Status: Urban Legend
A recent ad for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes shows a blond-haired kid dancing around singing "They're going to taste great!" I think this is a British ad. At least, I've never seen it here in America. And all the references to it I've found occur in the British press. For instance, David Whitehouse writes in the Guardian:
Pity the poor Kellogg's marketing department... all they wanted to do was make an advert in which a chirpy young scamp would skip his way through the streets of a suburban town attracting other children like a Pied Piper with a silly ditty about his breakfast. So, they set out to hire an angelic young choirboy with a voice so beautiful it could shatter the beaks of songbirds. Then disaster struck. It appears that, on the way to the shoot, this choirboy's balls dropped with quite monstrous results. They wanted Aled Jones, but they got Mick Jones. And what we're left with is a jingle being sung by a boy at the exact moment his voice breaks, in a tone so monotonous it appears to be operating at a frequency which toys with people's bowels. It is, quite simply, the worst soundtrack to an advertisement ever. His voice is so oppressively dull that prolonged listening is like having every orifice systematically packed full of wet bread by a politician with no facial features.
Evidently this is the kind of ad that people love to hate. And this dislike has inspired a rumor that the kid in the ad is dead. (Google
'Frosties Kid' and you pull up page after page of rumors of his death.) There are two versions of the rumor:
1) That the kid committed suicide on account of the bullying he received since the ad aired.
2) That the kid was a cancer patient whose dying wish was to star in a Frosties ad.
I don't know who the Frosties Kid is in real life. So I can't prove that he's alive. But there's absolutely no evidence to support the claim that he's dead. Plus, the 'Frosties Kid Is Dead' rumor seems to be a new variation of the 'Death of Little Mikey' rumor (which alleged that Mikey, of the Life Cereal commercials, died after eating Pop Rocks). So I think it's safe to assume that the Frosties Kid is still alive. (Thanks to Dave Tolomy for telling me about the rumor.)
Update: As Dead-Eric noted in the comments, Scott Mills of BBC Radio 1 recently discussed the 'Frosties Kid Is Dead' rumor on his show. Mills received the following official statement from Kelloggs about the rumor:
"The current advertisement has been well received by the vast majority of our customers. We would also like to take this opportunity to confirm that the lead boy within the advertisement is well and continues to live in his native South Africa."
You can listen to an mp3 clip of this portion of the Scott Mills show
here.
Comments
NB:
An other variation was that his family killed out of embarassment.
It's not really THAT bad.
it's rather the song that makes me nuts, just listen to it 3 times and you feel so angry!!
*takes a deep breath*
YMMV, of course.
Despite all this, I wouldn't wish him dead.
😉
😏
Okay, I can't even lie. Regardless of it's inaccuracy, that's just effin' funny.
The article stating this fact is with the following link
http://frosties.i8.com/
I found this link from the following forums http://forum.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=17442&highlight;=
So now I'm wondering if the kid is real if he actually lives in South Africa, if he is dead and if he is a CGI character so I wonder if we will ever learn about him at all. ❓
we had a few ads, with a blond boy who was replaced with an animated charictor.
the story is the boy had died, and had the sole contract for being the milky bar kid.
unlikely, as no advertising company would give a growing boy a permanant spot as a child actor.
What?
You're right by the way Steve, apparently it was originally shown in South Africa. Wish I could find that version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl0XF229IY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkeoFBMqO04&search=frosties%20advert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQTbK1Xcoos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3btW2YQY_o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGBgZau-8qA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU_edt8_GgI
from
The frosties kid's biggest fan!!!!
And i wanna meet the boy 😊
I wonder if they show the advert in 'his native South Africa'? He'd kill himself then, surely. Kelloggs could never be so cruel. Frosties adverts have always annoyed me anyway, because of Tony the Tiger. He bugs me in the same way Captain Birdseye does; a fully grown male, running around private islands and various towns with packs of young children, and nobody says anything about how obviuosly inappropriate it is. Behind closed doors and all that.
(Maybe) RIP The Frosties Kid
if this was to be true, it would be over the news, not in your email inbox. although, i think it is a bit weird that he lives/ from south africa, you can't hear it in his singing voice..
-- Posted by K.
I would imagine that for the four and a quarter seconds between shouting up to the kid in his room "son, have you OD'd?" and recieving an answer in the negative, fear would grip both themselves and their evidently non-spam filtered email account.
I don't like this ad but I know quite a few teens and kids who accept this song and even like it because of it's uniqueness and it's imperfection even though they wouldn't say it in those exact words.
I don't think many Frosties ads are targetted towards mature people who would take note on the lyrical value and melodic quality of the actor's voice.
IT'S A FROSTIES CEREAL AD!
The kid is alive and well in Sunny South Africa.....
THE REAL RUMOUR HERE AND ON 29 OUTTA-32 SURVEYED WEBSITES WERE
1. ( THE MOST BELIEVED) HE PUT 2 PENCILS UP HIS NOSE N SLAMMED HIS HEAD OFF A DESK..
2. (2ND MOST BELIEVED) HE FAKED HIS OWN DEATH BECAUSE OF BULLYING AND HATE MAIL.. ALSO THESE APPLY TO THE ONES ABOVE!