Voting Station

General Mills

Please vote to see the next celebrity.

Corporation

The Resume

    (June 20, 1928- )
    Headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota
    Founded as Minneapolis Milling Company (1856)
    Founders: Cadwallader C. Washburn, John Crosby, and James Ford Bell
    Beame the Washburn-Crosby Company (1877)
    Introduced Betty Crocker (1921)
    Merged with James Ford Bell Milling Company as General Mills (1928)
    Specializes in breakfast cereals, baking mixes, health snacks, and yogurt
    Products include Wheaties, Cheerios, Chex, Lucky Charms, Pillsbury, Nature Valley, and Bisquick

Why General Mills might be annoying:

    It is sometimes conflated with General Foods (they are two separate entities).
    It tricked the world into thinking Betty Crocker was a real person.
    It had a Cereal War with Kellog’s and Quaker Oats in the mid-1990's.
    It gave the world the first ever Olive Garden restaurant.
    It sponsored the Addams Family knockoff The Munsters.
    It forced The Bullwinkle Show to abandon a storyline where Boris Badenov planned to control the world's economy by counterfeiting cereal box tops because it offended executives sponsoring the program.
    Its depiction of Betty Crocker eventually led to a class action suit from N.O.W for what they claimed promoted gender discrimination (1972).
    It got in on the 'candy for breakfast' racket by introducing Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs in 1994 (cuz, why not?).

Why General Mills might not be annoying:

    It introduced the first ready-to-eat cereal in 1921.
    It may have aired the first radio jingle ('Have You Tried Wheaties?').
    Its team invented the Nerf Ball, the first deep-sea submersible and the Ryan flight recorder (the 'Black Box').
    It originated the trend of featuring well-known athletes on cereal boxes, starting with Lou Gehrig in 1934.
    The original 1976 Bruce Jenner Wheaties Box (unopened) sold for up to $300 when the athlete announced his transition to Caitlyn Jenner in 2015.
    It supported relief missions during World War I and produced food for Army rations during World War II.
    It developed a food safety system that was later adopted by the U.S. Food and Drug administration in 1972.
    They got blowback for airing a Cheerios commercial, in 2013, that depicted a mixed-race family (because… racism and stuff).
    It has created the best food mascots of all time (Lucky the Leprechaun, the Trix Rabbit, Pillsbury Dough Boy, Count Chocula, Frankenberry and Sonny.).

Credit: BoyWithTheGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 23 Votes: 47.83% Annoying