about to risk his reputation

on a last-ditch idea to salvage his OKs debacle.

You can save millions of dollars, and tons of time,

in figuring out ways to use what you've already got,

and figure out a way

to creatively put a fresh coat of paint on them

that doesn't require

new lines being built at your factories.

He sees how well Cheerios is doing,

and they're essentially these little, beautiful O shapes.

LaMothe makes the decision to ditch the K

and just sell the Os,

but to avoid simply being a Cheerios clone,

he ups the ante.

Let's go with what we know works.

Starting with the word sugar.

Realizing that he really can't dethrone Cheerios,

LaMothe says to himself, you know what?

I am not gonna be outdone in this sugary cereal market.

But it's his next innovation that will

make this cereal unlike any that have come before,

trying to incorporate a flavor

that has yet to be used in any Kellogg cereal.

Fruit.

They absolutely do not have any real fruit,

but they taste like what people imagine

fruit should taste like.

They taste like joy.

It looks like Cheerios,

but a little bit more fantastical, and exciting,

and kid-like.

They weren't different flavors,

but they were different colors.

Very cool, very exciting.

Unlike anything that Kellogg's had ever had before.

LaMothe's new creation

will evolve into a brighter cereal with six different colors

and will one day sell more than 90 million boxes a year

and become a cereal aisle icon.

Fruit Loops.

But right now, it's just another sugary cereal

in a crowded market.

LaMothe knows he needs another big hook

to set Fruit Loops apart.

While LaMothe has his sight set

on having the nation's number one cereal,

his rivals at Post are thinking bigger, beyond cereal.

Stan Reesman has been experimenting

with Gaines Burger dog food

and ways to apply its food dehydration technology.

One food that really dehydrates well is fruit.

It can be dry, but it still has its flavor.

So, Stan Reesman wants to figure out

how to use dehydrated fruit in a breakfast product.

Maybe we can make a breakfast pastry

so it's not completely dry,

but you don't have to refrigerate it.

Reesman has set

a near-impossible task for himself,

and it would be a first in the breakfast market.

Create a dehydrated, shelf-stable fruit pastry.

Anyone who's ever gone to a bakery

and bought pastries knows they go stale.

Jellies, equally, turn spoiled, go rancid,

and become a health hazard, let alone taste terrible.

This is a very challenging scientific problem,

and if you can figure that out,

you've probably got a winner.

Reesman and Post will figure it out,

and they will pioneer a new category of breakfast food

that will be worth close to $1 billion.

But one of the biggest mistakes

in the history of American food

is about to drop their idea right into Kellogg's lap.

In 1963, Kellogg's is about to unleash the cereal

that could solidify them

as the undisputed number one breakfast makers in the nation.

But executive William LaMothe

knows that it takes more than a good product to stand out

in the cutthroat cereal market.

William LaMothe realized you needed a good slogan,

and, in many cases, a good mascot.

In the 1950s and '60s,

advertising is more crucial than ever

thanks to a new, popular medium.

Television is new the hearth for the family.

So, there's a way to reach consumers

in a way there never has been before.

Plus, with cartoons, you immediately reach children.

And Kellogg's is at the forefront.

In 1955, Rice Krispies characters

Snap, Crackle, and Pop

appeared for the first time on TV.

I'm Snap.

I'm Crackle.

I'm Pop.

These are not just pushing the cereals,

they're pushing kind of a cartoon connection with them.

So, Tony the Tiger is almost as cartoon-like and lovable

as Bugs Bunny.

They're great!

What was not to love?

It was an edible cartoon.

The driving force

behind these iconic characters

is none other than William LaMothe.

Now, he needs to work his magic again.

The man behind Snap, Crackle, Pop,

Tony the Tiger,

the sunshine scooping down two scoops of raisins,

introduced Toucan Sam to the world.

Follow your nose.

Yahoo!

It always knows.

Toucans are known for jumping through trees

and foraging for fruit.

Ironically, toucans cannot smell,

but they have a colorful beak,

and I think that's why Kellogg's picked it, you know,

the colorful beak matched their cereal.

Fruit Loops bursts onto the market

and will eventually reach annual sales of $270 million.

But LaMothe doesn't know the breakfast battleground

is about to shift away from cereal entirely.

Post Cereal's Stan Reesman

presents C.W. Cook with his newly-developed

oven-warmed pastry with strawberry filling.

