A bite-size wheat biscuit from a St. Louis feed and food company.

Chex began under another name. English Wikipedia says the cereal was first produced in 1936 as Shredded Ralston, made and owned by Ralston Purina of St. Louis, Missouri, and that it took the Chex name from 1950. The earliest descriptions come from grocery advertising. A 1936 advertisement in the Clinton Daily Journal and Public, quoted by Wikipedia, called the cereal “ready to eat, made from pure whole wheat,” cooked, shredded and toasted “to a delicious golden brown.” A 1942 promotional article in the Sioux City Journal described bite-size Shredded Ralston as whole wheat “shredded and baked into crisp-bite-size biscuits,” and suggested it as soup croutons and as a snack with melted butter as well as at breakfast.

The Chex name arrived with a new grain and a new shape. Wikipedia dates Rice Chex to 1950, citing a September advertisement in The Winona Republican-Herald, and quotes a Battle Creek Enquirer advertisement from the same year describing “golden-toasted shreds of rice, crisscrossed into hollow, Bit Size waffles.” In 1951 the older cereal followed. An April 1951 advertisement in The Spokesman-Review announced that the company was changing the name of Shredded Ralston to Shredded Ralston Wheat Chex, and for a time, Wikipedia says, advertisements used both the long and the short names in the same copy. Side-by-side photographs in a 1952 advertisement in The Pittsburgh Press, Wikipedia adds, show that Wheat Chex at first kept its denser, biscuit-like form rather than the waffle shape of Rice Chex.

The third grain came at the end of the decade. Wikipedia says Corn Chex had a limited release in 1958, reported by the Battle Creek Enquirer that November, and went on sale across the United States in 1959, with the criss-cross shape of Rice Chex; a 1959 advertisement said the shape helped it stay crisp in milk. Rice, wheat and corn Chex, each in a criss-cross square, became the base of the range.

Ralston Purina, Ralcorp, General Mills.

For most of its history Chex was a Ralston brand. Wikipedia says it went with the corporate spin-off Ralcorp in 1994. The brand did not stay there long. On 15 April 1996 the Wall Street Journal, in a report by Richard Gibson, said General Mills had agreed to buy the Chex brands. The deal needed clearance from the Federal Trade Commission, and newspapers including The Journal News of White Plains, New York, and the Record-Journal of Meriden, Connecticut, reported on 27 December 1996 that it had been cleared. According to Wikipedia, the FTC required General Mills to allow private-label, or store-brand, versions of Chex to be made, including by Ralcorp itself.

General Mills has owned Chex in North America since 1997, the year Wikipedia gives for the sale. The new owner began adding its own varieties within about a year: the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on 3 June 1998 that General Mills would introduce Honey Nut Chex, which Wikipedia describes as the first General Mills addition to the brand. The Chex website lists the current varieties; Wikipedia’s list of them includes Chocolate, Cinnamon, Blueberry and Peanut Butter Chex, and dates a Strawberry Vanilla variety to 2024. The brand now sits in the same Minneapolis portfolio as Cheerios, Wheaties and Kix.

Outside North America the rights are held by a rival. Wikipedia says Kellogg’s has the rights to the Chex brand in South Korea and Singapore, and the Singapore site Middleclass reported on 17 June 2020 that Kellogg’s Korea had released a green onion-flavoured Chex; Hypebeast covered the same limited edition on 30 June 2020. The cereal also lends its name to a snack. Wikipedia says Chex Mix recipes were regularly printed on Chex boxes, and the commercial product has its own guide here: Chex Mix.

Design and documentation.

The American breakfast-cereal box works as a small poster that sits on the kitchen table every morning. Its front panel usually carries a name in large, often hand-drawn lettering, a photograph or painting of a filled bowl, and in many cases a cartoon character who belongs to the brand rather than to any one advertisement. Those characters move between the box, television commercials, websites and promotions, so a single figure can carry a brand’s voice across decades and several owners.

The back and side panels do a different job. Over the years they have held games, maps, cut-outs, recipes and offers, giving a reader something to look at over breakfast. Colour does much of the remaining work: a box is meant to be recognised quickly on a long supermarket shelf, so brands tend to hold on to one dominant colour and a recurring slogan.

Each guide in this group sets out who made the cereal, who owns it now and how its box, characters and advertising have been described in dated sources, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Radio westerns, a space show and a cereal video game.

Chex advertising followed the media of each decade. In the 1930s, Wikipedia says, Ralston Purina sponsored the Tom Mix radio show, produced Tom Mix comic books and giveaways, and promoted Shredded Ralston as “the Tom Mix Bite Size cereal”; a 1941 Fort Worth Star-Telegram item shows the comic-book giveaways already aimed at children. A 1937 advertisement in The Tampa Tribune had pitched the cereal to the whole family with the line “Its flavor knows no limits,” and by 1939, Wikipedia says, box-top offers such as a pen and pencil set had begun.

From 1950 to 1955, according to Wikipedia, Chex was the primary sponsor of the television and radio series Space Patrol, whose broadcasts carried advertisements, offers and prizes for Wheat Chex and Rice Chex. In 1956 Ralston Purina tried the opposite approach. Box and newspaper copy reported by The Lincoln Star on 23 March 1956 dropped the prizes and called Wheat Chex “the only cereal made on purpose for Grownups.” The restraint did not last: a 1969 advertisement in the Arizona Republic promised one of nine prizes, including a secret agent ring, in every box of Sugar Frosted Chex.

Television brought characters. In 1968, Wikipedia says, Chex ran commercials about the Chexmates, a cartoon trio named Chexter, Chop Louie and Jessie Jane, voiced by John Erwin, Tommy Cook and Julie Bennett. In the 1970s, Wikipedia says, Sugar Chex and Super Sugar Chex carried Casper the Friendly Ghost on the box. The oddest piece of Chex marketing is a computer game. English Wikipedia says Chex Quest, a non-violent first-person shooter, was created in 1996 and released in 1997 by Digital Café as a Chex cereal promotion aimed at children; it was built on the engine of Doom, and the player is a “Chex Warrior” in Chex armour. Two sequels followed.

For a design guide, Chex shows how a brand can be carried by a shape rather than a character: a woven square that has outlasted cowboys, spacemen, cartoon heroes and a change of owner. Compare it with Chex Mix, the snack built from the cereal, and Cheerios, its General Mills stablemate. For this guide we use Chex blue and deep navy on toasted rice with a grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Chex’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.