Post Rice Krinkles is one of those cereals that makes you wonder what exactly was going on in the advertising room.
It started as Sugar Rice Krinkles, a sweet puffed rice cereal, and Post first sold it with circus-style ads and Krinkles the Clown. Back then, clowns were still considered fun, friendly, and perfect for kids. Looking at him now, though, he has that unsettling “why is this staring at me during breakfast?” energy.
Then around 1960, Post replaced the clown with So-Hi, a small Asian boy character used to sell a rice cereal. The name was a play on “so high,” because he was short, but the character leaned hard into Asian stereotypes that would never fly today. It was the kind of lazy advertising shortcut that was common at the time: rice cereal, so they reached for an Asian caricature.
And no, this did not evolve into Snap, Crackle, and Pop. That was Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, a different cereal from a different company. Post Rice Krinkles was more connected to Post’s later rice cereal ideas, especially the road that eventually led toward Pebbles.
So it basically went from creepy clown to racial stereotype, all in the name of making cereal memorable to kids. And that’s the part that sticks out today. These mascots were meant to be cute and catchy, but looking back, they show how different, and often tone-deaf, advertising could be.
Rice Krinkles eventually faded away by the end of the 1960s, but the mascots are still remembered because they’re so bizarre. One scared kids by accident. The other should have made adults know better.