If you go to any supermarket and take a perambulation through the cereal aisle , you ’ll see a bounty of O - shaped options . There ’s generic supermarket brand oxygen ’s , Trader Joe ’s O ’s , Kosher for Passover Crunch - i O ’s , 365 Organic Morning O ’s , and of row the route - paver of them all , Cheerios . With all of these iterations of the original General Mills grain , you would guess that the company would have tried to trademark their figure , set a full point to all other versions of what is essentially their product .
invent in 1941 and originally scream Cheerioats ( until a rival lawsuit demanded that they shorten the name to cease all oat - based food grain confusedness ) , Cheerios was the first oat - based cold cereal to shoot the market . According to75 Years of Innovation , Invention , Food & Fun , General Mills ’ celebratory anniversary Word of God , they test more than 500 formulas and “ more than 10 shapes and size of it … before researchers came up with the perfect combination . ”
accord to theOxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America , the original manufacture operation of gun for hire - puffed rice was invented by Dr. Alexander P. Anderson in 1902 . In the 1940s , a new variant of the puffing gun was invented by General Mills ' Mechanical Experimental Department engineer , Thomas James . OnGeneral Mills ' web log , Susan Wakefield , a incorporated archivist for the troupe , explains that much of General Mills ’ success can be attribute to the puff gun and its subsequent models , admit the atomic number 6 - gas pedal in the 1960s and E - gun in the 1980s .
Yet according to the General Mills ' archives section , even with this fancy engineering , the companionship never adjudicate to brand the now - classic type O shape . ( Technically , trademark legislation was still in its very early leg when Cheerios first appeared , furnish a solid argument for why nobody guess to immediately melt down to their attorney . )
But had they been make up after Congress passed theLanham Actin 1946 , would General Mills have had a case ?
Compare the Cheerios flesh to the definitive Coke Contour Bottle , which was trademarked in 1977 . The contour form , also refer to as the hobbleskirt bottle , has no functional value ( it does n’t even make it comfortable to admit ! ) and is powerfully relate with the Coca - Cola company , whereas the pear-shaped Cheerio could be brought to you by the letter O , or by the long - gone discoverer of the wheel .
only put , Herzfeld does n’t think they would have had a solid showcase for earmark tribute . Which is a bummer , considering how awful it would be if every cereal in the supermarket was a different shape . Or maybe there would just be few cereals . Either direction , General Mills ' decision , or want thence , to not brandmark their now recognizable group O ’s is a win for us all .
