Ready Brek

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Ready Break redirects here. For information about the Something Corporate album see Ready... Break.

Ready Brek is an oat-based breakfast cereal produced by Weetabix Limited. It is intended to be served hot, and comes in two varieties- 'original' and 'chocolate'.

Ready Brek was originally produced by J. Lyons and Co., created from experimentation by Walter Pitts, a factory manager from the Tea Division of Lyons. It was launched in 1957 as an instant porridge, then in 1969 as an instant hot cereal. The brand was purchased by Weetabix in June 1990. Since its beginning, it has been consumed mostly by children, or students, and understandably more popular in autumn and winter.

There is a more-oaty variety called Seriously Oaty, which is more of a flavoured oats mixture, where porridge oats in small sachets have had sugar and powdered flavouring added. There is less packaging in the normal box of Ready Brek.

Ready Brek had the slogan Central heating for kids and Get up and Glow, and TV adverts during the 1970s and 1980s showed children walking to school with a dramatic radiant glow. In a survey by Which? in March 2004, Ready Brek was found to have the lowest added salt and sugar of all breakfast cereals.

Most supermarket chains have their own range of instant oatmeal cereal.

[edit] Trivia

Viz magazine once imitated the Ready Brek slogan, with an advert for Carlsberg Special Brew as "Central heating for tramps".

In the 1980s, Whizzer and Chips had a recurring character named "Glow Boy"; "Once I've eaten my breakfast, I glow!" Although the character was not explicitly connected to Ready Brek, the similarity between him and the glowing children in the advertisements was obvious.