Cap’n Crunch resurfaces after anxious week in blogosphere

It's been a stormy week on the high seas of the blogosphere for Cap'n Crunch.

The Cap'n is a welcome presence in Cedar Rapids, not only because of the many jobs his cereal provides at the huge Quaker Oats plant, but also the delicious smells emanating from the plant on the days Cap'n Crunch is made. It's a smell like sweet butterscotch that wafts through the downtown area when Cap'n Crunch is cooking

So imagine our heartburn when DailyFinance's Jonathan Berr opined  that Cap'n Crunch “has fallen into the brand equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle” this week.

Berr pointed out in a column Monday, March 7,that Cap'n Crunch was nowhere to be found on the web site of Quaker Oats, the Pepsico division that manufactures the cereal, and suggested the company seemed to be distancing itself from the heavily sweetened cereal in an era of growing concern over child nutrition.

Berr also talked to Jennifer Harris, director of Marketing Initiatives at Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. She said “Our research shows that PepsiCo is no longer marketing Cap'n Crunch cereal directly to children. In a sense, you could say that they have retired Cap'n Crunch, and that's a good thing.”

It gets worse. Berr quoted Ryan Stredney of market research firm Symphony Group/IRI, saying Cap'n Crunch sales are down 6.8 percent in 2010 from 2009, while overall cereal sales were down just 3.25 percent.

The response to Berr's column was swift and massive, probably a testament to the loyal following of Cap'n Crunch as much as to Berr's own findings. On the Yahoo! search engine, Cap'n Crunch became one of the most frequently searched terms on Friday.

PepsiCo kicked its public relations machine into high gear. By Thursday, Cap'n Crunch had a Facebook and a Twitter account.

“I would like to confirm that Cap'n Crunch is here to stay,” Quaker spokeswoman Denise Lauer said in an e-mailed response.

Since Cap'n Crunch was suddenly talking, I was hoping to hear something epic. Maybe he'd been down to Davey Jones' locker, or had another epic battle with the Crunchberry Beast, but it was just this on a revamped Web site Pepsico created for Cap'n Crunch.

“Thanks to Everyone who was asking about me. I was out on the seas, but don't worry. I'm back and not going anywhere.”

The Cap'n got a fair amount of support from posts on many web sites, but health writers still have it out for the Cap'n.

Meredith Melnick's column on Time Healthland was fairly direct. It was headlined “Cap'n Crunch Will not Retire, But He Probably Should.”

By the end of the week, some bloggers were wondering if the whole Cap'n Crunch drama wasn't cooked up by Quaker as some kind of publicity ploy to gain social media buzz.

If it was (and I doubt it) Quaker was going way over the top. Berr's column even grabbed the attention of members of the maintenance unions at the Quaker plant who were negotiating a new contract with the company. (One of them heard about it first from his wife, who was serving in Afghanistan!) The company quickly reassured the unions that Cap'n Crunch was still onboard.

I'm not planning to tell my eight-year-old Cap'n Crunch-eating son about this. He has enough things to worry about – spelling lists, time tests, playground bullies and whether he'll get that Megatron Shadow Blade Transformer for his ninth birthday.

Lauer said Quaker stands behind the nutritional content of Cap'n Crunch, but made it clear we shouldn't go overboard.

“When families eat a single, portion-controlled serving of Cap'n Crunch, they can enjoy a great-tasting way to get the benefits of breakfast along with essential vitamins and minerals,” Lauer wrote.

For more information about the cereal, and to read the special message made by Cap'n Crunch (including information regarding his Facebook and Twitter) visit the official

website.