He's an innovator

and did something no one had ever seen before

when it came to the creation of pastries.

This is something that's gonna, you know,

change the face of breakfast and how we have our mornings.

Good.

But.

So, Cook thought of something that Reesman

really hadn't thought about.

Kids have to turn on the oven

to make themselves breakfast.

That's not gonna fly.

This is the 1960s.

You know, mom was home, and mom cooked everything.

The idea that children would heat up the oven,

put a pastry in the oven, was not very convenient,

but most importantly, it wasn't safe.

But children can make a bowl with cereal on their own,

and it's quick, it's easy.

So, Reesman goes back to the drawing board.

They're really trying to create

a very easy-to-use experience,

have a warm, delicious pastry in an instant.

In 1963,

the microwave is not yet a common household item,

but Reesman sees untapped potential

in another appliance that is.

We don't think twice

about throwing a slice of bread in a toaster.

Well, now imagine a world

where toasters are the new vanguard of technology.

Although General Electric

invented the toaster in 1909,

it wasn't until 1926

that the first easy to use pop-up toaster was released.

But the toaster is so prohibitively expensive.

While toasters in the 1930s

could cost up to about $540 in today's money,

by the 1960s, the price has dropped to about $11,

but its only function

was toasting bread.

Pretty much all you used it for

was to turn bread into toast, right?

That was it.

Which means that the first company

to harness toaster technology in the breakfast market

stands to make millions.

Reesman alters the dimensions of his pastry

into toaster-sized squares.

Boom, you can throw in a toaster.

Ah, there's that delicious, warm, fruity filling

with the crusty, flaky layers around it,

and it works.

What would normally take someone hours to bake

was suddenly there, popping up in a matter of moments.

There was no product like this in stores.

It was almost a new category of food.

And they came up with a name.

Country Squares.

Bet you thought I was gonna say Pop-Tarts.

I think when Post named their breakfast pastry

the Country Squares,

they were really trying to invoke that feeling

of something that's homemade.

C.W. Cook believed he found the product

that will finally put Post ahead of Kellogg's.

Boy, C.W. Cook,

he really wants to stick it to Kellogg's.

And in February, 1964,

he publishes a national press release

to tout their new creation.

The only problem?

The launch is still months away.

They've announced it, they haven't released it.

Stan Reesman was still figuring out

the mass production ramifications of this

when they announced it.

He's just like, "I figured out how to make one."

You know, "I didn't figure out how to make a million."

One of the things you're taught

is never telegraph your punch.

Post did not get this memo.

Now, the whole food industry

knows that Country Squares are coming,

including Kellogg's.

A toasted breakfast.

LaMothe realizes he has a small window

to beat his arch-rival, Post,

and create his version of the toaster pastry.

Now, the race is on

for LaMothe to hit the market first,

ensuring that Kellogg's, not Post,

is the name that changes breakfast as we know it

and reaps the untold millions in profit

which could have been Post's.

In 1964, the Post Company announced to the world

that they invented a revolutionary new product,

the first shelf-stable pastry,

which is also the first toaster pastry,

but the announcement is premature.

It's a great idea,

but they don't have the product yet.

Post, in the breakfast game,

had been number two for a long time.

Maybe making that announcement early

was a desire to sort of throw a punch.

Now, Kellogg's VP, William LaMothe,

is tipped off

and determined to perfect the same idea

and race it to market first.

So, he does what any innovator in his position would do.

He turns to Post.

Not the company.

Plant manager of Keebler, Bill Post.

Though not a part of the Kellogg's umbrella

at the time,

the Keebler Company is also located in Battle Creek

and has been mass-producing cookies

for over a hundred years.

And for the past 20 years,

37-year-old Bill Post has worked his way up

through the ranks at Keebler,

gaining knowledge of how to create baked goods.

They looked to Bill and said, "Can you help?

Can you bring this vision to life?"

Bill Post is given weeks

to back-engineer a product

that Stan Reesman worked on for over a year.

Bill Post, he can make a cracker, he can make a cookie,

but now you have to create a toaster pastry

that won't burn

and will come out to market faster

than Post's Country Squares.

Initially,

when the first iterations of the pastry came out,

the steam inside of them

was causing them to explode in the toaster.

