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| No fear, Quiky. We've all been there. You can get through this. |
Perhaps there a possibility that
it is all some kind of sick joke? Part of me thinks it has to be. The resemblance
is uncanny. The guys at Nestle Cereals were dead stoned one day, like all
cereal guys should be, and came up with this supposed marketing malfunction on
purpose. It went something like this:
"Hey. H... h... hey, Mark! Mark! MARK!"
"Zzzohmyjesus!"
Mark wakes up, startled. "What's going on, Cal? You scared the shit out of
me. Why have you got your shirt off? And what's with the malice etched on your
face?"
"I've
got it, man! I've totally got it. Check out my prototype for the new Nesquik
cereal. Chocolate corn balls." Cal pushes a bowl of Nesquik over to his
colleague and starts hitting the team bong.
"Oh,
alright, these look reasonable... I guess. But... wait a minute, dude. These
look exactly like rabbit droppings."
Cal turns
to face Mark, breathing out the pungent bong smoke. "Exactly."
However
it came about, any sane person's first reaction to Nesquik cereal - besides
"why is there no 'c'?" - is along the lines of "I see what you
did there" (for want of a less pop-cultured phrase). This contemplation is
frivolous, though, as the truth is: nobody will ever know what they were
thinking.
Marketing aside, Nesquik has all the makings of a great cereal. Firstly, it has that whole crunchy rice and corn thing going on, plus the chocolateymilkness - which I generally love - but also, it is brand that has been in Europe since the 1950s. It debuted as an extension of Nestle Quik, an American brand of milkshake powder (in fact, the cereal itself was called Nestle Quik in the USA until 1999!). The brand's 1970s marketing drive even involved voice acting powerhouse, Barry Gordon - who you may know as the voice behind Donatello and Bebop in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - as Quiky. It is one of Nestle's best-selling cereals and a household name, but - rabbit poo comparisons aside - it just don't sit right with me.
Taste: Although I am a huge fan of chocolate breakfast cereal, Nesquik cereal just doesn't taste chocolatey enough for my liking. Although it doesn't taste bad, I find it to have a weak flavour, particularly compared to Coco Pops and Coco Shreddies. 5/10
Milk Flavour: This is where Nesquik is strongest, which is unsurprising for a company that started out as, and still make, chocolate milkshakes. It improves the overall taste of the cereal, but is easily the stronger component of the cereal:milk equation. 9/10
Texture: I feel that Nequik could do a lot better here. While you don't want your cereal to get too soggy, you want it to soften up in the milk, for that lovely "soft on the inside with a crunchy core" thing Golden Nuggets have going on. However, I find Nesquik to be too crunchy, even at the end of a bowl. 4/10
Packaging: An array of colour: always the yellow box, with a brown Quiky to harmonise and a blue bowl/Nesquik logo to contrast (that's right, I did Art up to Secondary 2). I find the bright yellow box really sticks out on shelves. 9/10
Relevancy of Mascot: I feel I should give this a 0/10 as the relationship between mascot and cereal is rather flawed and disgusting, but since this is graded on relevancy of mascot, I can't really argue. 10/10
Potential: I have tried putting my Nesquik in the microwave to soften it up into a delectable hot chocolate with lumps, but I found it didn't work so well. It wasn't terrible, but the cereal goes kind of hard. Not crunchy, but hard. It is fine for mixing with most other cereals, particularly Alpen, Rice Krispies and Chocolate Weetabix. Nothing too revolutionary here though. 6/10
Overall: Despite the exact thing that should bring its mark down being the strongest mark under my reviewing system, Nesquik still scores fairly lowly. Perhaps I ought to rethink my system. Not the worst breakfast cereal, but certainly not the best. 6.5/10
