Cereal Killers?

Bouncy Brian has been the character most associated with Golden Brian's since the products launch in 2011. A character full of energy and adventure he is, psychologists say, the visible expression of what many children aspire to be.

Under fire processed food manufacturers Threadbone Heavy Chemicals are once again in the dock today as health experts suggest that the Company's breakfast cereal products may not be as healthy as their nutritionists claim. Scientists working for the Dorset Public Health Institute were said to be concerned at recent findings which suggested that health-related claims made for the product were "some way off being even remotely true".

Attention has focused particularly on their Golden Brian's brand which the Company itself claims are "deliciously over-sweetened industrially-processed cereal cushions" and which are designed to appeal to young children in particular. More than a million packets are sold annually through Waitaminute superstores alone.

Launched in 2011 amidst a fanfare of claimed health benefits, the cereal has traded on its child-friendly and highly popular cartoon character "Brian" - modelled, some claim, on Professor Brian Thrupiece the well-known Culinary Bio-ethicist, author and champion horizontal jogger. Though the Company has never publicly acknowledged the connection, marketing experts believe that the ploy - if such it is - has been a remarkably successful one. "A symbol of ethical probity as well as nutritional innovation, Professor Thrupiece is the perfect embodiment of everything the Threadbone Corporation hopes consumers will believe Golden Brian's to be", says cereal marketing guru Bran Flaykes, "and this annexation of his name and reputation undoubtedly explains the popularity of the cereal amongst parents wanting to do the right thing for their children".

Golden Brians - a family favourite since 2011.

Though doubts about the product - as well as the manufacturer's advice that it is best served with "heaps more sugar and a generous helping of syrup-infused whole milk" - have been voiced before, recent tests have gone further than ever in questioning the safety of the chemical composition of the "cushions" themselves. According to the latest reports they contain "no traceable organic material that could reasonably be described as a foodstuff at all". Whilst many will be scandalised by this assertion - which no one at the Corporation was today willing to refute - others will take comfort in the fact that any such finding proves beyond doubt the lineal ancestry of Golden Brian's and their strict adherence to the nutritional principles which have always guided the creation of products badged under the thrupiecediet. Whilst the Threadbone Corporation has never sought to exploit any such link, it remains the case that any impression that any of the proven benefits of fluff-based dietary regimes may also accrue to those force-feeding their children cereal cushions, will be of untold benefit to the Company. "This will be a real plank in the corporate defence of the cereal" says corporate defence lawyer Indy Fensible. "For the Company its win-win. The more critics claim the cereals are not food, the more the Company can claim they are healthy. Frankly they'd be better off taking the line that they rot your teeth and ruin your stomach lining but its not for me to advise them and - of course - I'd rather they didn't. It would make my job as a corporate defence lawyer ever so difficult".