Yesterday I went to the food store to buy a box of Cheerios, and I noticed the following variety of weights (okay, masses, if you want to be precise) among various cereals:
small boxes: up to 400g;
medium-size boxes: 425g, 450g, 475g, 500g, 525g;
large boxes and “club sizes”: 625g and up.
This ignores the variation in box size: a 500-g box of bran cereal was much smaller than other 500-g boxes, because bran cereal is much denser than most other cereals.
My question: why the great variety of sizes in the middle range around 500 grams?
The more shelf space you have the less the competition gets, in theory. 8 weights of 6 different varieties of Cheerios, all positioned together stands out more than just those two types of Life. It is therefore hard to miss the Cheerio section while you could overlook something else.
You have probably noticed that the kid cereal is down low at kid level.
The Safeway I go to has taken to labelling their cereal aisle in sections: “Kid’s Cereals”, “Family Cereals” and “Adult Cereals”. For some reason this always makes me picture somebody having to show proof-of-age to buy All Bran, or the local prudes picketing to have the “adult cereals” removed from the shelves where they will pollute the morals of the innocent children. Porn Flakes, anybody?
Ever see a little kid munching from an open box of some marshmallow-chocolate-sugar-peanut-butter-frosted cereal, then the parent looks around, closes the box, and puts it back on the shelf?
I just wanna boot the kid AND the adult across the store.
Worse yet, I was at the bookstore and saw in the children’s books section a whole row of pre-school books which prominently feature breakfast cereals, including Froot Loops and Cheerios, as a prominent character and/or “plot” element. WTF ???
As to the OP, I always figured the different sizes were to:
a) keep me from comparison/price shopping without a scientific calculator strapped to my arm…
b) ensure I buy certain brands whose box fits in my pantry shelf.
It gets weirder. Yesterday I went back to the store and took a closer look.
Lots of sizes: try 400g, 425g, 500g, 525g, 575g, 600g, 640g, 680g, 700g, 908g (= 2 pounds; it said so right on the box), 1250g… and in the middle of it all, a nice even 1000g.
Now my guess is that there are only a certain number of box sizes for each manufacturer (although the box sizes seem to differ from manufacturer to manufacturer), and thet boxes are filled to a certain consistent volume… but then they mark them by weight, and it’s a different weight for each cereal.
