The Yogourt Chronicles—Episode 2: Céréale Killers

Previously on The Yogourt Chronicles: 

I had promised an instalment of TYC dealing with maple syrup, assuming such a quintessentially Canadian product would be steeped in linguistically interesting packaging and promo examples, but as it turned out I spent twenty minutes in the vast syrup section of my local grocery store and came up wanting. A little further down the breakfast aisle, however, I stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove of kooky, kwazy and krunchy bilingual product packages.

Ladies and gentlemen: Breakfast Cereal.

Breakfast cereal is one of those products that has 1) a considerable amount of surface area, 2) off-the-wall zany child-oriented advertising, and 3) 97,000 different varieties. As a result, Canadian breakfast cereal boxes boast some of the most complicated and interesting examples of the strategies that companies use to comply with the nation's bilingual packaging and promotional standards.

Given the excessive amount of surface area on a cereal box, one common strategy is to print one face of the box entirely in French and the other entirely in English (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1

This is a useful space-saving tactic, but it is not always an option, because oftentimes marketers want to use the back of the box for some sort of crazy bilingual word finding game or mail-in contest or other child-mesmerizing scheme (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

In this case, the French and English text will all have to appear on the front of the box, which, despite the expansive cereal box face, can result in some cluttered looking products. Fortunately for designers, registered product names don't have to be translated. So you end up with things like "Can't get enough of that... On n'a jamais assez des céréales... SUGAR-CRISP" (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Of course, sometimes when the English name of a product might be confusing or meaningless in French, the marketers prefer to come up with an alternate version. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, for instance, is rendered more succinct and comprehensible as Croque-Cannelle (Cinnamon Crunch) in French, because cinnamon toast isn't really a thing outside of Anglo-North America. The result? One of the most chaotic (and slightly psychedelic) looking cereal boxes in the universe (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

Incidentally, Cinnamon Toast Crunch has even been translated for English speakers outside of North America. In the United Kingdom they call it:

Fig. 5

Elsewhere, they're called Cini-Minis, as seen on this trilingual package designed for sale in Eastern Europe with text in Polish, Czech and Romanian (with some English thrown in for good measure):

Also, apparently it was necessary for Cap'n Crunch's name and rank to be Frenchified, possibly in order to align with the Quebecois branch of the Canadian navy (Fig. 7). The word Crounche, along with its derivative Crounchifique, is entirely made up.

Fig. 7

Sometimes the promotional masterminds at these food companies try to get creative and use the opportunity of translating product names to make some sort of hilarious hilarious pun. Quaker's kiddie oatmeal "Dino eggs" become "Dinosoeufs" (which sounds a lot like the French word for dinosaurs) (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8

And sometimes they blow it. They let the world down and miss the chance at a perfectly good pun. Such is the case with my son's toothpaste (Fig. 9):

Fig. 9

Watermelon Burst toothpaste/dentifrice.

Honestly? 

You couldn't come up with Pastèque-splosion?



By the way, breakfast cereals are one of the worst offenders for cavities, so if you're planning to Croque on the Capitaine, or if you're feeling Curious about Cini-Minis, don't forget to use that Pastèque-splosion or whatever it's called. This has been a public service announcement.

Next time: Over-the-counter medications (or something).