Smorz Cereal

Cereal products that are almost like candy are not new to Americans who love cereal. The Kellogg Company makes many sugary breakfast cereals that are very popular with adults and kids alike. Smorz cereal has been an on and off again product that the Kellogg Company has sold, which was created to embody the delicious chocolate and marshmallow goodness of the s’more in a cereal product.

Smorz cereal was discontinued in December 2013, then brought back in December 2015. It again went off the market in April of 2019, but the Kellogg Company has recently offered the product for sale again through select retailers and online. During the height of this cereal’s popularity, Kellogg’s needed thousands of pounds of chocolate cream and marshmallows each day to make the product and get it shipped to stores around the US.

The recipe that is used to make the current cereal product is largely unchanged, but Kellogg’s likely doesn’t need as many supplies to make Smorz since they offer it for sale in such a limited market these days.

History

The Kellogg Company has been around since 1876. Corn Flakes were the first major product that the company sold, and the crunchy, slightly sweet cereal is still sold today. The product was actually originally made to appeal to elderly people at the Battle Creek Sanitarium and to be a good food option for those who had to eat a vegetarian diet. In the early days, cereal products were a mainstay of many people’s diets due to the affordability of these products and the ease with which they could be eaten by people of all ages.

It’s hard today to imagine cereal products being made solely for the elderly or being made to be just slightly more palatable than something like porridge. Cereal has enjoyed a history rather like gum products, which were originally made just as breath fresheners with really strong flavors. Cereals were originally made with a totally different intention in the late 1800s. Despite the changes that have taken place over time, the Kellogg Company has managed to remain at the leading edge of cereal development. The company has always been willing to try new things, and many of the creative and clever cereal products that they have sold over the years would never have been dreamed up by another company.

The Kellogg Company was also one of the first cereal brands to realize that their products were being eaten primarily during breakfast time, leading to the invention of a variety of uniquely breakfast-friendly products. The Kellogg Company is probably best known for the Eggo Waffle, which is a favorite of kids and adults alike for a satisfying and quick breakfast. Over the many years since the company only made Corn Flakes, the Kellogg brand developed crackers, cookies, and many other kinds of products. 

Smorz cereal was first sold in 2003. This cereal has always been made by the Kellogg Company, and the product was released with the intention of capturing the ooey gooey goodness of the S’more and making it part of a cereal product. The Smorz product includes chocolate graham-flavored corn puffs as well as marshmallows.

Boxes of the original products proclaimed that the cereal inside was, “a rich chocolatey graham cereal with marshmallows”. The boxes were light blue in color, and there was an image of a bowl of Smorz in milk at the bottom of the box. The logo was huge and towered over the cereal at the bottom of the image. The letters were white, and the O in the word “SMORZ” was made to look like a marshmallow. A graham cracker crowned the top of the S in the logo.

Kids were readily attracted to this candy-like cereal, and SMORZ enjoyed a lot of success up until it was discontinued in 2013. This was likely partially in response to growing concern over the amount of sugar in kids’ breakfast products. All makers of cereals and breakfast products felt the pinch of the activist groups trying to crack down on the unhealthy ingredients in foods that were marketed toward kids during this period.

Over time, a variety of cereal products and other beloved kid’s food items were either heavily modified or ceased to be sold. Some of the products that were discontinued just didn’t taste the same without real sugar in the recipe or with reduced amounts of real sugar in the revised product. It is likely that Smorz was a victim of this effort to make food products for kids a bit healthier as the first decade of the 2000s came to a close.

Smorz cereal was released again for sale in 2015. While the re-released Smorz cereal product performed fairly well, the Kellogg Company pulled after just four years. People were sad about this and pleaded with the Kellogg Company to start making it again. In response to consumer demand, the cereal was recently put back on the market, but only in limited locations. You can get Smorz online as well, but you will be unlikely to find it on the shelves of stores unless you live near a Walmart.

