Weetos is a brand of chocolate-flavoured
breakfast cereal
Cereal, formally termed breakfast cereal (and further categorized as cold cereal or warm cereal), is a traditional breakfast food made from processed cereal grains. It is traditionally eaten as part of breakfast, or a snack food, primarily in ...
produced by
Weetabix Food Company
Weetabix Ltd., trading under the name Weetabix Food Company and commonly referred to as simply Weetabix, is a food processing company that is responsible for the production of breakfast cereal brands, including Weetabix, Alpen, Crunchy Bran a ...
. The name comes from the fact that its primary ingredient is wheat (Weet-) and the cereal pieces are in
O shapes (-Os), the same naming convention that is used on the company's flagship cereal
Weetabix
Weetabix is a breakfast cereal produced by Weetabix Limited in the United Kingdom. It comes in the form of palm-sized (approx. 9.5 cm × 5.0 cm or 4" × 2") wheat biscuits. Variants include organic and Weetabix Crispy Minis (bite-size ...
(Wheat Biscuits).
The brand initially began with the Weetos cereal, officially known as Weetos Chocolate Flavour, and has expanded to include Weetos Meteors, Weetos Bars (which are cereal snacks in bar-form), and Weetos Vs. Alien Invasion.
History
Weetos is the only cereal by Weetabix Food Company that is marketed toward the youth and children segment and, as a result, has a long history with
mascots
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fic ...
. The original mascot, introduced in 1987, was a skateboarder named Derek, who "''found life really boring, until new Weetos came out of the blue!''", delivered in a broad
West Midlands accent. From 1992, the breakfast mascot was Professor Weeto, an elderly gentleman dressed in a white
labcoat, whose remaining hair was white and who wore a pair of spectacles constructed from two large Weetos pieces. He was the mascot that acted as the creator and sole advertiser for the cereal. In 2010, he was replaced by The Weeto, a strong Weeto with arms and legs who'd do anything to get into the cereal for children.
In 2006, Weetabix Food Company lowered the amount of sugar present in Weetos by over 35% as part of a drive to appeal to health conscious parents, which resulted in a change of flavour. This was coupled with the dropping of long-running mascot Professor Weeto in favour of neutral images of children participating in various sports.
Products
Weetos Chocolate Flavour
Weetos is packaged in a brown rectangular cardboard box with the logo and an advert of whatever toy is inside.
Ingredients include
wholegrain wheat (41%), wheat flour,
sugars,
cocoa powder
Cocoa may refer to:
Chocolate
* Chocolate
* ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree
* Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao''
* Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...
,
vegetable oil
Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of fruits. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed oils, ...
, milk powder and various vitamins and minerals.
Weetos Meteors
Launched in 2008, Weetos Meteors is a
space
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually con ...
-themed cereal that combines the original O-shape pieces with star and meteor shapes ones. It is one of the few breakfast cereals that directly advertises to children seeing as it is not high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) and as a result, doesn't qualify for
Ofcom's ban on promotional tie-ups with HFSS food products.
Weetos vs. Alien Invaders
Launched in 2011, Weetos vs. Alien Invaders contains both the original O-shaped pieces along with three ringed alien pieces.
Weetos Bar
Weetos is also available in a 20g cereal bar. They contain chocolate flavour wheat hoops and form soft and chewy bar, with a layer of milk chocolate on the bottom, and are individually wrapped. There is however ambiguity in the calorific content, as the box listed content is 99 calories per bar while the Weetos website declares 88 calories per bar.
See also
*
Weetabix
Weetabix is a breakfast cereal produced by Weetabix Limited in the United Kingdom. It comes in the form of palm-sized (approx. 9.5 cm × 5.0 cm or 4" × 2") wheat biscuits. Variants include organic and Weetabix Crispy Minis (bite-size ...
*
Weetabix Food Company
Weetabix Ltd., trading under the name Weetabix Food Company and commonly referred to as simply Weetabix, is a food processing company that is responsible for the production of breakfast cereal brands, including Weetabix, Alpen, Crunchy Bran a ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Weetos - Official website
Weetabix cereals