Then, not only is your toaster pastry ruined,

your toaster's ruined.

That would've been an instant brand killer.

So, because he is a self-taught technologist

and a problem-solver first,

Bill Post has an innovation

that most home bakers already know about.

He employs a technique used in pie making

and is reminiscent of Keebler's popular saltine crackers.

Docking holes are basically

little, tiny pinpricks in the dough,

but they allow for the steam to be released.

You now have a more durable dough

that won't explode, won't expand,

and still give you that delicious, flaky pastry crust

that you're looking for.

With the code cracked,

Kellogg's can now rush their toaster pastry into production.

There were a lot of people that

pushed back on this idea with Bill,

and said, "That's not gonna work in a toaster,

you will not find success with that."

Bill Post is one of the coolest characters to me.

One of the things that really defined his success

was that, whenever anyone told him

something couldn't be done,

he took it kind of personally

and decided he was gonna prove them wrong.

While at Post,

Stan Reesman has completed the development of his pastry,

but the release of Country Squares is still delayed.

There was battles about the flavors,

and the distribution, and the packaging, and the pricing.

Stan Reesman, he's gotta be pulling his hair out.

Like, throw me a line.

Let's get this thing in stores,

people are gonna go crazy when they see it.

And they did go crazy when they saw it,

except it wasn't Country Squares.

By the fall of 1964,

Kellogg's has one final hurdle

before they unleash their own pastry on the market.

They need a name.

The interests of teenagers and of kids

start to become more central

to the mainstream of American culture.

So, you see brands who are distinctly trying to court

that younger consumer,

and you see the tastes of young people

actually be what's considered cool.

William LaMothe, marketing genius that he is,

realizes that Andy Warhol's pop art movement of the time

is sweeping the nation.

The pop art movement was a

cultural phenomenon in the late 1950s and '60s.

Pop art was essentially

an artistic appreciation of that which we saw every day.

The most famous pop artist, Andy Warhol,

burst onto the scene with his iconic paintings

of Marilyn Monroe, Campbell's Soup, and others,

transforming these beloved celebrities and brands

into fun, avant garde art.

So, to embrace the movement,

William LaMothe renames the toaster scone, the Pop-Tart.

On September 14th, 1964,

Kellogg's beats Post to market,

releasing their first non-cereal creation.

And while Post had visions of reinventing breakfast

with their toaster pastries,

LaMothe aims bigger.

Store owners were actually forbidden

from putting Pop-Tarts in the cereal aisle.

They wanted Pop-Tarts to be perceived

as a any-time-of-day snack,

not just a breakfast food.

Back then, snacking was

something done rather infrequently.

Whereas today, snacking starts when you wake up

and it lasts until you go to bed.

Put some Pop-Tarts in the toaster, and boom,

you have something that you can snack on.

Although they didn't invent

the first toaster pastry,

Kellogg's Pop-Tarts are an instant smash.

People went crazy for them.

It was a huge innovation.

It was the first thing, you know, other than bread,

you would put in a toaster.

It was so easy, even a kid could do it.

Pop-Tarts give people even greater convenience

and greater diversity in terms of what they can eat

in the morning, on their way out the door,

on their way to school, on their way to work.

It hit all the marks.

I told you we needed to act now.

Can you imagine,

you have come up with this thing

that you know is gonna work, right?

And then someone else does it first?

- I was ready, it was done. - All right.

I couldn't get past your red tape.

It's gotta just tear your soul apart.

I gotta go.

I mean, ah, I can't imagine.

Two months after Pop-Tarts' release,

Country Squares finally makes it to market.

They did an orange-pineapple flavor,

which maybe in a juice is a great combination,

but in Country Squares, it just wasn't very good.

Pop-Tart has now dominated the market,

rendering any competition completely worthless.

From the start,

sales of Country Squares are flat,

and Post is once again second place.

You know, it's ironic that the company

who really innovated the product

did not get to be the star of its own show.

Country Squares didn't work out.

Maybe at this point it's time to choose a different battle.

Reesman isn't going down without a fight.

This time, he'll hit Kellogg's with a page

from their own playbook.

He lost the pastry battle,

but he can still win the cereal war.

It's 1964, and Post food technician Stan Reesman

is reeling after Kellogg's beat him to market

with their own toaster pastries.

