Cookie Crisp


Cookie Crisp is a cereal made to recreate the taste of chocolate chip cookies. It is manufactured by General Mills in the United States and Cereal Partners in other countries. Introduced in 1977, it was originally manufactured by Ralston Purina until they sold the trademark to General Mills in 1997, who soon after changed the recipe.

Varieties

Double Chocolate Cookie Crisp was a double chocolate-flavored variety of Cookie Crisp introduced in 2007.
Peanut Butter Cookie Crisp was also introduced. It has the taste of peanut butter cookies.
In July 2009, Cookie Crisp Sprinkles were introduced. They are vanilla cookies with small sprinkles on them. The cereal is said to be gluten free. In Summer 2009, Nestlé released new packaging for the UK version of Cookie Crisp with sprinkles.
Cookie Crisp Brownie was introduced in the U.K. in 2013, which has the flavor of brownies,
The cereal was once available in a vanilla wafer flavor as well.
During his tenure as Cookie Crisp mascot, Cookie Jarvis was used on three versions of Cookie Crisp: Ralston’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Crisp, Vanilla Wafer Cookie Crisp, and Oatmeal Cookie Crisp.
In March 2018 Birthday Cake Cookie Crisp was introduced to the U.S. market.

Imitations

In 1997, Ralston sold their cereal line to General Mills, who soon after changed the recipe, prompting many Cookie Crisp lovers to seek the original taste in knock-off and foreign brands.
Keebler Cookie Crunch was introduced by Kellogg’s in 2008. This cereal has cookie pieces that represent Chips Deluxe and are strikingly similar to Cookie Crisp. It also includes round O shapes that represent Keebler’s popular fudge stripe cookies.

Advertising

Cookie Jarvis

Introduced in 1977, the first Cookie Crisp mascot, Cookie Jarvis, was a wizard in the Merlin mold, who with one wave of his wand, magically turned cookie jars into cereal bowls, usually chanting rhyming incantations along with it. He was voiced by Lennie Weinrib.

Cookie Crook and Cookie Cop

Cookie Jarvis was joined by Cookie Crook, an anti-hero robber who attempts to steal the Cookie Crisp, in the mid-1980s, followed by his opponent Cookie Cop, a police officer with an Irish accent who thwarts the Cookie Crook's attempts to steal the Cookie Crisp.
A typical ad would begin with the Cookie Crook attempting to steal the cereal from a live-action breakfast table; often he and the Cookie Cop were portrayed as no larger than mice, so their pictures on the cereal bowl were “life size". The Crook would have some new gadget or scheme to steal the cereal, but then the Cookie Cop would arrive and save the kid’s cereal in the nick of time. Eventually, the format of the ads changed to full animation, and the duo was portrayed as the size of normal humans; an even more slapstick approach was used in these commercials.

Chip the Dog

In 1990, the Cookie Crook was given a sidekick named Chip the Dog. Chip would howl the cereal's name in each ad before he and his master were inevitably foiled by the Cookie Cop.
After General Mills bought the Cookie Crisp trademark Chip the Dog continues from 1997 to 2005 to be the mascot with the Cookie Crook and Cookie Cop. In the format of the advertisements, Chip was a friendly pooch, no longer wearing a mask, who offered Cookie Crisp to a group of kids. Typically an adult would interfere on the grounds that cookies are not breakfast food. Near the end of the ads, the adults would change their minds once Chip gave them a taste of his Cookie Crisp.

Chip the Wolf

In 2005, Chip the Wolf replaced Chip the Dog as the cereal's Chip the Dog continues from 2006 to 2018 mascot in the United States. However, Cookie Crook and Cookie Cop have made reappearances on the back of the later Cookie Crisp boxes. Chip the Wolf was voiced by Robb Pruitt in the US and Marc Silk in the UK.