Fruity Pebbles
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Fruity Pebbles is a breakfast cereal introduced by Post Cereals in 1971 and featuring characters from the animated series The Flintstones. It contains fruit-flavored crispy rice cereal bits. A similarly-themed cereal is Cocoa Pebbles.
Despite the product's name, the list of ingredients names no fruits in its contents (although it apparently contains coconut oil and palm kernel oil).
Unlike its sister cereal, which has remained essentially the same over the years, Fruity Pebbles has undergone many formula additions and variants such as "Fiesta Fruity Pebbles", "Half Sugar Fruity Pebbles", "Marshmallow Mania Pebbles", and "Bronto Bright Pebbles". The cereal started out with three flavors: Orange, cherry, and lemon. New flavors were added over time such as grape in 1980, lime in 1984, Berry Blue in 1994, Incrediberry Purple in 1995 and Bedrock Berry Pink in 2005.
The formula for both versions of Pebbles had a major addition in 2006: polydextrose became a key ingredient.
The classic television commercials for both Pebbles cereals had a recurring theme: Barney Rubble attempts to trick Fred Flintstone out of his cereal, or to simply steal it outright. Barney was often in disguise in these attempts, and sometimes, he pulled off his gag with some help from Dino. In protest of his burglarized breakfast, Fred customarily shouted, "Barney, my Pebbles!" and gave chase. This would always be followed by Barney saying a pun.
The commercials were the concept for a sketch on Robot Chicken in which Barney and Fred brawl during Barney's attempt to steal Fred's pebbles. But in this case, Barney smashed a club over Fred's head, resulting in his death. As Barney buries Fred, he notices that the rake was a witness and proceeds to kill it. Then, he goes killing every other appliance in the house, to the shock of Wilma and Betty. The sketch ends with "Fruity Pebbles are a part of this complete breakfast" while Barney is seen hanged in the background.
While still widely available within the United States, Fruity Pebbles is no longer available in Canada.
