Cookie Crisp
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
since Ralston Purina’s spin-off of cereals in 1997 and Cereal Partners
Cereal Partners Worldwide
Cereal Partners Worldwide S.A. is a joint venture between General Mills and Nestlé, established in 1991 to produce breakfast cereals. The company is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, and markets cereals in more than 130 countries Cereal Partners Worldwide S.A. is a joint venture between...
(under the Nestlé
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. is the world's largest food and nutrition company. Founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestlé originated in a 1905 merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, established in 1867 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, founded in 1866 by Henri...
brand) in other countries. The cereal was once available in a vanilla wafer flavor as well.
Cookie Jarvis
Pointy hat
Pointed hats have been a distinctive item of headgear of a wide range of cultures throughout history. Though often suggesting an ancient Indo-European tradition, they were also traditionally worn by women of Lapland, the Japanese, the Mi'kmaq people of Atlantic Canada, and the Huastecs of Veracruz...
, and big white beard
Beard
A beard is the collection of hair that grows on the chin, cheeks and neck of human beings. Usually, only pubescent or adult males are able to grow beards. However, women with hirsutism may develop a beard...
. Both the wand and the pointy hat were decorated with chocolate-covered chocolate chip cookie
Chocolate chip cookie
A chocolate chip cookie is a drop cookie that originated in the United States and features chocolate chips as its distinguishing ingredient. The traditional recipe combines a dough composed of butter and both brown and white sugar with semi-sweet chocolate chips...
s. During his administration as Cookie Crisp mascot, Cookie Jarvis actually presided over three versions of Cookie Crisp: Ralston’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp, Vanilla Wafer Cookie Crisp, and Oatmeal Cookie Crisp. In the commercials, with one wave of his wand, Cookie Jarvis magically turned cereal bowls into cookie jars, usually chanting rhyming incantations along with it.
Cookie Crook and Officer Crumb
Eventually, Cookie Jarvis was phased out in favor of a new mascot, the Cookie Crook (1981–1997). The Cookie Crook was an anti-heroAnti-hero
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...
mascot who often attempted to steal the Cookie Crisp. He had a comb mustache, and wore a red chef
Chef
A chef is a person who cooks professionally for other people. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who cooks for a living, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation.-Etymology:The word "chef" is borrowed ...
’s hat with cookies all over it. He also wore a purple shirt, and a black mask that covered his face and nose.
The introduction of the Cookie Crook was followed by another new character: Officer Crumb (1982–1997). Officer Crumb (sometimes known simply as the Cookie Cop) was a police officer
Police officer
A police officer is a warranted employee of a police force...
who was always trying to thwart the Cookie Crook's attempts to steal the Cookie Crisp. He was dressed in a standard blue police uniform, and had a big nose, a thick brown mustache, and a unibrow hanging over his eyes. He spoke in an Irish accent
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
and was often a diminutive character. At first, he was portrayed as a bit of a dupe who was always foiled by the Cookie Crook, but eventually it was decided that having a criminal constantly thwarting a police officer was sending the wrong message to kids. As such, for the majority of their tenure as mascots, Officer Crumb would emerge the victor, repeatedly preventing the Crook from stealing the cereal. A typical ad would begin with the Cookie Crook attempting to steal the cereal from a live-action breakfast table; often he and Officer Crumb were portrayed as no larger than mice, so their pictures on the cereal bowl were “life size". The Crook would have some new gadget or scheme to steal the cereal, but then the Officer would arrive and save the kid’s cereal in the nick of time. Despite his heroics, Officer Crumb was a secondary character; the ever-failing Cookie Crook remained the cereal's main mascot. Eventually, the format of the ads changed to full animation, and the duo was portrayed as the size of normal humans. A more slapstick approach (similar to Looney Tunes) was used in these commercials.