So, Stan Reesman is trying to figure out

what else can we do to stick it to Kellogg's?

I think it was Einstein who said,

you know, inspiration is everywhere.

So, Reesman, he's looking at

their Post Rice Krinkles cereal, and thinking,

what can we do with these products we already have?

And then he's looking at Fruit Loops, right?

A Kellogg's product, and is like, "Hmm, interesting."

He's like, "Wait a second,

we could take this hit product,

and our currently-not-a-hit product,

and they seem like they're a match made in heaven."

Meanwhile,

Kellogg's Pop-Tarts have hit the market with a bang.

I don't think anyone could have prepared

for the success that Pop-Tart was going to have.

They've sold out completely.

Kellogg's, and William LaMothe, and Bill Post,

were under the gun almost from the beginning.

They had to create it and get it to the market

faster than the Post-announced Country Square.

Now, it goes to market, it's a hit, but it sells out.

LaMothe worries that,

without Pop-Tarts on shelves,

consumers may turn to other products,

like Post's Country Squares.

With no product on the market,

and a nation demanding a toaster pastry.

Well, you've now left yourself wide open

to the possibility of a competitor meeting the demand

that you simply can't.

It kind of was a disaster.

Food, it's all about distribution.

He's gotta come up with some really novel,

you know, solutions.

And without a quick fix,

Pop-Tart's success may just be a flash in the pan.

Within weeks,

Stan Reesman has transformed Post's Rice Krinkles

into a colorful, fruit-flavored cereal.

He created this thing that feels brand new,

even though it's sort of just from the ingredients

that they already had sitting around.

What do we call them?

What do they look like?

Chips?

Pebbles.

Pebbles.

They named the small, colorful rice flakes

Fruity Pebbles.

Nice job, Stan.

I think we got it.

Nice job.

Before sending Fruity Pebbles to market,

Post will look to employ a beloved spokesman,

transforming it from basic new cereal

into a breakfast table powerhouse.

Over at Kellogg's,

LaMothe is facing down a public relations nightmare.

Pop-Tarts is completely sold out nationwide.

William LaMothe's a savvy marketing man.

He decides to embrace it.

They release a slogan,

"Oops, we goofed."

They put it on billboards, they put it everywhere.

A complete admission of the fact

that they didn't make enough

of America's first, and now favorite, toaster pastry.

It's an ad campaign that LaMothe hopes

will buy Kellogg some time.

But, as everybody knows,

from sneakerheads like me

to collectors of art or fine wines,

limited supply, well, that only increases demand.

Two weeks after it's released to the market,

Pop-Tarts completely sells out of stores.

And though LaMothe has saved face with some honesty,

creating a clever, "Oops, we goofed" ad campaign,

demand for Pop-Tarts has only skyrocketed.

People were obsessed with this product.

It was something that everybody wanted to try.

So, they were ramping up

and doing a level of manufacturing

they had never done before.

Kellogg's pours nearly $20 million

into equipment and factory expansion

in order to get Pop-Tarts back into the hands

of every consumer across the country.

The staff, the workers,

they were all working a lot longer shifts,

third shifts, to try to keep up with the demand.

Kellogg's revamped production line

has them replenishing store shelves,

to the delight of loyal customers.

And over the decades,

the Pop-Tart will evolve into a true American icon.

There aren't a ton of products

that start out super successful and stay super successful,

and we've seen that with the Pop-Tart.

After months in development,

Post is nearly ready to unleash

their brand new Fruity Pebbles cereal.

And like all other kids' cereals, they need a mascot.

It's always vital to have an exciting, lively mascot.

You want to interact with kids and have this image.

But the market is really getting jammed.

Mascots are everywhere.

Dig 'Em the Frog, the Trix rabbit, Tony the Tiger.

So, they had to figure out a way

to stand out from other similar products in the marketplace.

While LaMothe, at Kellogg's,

is the king of original mascots,

Post wants to up the ante and do something bigger.

Any mascot that already has some familiarity

with the general public,

people are just going to gravitate to that

before a brand new character.

So, they tie it together

with one of the biggest sitcom hits

that happened to be animated in the '60s.

Yabba dabba doo!

Yabba dabba do not count out Post.

Spokesmen were big back then.

They would have celebrities being spoke,

but they said, "Okay, we're gonna get Fred Flintstone,

put him on this cereal."

And, boy, they made magic.

Try the Flintstones' new Fruity Pebbles.

Inspired by the character

of Pebbles Flintstone,

Fruity Pebbles is the first Post cereal

to join forces with a television series.

Most companies that are beginning with a mascot

have to have some kind of origin story.

They've gotta invest children emotionally.

You'd always had these kind of, you know,

cutesy animals, for example,

but they didn't have a show that went along with it

to kind of drive it.

Kids know Fred Flintstone.

So, we've got somebody who's easily recognizable,

slap him on the box,

and voila, built-in target audience.

As a kid, looking at the Flintstones,

you're obsessed with the world they live in, right?

Fruity Pebbles does look like a cereal

that you could have found in Bedrock.

We live in a day and age

where there are streaming services,

where you could watch whatever you want

at any time you want.

Well, that was not the case

when "The Flintstones" were airing on television.

So, cereals like Fruity Pebbles were really special,

because that was how you kind of

carried the magic of the cartoon you loved

into the times you couldn't watch the cartoon itself.

In October of 1971,

this novel partnership gives both

the new cereal and the syndicated cartoon

a big boost in popularity.

By the time they're coming up with this,

"The Flintstones" is almost off the air,

but after the partnership, it's in syndication nonstop.

So, Fruity Pebbles is a hit out of the gate,

and it was a big one.

I'm sure Kellogg's was like, "Whoa."

You know, "That one,

we didn't expect that coming from these guys."

And it was a big shot.

With Fruity Pebbles

becoming the favorite debut cereal of 1971,

Post launches a chocolatey spinoff,

Cocoa Pebbles.

- Yeah. - It's new Cocoa Pebbles.

And that's a hit, too.

Chocolatey good.

Cocoa Pebbles give you chocolate milk at the end.

You gotta love that.

Meanwhile, food companies nationwide

are desperate to gain their own foothold

in the kid-friendly breakfast market.

In the wake of the success of Pop-Tarts,

food manufacturers of all shapes and colors

are trying to figure out,

what else can we turn into a shape

that can go into a toaster?

In San Jose, California,

Frank Dorsa, an unknown, independent food engineer,

has been experimenting with his own toaster product.

Frank Dorsa loved tinkering with things

and inventing things.

He and his two brothers decided to start a business,

and their business really took off in the 1950s.

Their first product

is a popular new brand of mayonnaise called Eggo,

but it won't be mayonnaise that he's famous for.

It'll be the $200 million jackpot

that rivals Pop-Tarts in popularity.

By the early 1970s,

Kellogg's Pop-Tarts has helped the toaster

become a common household appliance,

with over 50 million of them in American homes.

Toaster technology becomes even more refined,

the price comes down,

they're able to be to be made cheaper and lighter

to give people even greater convenience

and greater diversity

in terms of what they can eat in the morning,

convenience that no self-respecting homeowner

wanted to be without.

In San Jose, California,

Frank Dorsa is working on his own contribution

to the booming toaster market.

But Dorsa already has a popular flagship product.

One of the biggest acclaims they got for their mayonnaise

was that it had higher egg content than anyone else.

Apparently, this is a quality

that a lot of people really liked.

The popular high egg-content

in their mayonnaise

inspires their company name, Eggo.

Eggo rides the success of their mayonnaise

with a notable lineup of convenience foods

like potato chips and ready-to-make waffle mix.

With waffles, at the time,

the prevailing wisdom dates back to 1896

to the "Fannie Farmer Cookbook,"

where adding yeast to this batter

helps it rise overnight,

creating that fluffiness,

and contributing to the crisp that you get

the following day.

But the problem with this is,

it takes a little bit of advanced planning.

So, the dry mix that Frank Dorsa developed

was pretty remarkable,

in that it really took a lot of the legwork

out of making waffles.

All you had to do was just add milk.

Having a dry mix allowed you to spontaneously

wake up and say, "You know what?

I could really go for some waffles, right now."

Dorsa is determined

to make waffles even more convenient.

When you're making something like waffles,

you have to preheat that waffle iron.

You have to add just the right amount of batter.

We've all added too much,

but then you have waffle batter

that drips down the sides of the waffle iron

and it is no fun to clean up.

If I was a high schooler in the '60s,

and I wanted to make some waffles,

I would need to be doing a lot of work

that I don't know if I would wanna be doing

as a high schooler.

Dorsa believes he can create

a whole pre-made waffle for consumers

by using a new method in food technology.

Flash freezing.

Flash freezing is an alternative to the old method,

which was just freezing over a period of time.

That slower method tends to create

these larger crystals of ice.

The problem is, when you thaw the food,

the flavor drains out with the water.

Flash freezing fixes that problem,

because it freezes right through immediately,

instantaneously,

so there's none of those crystals,

so it maintains the flavor.

Dorsa develops the first frozen waffle.

He took the waffle,

something just about everyone loves,

and the toaster, that was just about

every household in the country,

and combined it with flash freezing technology,

and created a whole new dimension.

Not only breakfast foods,

but American foods, and toaster foods, forever.

Frank Dorsa's really capturing lightning in a bottle

with creating a fully-formed, fully-fledged waffle

in frozen format

that's becoming available for more and more Americans.

This revolutionized how waffle lovers

can have waffles for breakfast.

We can just take those frozen waffles,

put them in the toaster, and then all you need is syrup.

This concept doesn't have a name yet.

Frank decides to make a portmanteau.

He puts together the word frozen, the word waffles,

come together to make

the very catchy, I think, word froffles.

Dorsa's froffle has caught the attention

of the biggest name in breakfast.

William LaMothe of Kellogg's realizes,

"Hey, we know we can put a pastry in the toaster.

Now our competitors do too.

We have to find the next great thing to put in the toaster.

Why not a waffle?"

LaMothe summons Frank Dorsa

to Battle Creek Michigan,

and in 1970, Kellogg's buys Dorsa's frozen waffle.

Kellogg's, as an international breakfast conglomerate,

has the reach to put Froffles in every American household.

But before LaMothe

launches Froffles nationwide,

he reconsiders the name.

The name Froffle is, technically speaking,

stupid.

So, he looked back

to one of Frank Dorsa's early developments,

mayonnaise, and potato chips, the Eggo brand.

So, LaMothe chooses a name

that literally means waffles to me

and just about everyone in the United States.

It's now the Eggo Waffle.

So, with the invention of the Eggo,

suddenly you had this opportunity

to take it outta your freezer, throw it in the toaster,

and have it done for kids.

Well, the marketing mind of LaMothe wins again.

He creates a slogan that has withstood the test of time.

Leggo my Eggo.

The marketing around the Eggo waffle, "Leggo my Eggo,"

was brilliant,

and I think echoed what happened in

households across the country,

where siblings battled to be the first, or the last,

to eat the Eggo waffles that were still left in the box.

So, because of Frank Dorsa's ingenuity,

you take something that is as beloved as the waffle,

and the marketing savvy of William E. LaMothe.

Well, now you have created a new breakfast category,

a new taste sensation, an innovation,

and something that will populate

American breakfast tables for years to come.

The Eggo purchase would result in $115 million

in annual frozen waffle sales,

and now, makes up to $186 million.

Today, Kellogg's has combined its two toaster all-stars

into one treat, the Eggo Pop-Tart.

Kellogg's not only became the first word,

and first name, in terms of the American breakfast table,

they redefined breakfast in America,

and maybe the world as we know it.

People still, in the 21st century,

are talking about two scoops of raisins,

Snap, Crackle, and Pop,

Leggo my Eggo.

For a long time, breakfast was, frankly, very boring,

and then suddenly, there was this sort of

explosion of joy in the morning,

this idea that you could have fun

with something that came out of a box.

Kellogg's has released

over 25 different flavors of Pop-Tart

since their debut in 1964,

and still introducing new varieties to this day.

Pop-Tart's massive sales reach

nearly 2 billion units annually.

But despite all the innovation and reinvention of breakfast,

cereal still reigns supreme.

I love Fruit Loops,

but Fruity Pebbles, the way the milk hits them,

when you can scoop up

such a high pile of Fruity Pebbles in a bowl,

and you get that nice crunch,

and all the flavor just pops out.

1.4 billion bowls of Post's Pebbles

are eaten each year.

There's still something magical, though,

about, like, the ice-cold milk with the crunch of cereal.

How could you not love this?

I just want to salute every teacher

that had to contend with a room full of kids

that just consumed bowls of cereal like this.

This had to be rocket fuel

in the system of a first grader.