Kellogg’s took the two years that Smorz cereal were off the shelves of supermarkets to release a product that they believed would readily replace Smorz and be more appealing to adults as well. The Krave lineup of cereal products were meant to appeal to all ages of consumers and be a new way of branding an old idea. Krave offers a variety of different flavors and has a soft center inside each cereal piece that offers a burst of flavor. Krave comes in Double Chocolate, S’mores, and Chocolate. The S’mores product does offer a similar flavor profile to Smorz, but the cereal pieces and the overall texture of the product are different.

For those who loved the cereal products of the early 2000s, which came complete with marshmallows, different kinds of cereal squares, and things like clusters of granola all in one box, Krave is not a suitable replacement for Smorz. This is probably a big part of why Kellogg’s was willing to bring Smorz back for limited distribution.

The Kellogg Company promises nothing about the potential longevity of Smorz, and it does seem likely that Krave will be the product that they continue to sell in a wider market for the foreseeable future. There are perks to both of these cereal products, and the main difference between them is texture-based. You might want to try Krave S’mores before you knock it, and stock up on some extra boxes of Smorz cereal next time you order some online, just in case the product goes off the market yet again.

Marketing

When Smorz cereal was first sold, the Kellogg Company leaned heavily into the idea that kids would be able to enjoy s’mores without having to go outside or having to make a campfire. Maybe S’mores really were that popular during the early 2000s, or maybe the Kellogg Company assumed that most kids liked them and would be happy to be able to hit the easy button and get their s’mores fix in cereal form.

The original tagline that was used in ads for Smorz was, “Get some Smorz…indoors”, which has a nice rhyming quality and does stick in your mind. Another tagline was, “Bring the S’mores experience home to your breakfast table”. Lots of the television ads for the product were focused on kids talking about how nice it would be to have a campfire and some S’mores. 

In some of the ads, kids would lament how terribly hard it was to make S’mores while they sat at a real campfire and failed to be able to create a neat and tidy S’more. These scenes were interspersed with a kid completing the easy process of pulling a box of cereal off the shelf, pouring it into a bowl with some milk, and excitedly talking about how much the cereal was just like a S’more but better.

There is something to be said for the idea that pouring cereal into a bowl is much easier than making a S’more. You usually do burn the marshmallow, and the graham cracker usually does break in half and make you drop part of your treat on the ground near the campfire. However, there is no real evidence that the experience of eating Smorz cereal is really that much like eating an actual S’more around a campfire. The Kellogg Company was clearly hoping that kids would use their imagination to fill in the gaps between the physical experience of eating this treat in its original form and eating a cereal that was reminiscent of the treat.

Logo

Ingredients:

From the Giantfood Grocery listing:

• Degeminated yellow corn flour
• Sugar
• Marshmallows(sugar, corn syrup, modified corn starch, dextrose, natural and artificial flavor, gelatin)
• Whole grain oat flour
• Fructose
• Vegetable oil (Soybean and Palm)
• Wheat flour
• Whole wheat flour
• Brown sugar syrup
• Contains 2% or less of:
• Salt
• Nonfat milk
• Cocoa processed with alkali
• Caramel color
• Soy lecithin
• Natural and artificial flavor
• BHT for freshness
• Vitamins and minerals
• Reduced iron
• Niacinamide
• Vitamin B6(pyridoxine hydrochloride)
• Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin)
• Vitamin B1 (Thiamin Hydrochloride)
• Folic acid
• Vitamin D3
• Vitamin B12

The Smorz Cereal box includes warnings that the product contains wheat, milk, and soy ingredients.

Nutrition

Serving Size:	0.8 cup (30g)	% Daily Value*
Amount Per Serving
Calories	120
Calories from Fat	20
Total Fat	2g	3%
Saturated Fat	0.5g	3%
Trans Fat	0g
Polyunsaturated Fat	1g
Monounsaturated Fat	0.5g
Cholesterol	0mg	0%
Sodium	135mg	6%
Total Carbohydrates	25g	8%
Dietary Fiber	0.5g	2%
Sugars	13g
Protein	1g
Vitamin A		10%
Vitamin C		25%
Calcium		0%
Iron		25%

• Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000-calorie diet.

Pictures

Ads:

Commercial from 2005:

A taste test: