Kellogg’s Corn Flakes adverts, 1936

Written By Dr Craig Horner.

Kellogg’s have been putting breakfast cereals on my table for all my life. They’re such a part of the furniture, if you will, that it was a shock all those years ago when I found the company wasn’t British. They are, of course, American, and were first marketed there in the 1890s, coming to the United Kingdom in the 1920s. In both the US and the UK they have been promoted ever since.

I came across an example of this when I was idling through National Geographic magazine for the 1930s. At the time, Kellogg’s were running a campaign for Corn Flakes based on the slogan ‘Nothing takes the place of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes’, with simple artwork to accompany them. I’m showing six of them here, each appearing once in the issues of National Geographic from June to November 1936.

There’s lots here to interest us about how they were marketed. Classlessness is one clear thread: my favourite, ‘Postcript’, depicts a society couple dressed up to the nines who, having returned from a party, find Corn Flakes are great at staving off that feeling of hunger. Another strand suggests that Corn Flakes can be eaten at any time of day: ‘Light lunch’ and ‘Fair and cooler’ suggest you have them for lunch. ‘Sweet and low’ and ‘Fourth meal’, like ‘Postscript’, assure us they make great late-evening snacks. ‘Applause’, meanwhile, emphasises that this is a food for people of all ages. Implied throughout is the simplicity of preparing them: you just add milk.

At the Richard Roberts Archive we have excellent runs of National Geographic and are currently cutting up duplicates to go in our product files. First appearing in the US in 1888, National Geographic is still in print now, albeit only through subscription. It is also available in country-specific editions: most of ours are the US version. That detail is also underlined by a line in most of these adverts for Kellogg’s, where it is emphasised that the Corn Flakes are manufactured in Battle Creek in Michigan (where the Kellogg brothers had their sanitarium, and depicted in Alan Parker’s 1994 film ‘The Road to Wellville’).

If you’d like to see our National Geographics, or help out with our product filing, get in touch on contactus@richardrobertsarchive.org.uk 

Dr Craig Horner.

Craig Horner was until recently senior lecturer in history at Manchester Metropolitan University, and is now retired. His research is in late-Victorian mobility, especially cycling and motoring.

He has written on early motoring, most recently The Emergence of Bicycling and Automobility in Britain published by Bloomsbury 2021 and edits Aspects of Motoring History for the Society of Automotive Historians in Britain.

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The Ocean Times, 25 January 1958