WATCH: Think you can stomach the taste of onion-flavoured cereal? South Koreans are loving it
|Published
The bizarre flavour is being introduced by Kellogg’s after customers voted for it as part of a publicity stunt back in 2004. Picture: YouTube.com The bizarre flavour is being introduced by Kellogg’s after customers voted for it as part of a publicity stunt back in 2004. Picture: YouTube.com
London - For most of us, flavoured cereal means some lumps of dried banana or maybe a few raisins.
Families in South Korea, however, will soon be filling their breakfast bowls with something that sounds a little less appetising – green onion cereal.
The bizarre flavour is being introduced by Kellogg’s after customers voted for it as part of a publicity stunt back in 2004.
Makers assumed that chocolate-flavoured Cheki would win over green onion-flavoured Chaka, due to the tastes of children, however South Korean voters had other ideas.
The firm had launched a light- hearted advert for Chex, which look like Shreddies, asking Koreans to pick either chocolate or green onion flavour.
Bosses expected chocolate to triumph easily but the public had other ideas, with a surge of votes for green onion.
In a panic, Kellogg’s claimed some people had voted twice and declared the chocolate flavour – depicted by a cartoon character called Cheki – the winner. But internet users branded him a "tyrant" and spent 16 years campaigning for "democratically elected" green onion to be made available.
Chaka fans cried foul, and decried Cheki's subsequent 16-year rule as that of an illegitimate tyrant. Chaka remained in the public consciousness via regular hashtags like #PrayForChex, and memes depicting the onion character as a freedom fighter.
"We never expected consumers would be interested in this product for over 16 years," Kim Hee-yeon, a spokeswoman for Kellogg's Korea, told Reuters. "Every time we launched new cereals or had promotional events, online communities would repeatedly ask for the flavour."