319/365: National Raisin Bran Cereal Day*

You may be raisin hell if you skip breakfast today. November 15 is National Raisin Bran Cereal Day!

It’s also National Bundt Day, but I’m not much of a baseball fan, and when I am I like to swing for the fences rather than gently tapping the pitched ball with my bat to make it more difficult to field. What’s that? Wrong kind of “bunt”? Doesn’t matter. We’re celebrating cereal today.

Raisin Bran cereal was first introduced in 1926 by U.S. Mills, under the brand name Skinner’s Raisin Bran. The name was originally trademarked, but in 1944 the District Court of Nebraska ruled the name couldn’t be used as a trademark because A name which is merely descriptive of the ingredients, qualities or characteristics of an article of trade cannot be appropriated as a trademark and the exclusive use of it afforded legal protection. The use of a similar name by another to truthfully describe his own product does not constitute a legal or moral wrong, even if its effect be to cause the public to mistake the origin or ownership of the product. In other words – minus the legalese – if your product contains raisins and bran, you don’t own the name Raisin Bran any more than if your product contained chocolate and milk and you trademarked the name Chocolate Milk™. Not gonna happen, folks. As a result, a number of companies sell their own versions of raisin bran cereal, including Kellogg’s, General Mills, and Post. The cereal is naturally high in fiber, but is sometimes criticized for containing too much sugar.

Raisin Bran was a favorite cereal of mine growing up, but I don’t eat it much anymore these days. It’s too sweet to me, and I agree with Tara that it gets too soggy in milk too quickly. Still, it made for a decent enough breakfast before work this morning!

National Raisin Bran Cereal Day

Related articles

• Soggy Cereal Sales Push Kellogg to Cut Jobs (businessweek.com)
• A Healthy Breakfast (fitnessblog93.wordpress.com)
• Cereal Eats: The Raisin Bran Family Tree (seriouseats.com)