Chip the Dog
In the early 1990s, the Cookie Crook was given a sidekick named Chip the Dog. Chip would howl the cereal's name ("Coo-oooooooooookie Crisp!"). In each ad before he and his master were inevitably foiled by Officer Crumb. Despite starting as a sidekick, Chip soon began getting larger parts in the ads, until finally, in 1997, he took over as the main mascot for the cereal, and the Cookie Crook and Officer Crumb were dropped altogether. In the new format of the ads, Chip was a friendly pooch (no longer wearing a mask) who offered Cookie Crisp to a group of kids. Typically an adult would interfere on the grounds that cookies are not breakfast food, including Officer Crumb in one of the earliest of these ads, but they would change their minds once Chip gave them a taste of his cereal.Recent advertising campaign
In 2005, Chip was radically redesigned, gaining a change in both attitude and species. He is now Chip the Wolf (originally known as a Howler), a slim gray wolf in a red sweater and blue pants. His new design seems to have come with a change back to his criminal ways—the new ads generally depict him fruitlessly attempting to steal Cookie Crisp from children, just like the Cookie Crook, using various schemes (in these ads, he describes the cereal as well, "It looks like chocolate chip cookies. Tastes like 'em too. But it's a breakfast cereal!"). In this respect, he is much like cereal mascotMascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
s such as the Trix
Trix (cereal)
Trix is a brand of breakfast cereal made by General Mills for the North American and by Nestlé for the European, South American and Asian markets. The cereal consists of fruit-flavored, sweetened, ground-corn pieces. They started out as round cereal pieces, but in 1992, they were changed to puffed...
rabbit or the children in the advertisements for Lucky Charms
Lucky Charms
Lucky Charms is a brand of cereal produced by the General Mills food company of Golden Valley, Minnesota, United States. It first appeared in stores in 1964. The cereal consists of two main components: toasted oat-based pieces and multi-colored marshmallow bits in various shapes, the latter making...
. In this incarnation he is voiced by Marc Silk
Marc Silk
Marc Silk is a voice actor from Solihull, England.His work includes appearances in Chicken Run and as the U.S. voice of Bob in Bob the Builder, the roles of Aks Moe in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and Johnny Bravo, and commissions for Disney.- Animation & Cartoons :* Bob The Builder -...
. At the same year, Cookie Crisp was then newly introduced for the first time in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and the UK.
In 2007, a double chocolate flavored variety of Cookie Crisp was introduced, titled Double Chocolate Cookie Crisp.
In July 2009, Cookie Crisp Sprinkles were introduced. They are vanilla cookies with small sprinkles on them. The cereal is said to be gluten free.
In some foreign boxes of Cookie Crisp, the mascot is a panther
Black panther
A black panther is typically a melanistic color variant of any of several species of larger cat. Wild black panthers in Latin America are black jaguars , in Asia and Africa they are black leopards , and in North America they may be black jaguars or possibly black cougars A black panther is...
who is light grey in color and wears Chip’s clothing. The panther resembles a mix between Bagheera
Bagheera
Bagheera the black-toned Indian Leopard is an animal fictional character in Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli stories in The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book...
and the Pink Panther. His team consists of him, The Trix Rabbit, Koko (a brown koala
Koala
The koala is an arboreal herbivorous marsupial native to Australia, and the only extant representative of the family Phascolarctidae....
), Stars (an astronaut bear
Bear
Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...
), and Snow (a polar bear
Polar Bear
The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...
) who represent other cereals.
In Summer 2009, Nestle released new packaging for the UK version of Cookie Crisp with sprinkles.
Taglines
- You can’t have cookies for breakfast, but you can have Cookie Crisp! (1977–1983)
- If you like cookies, you’ll love Cookie Crisp! (1983–1990)
- Little cookies you can’t resist. (1990–1996)
- No other cereal tastes like this. (1990–1996)
- It’s like lots and lots of little chocolate chip cookies! (1996–1997)
- Doggone good cookies for breakfast! (1997–2004)
- Now with a mouthful of chips, in every bite. (2001–2005)
- Coooookie Crisp! Next time, it’s mine! (2005–2007(still used in the UK and Ireland.))
- Totally Chipalicious (2007–Current)
Imitations
In 2008, Kellogg’sKellogg Company
Kellogg Company , is a producer of cereal and convenience foods, including cookies, crackers, toaster pastries, cereal bars, fruit-flavored snacks, frozen waffles, and vegetarian foods...
introduced Keebler
Keebler Company
The Keebler Company is the largest cookie and cracker manufacturer in the United States. Founded in 1853, it has produced numerous baked snacks. Keebler has marketed its brands such as Cheez-Its , Chips Deluxe, Club Crackers, E.L...
Cookie Crunch. This cereal has cookie pieces that represent Chips Deluxe
Chips Deluxe
These signature cookies are delicious.Chips Deluxe is a brand of chocolate chip cookies made by the Keebler Company and distributed in the United States.-Varieties:* Original Chips Deluxe* Rainbow Chips Deluxe...
and are strikingly similar to Cookie Crisp. It also includes round O shapes that represent Keebler’s popular fudge stripe cookies.