Breakfast cereals of the past 100 years

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/112856/breakfast-cereals-declining-popularity-247

"Increasingly, people are eating less cold cereal, which has been part of breakfast for more than 100 years."

Breakfast cereals were the "fast food" of their day; the primetime tv; they were the "experience", much as fast food was less about the food as it was the "experience" of going there, seeing the place, experiencing the living brand; (much like a theme park). Primetime tv was less about the actual content as it was the experience of sitting down, as in a theater, and gorging on your "favorite shows". These all were about the meta-experience.

Breakfast cereals were less about the actual sustenance as they were about the experience, of the flashy packaging / branding, the "experience" you had while eating, the visuals in your head as you ate.

It's no surprise that these have taken a back seat to other forms of entertainment that have now dominated people as the predominant experience. In older times, we had no such stimulation: the flashy breakfast cereals were it. They were our morning entertainment.