Goodbye to Tony the Tiger

Saying goodbye to Tony the Tiger, Cap’n Crunch and the Trix Rabbit.

Due to a recent regulation in Mexico, the beloved cartoons of our childhood foods are disappearing from cereals and other food packaging. The argument is clear, necessary, and effective: we must curb our aggressive advertising to children in foods that are unhealthy.

Food shelves are changing rapidly, and packaging designers are doing their best to keep us from noticing much of it. Others have found loopholes to the law and are already using the same characters in different ways. For example, this Bimbo bear that is now appearing in a lunch box give-away that you get when buying ultraprocessed doughnuts.

The point of my argument here, however, is not to criticize corporate maneuvers to mitigate the desired effect. What I want to call is for an ACT OF COLLECTIVE FAREWELL to these characters who have been part of our lives. Celebrate and say thank you while putting a lot of emphasis on why we have decided to eliminate them. Removing these advertising characters from circulation is a cultural loss that deserves a farewell, their elimination merits a funeral. A funeral of gratitude and integration and not one of shaming. Above all, a funeral so that their disappearance wont go unnoticed.

I think goodbyes are important–especially on an emotional level. They allow us to close doors and be ready to open new ones. They allow us to use our past mistakes to integrate them into a new story for our future.

A closure without goodbye will not close the chapter because it will continue to make us feel as victims of structural forces for which we have little control over. On the other hand, saying goodbye with gratitude lets us know that the decision to ban these characters also reflects our personal decision to understand that they weredoing a lot of damage and we’ll be better off without them.

That is why I think that everyone who is going to miss them, should say goodbye to them. Not only explaining to children why they are leaving, but so this explanation is remembered as a choice and not as an imposition. As a ripening from the inside-out and not as a prohibition from the outside.

It is likely, and highly desirable, that in the following decades we will give up many unhealthy foods and lifestyles. But the most effective transition will be one that is motivated by love and hope for the new, rather than frustration, guilt, or pain from past decisions. Changing towards a healthy lifestyle cannot be sustained in the long term out of fear of bad things happening to us, but rather out of the desire to live healthily so that we can be with those we love and do what we dream of.

Let us say goodbye to these dear companions.

Dear Tony the Tiger:

I thank you for your companionship in so many breakfasts, for comforting me and for the fun with the little gifts you brought me with the games in the back of the cereal box. Thank you for being everywhere: in every corner store in my city, as well as in every corner store in the cities I visited. Thank you for making my mother feel that she was buying healthy food for me and that by consuming your frosted flakes I would get essential vitamins and minerals for my correct and healthy development. Thank you for reminding me that eating could be fun and by choosing the right foods, I could be strong and healthy.

I say goodbye to you because now I understand that the “breakfast of champions” did not provide the nutrients that I really needed. I say goodbye because I understand that, although your messages of growing strong and healthy were important, there was always a contradiction between what you said and what you offered inside your box. And that your games, gifts, smiles, and big muscles distracted and confused me.

I am sorry it took me so long to find out about this, but I forgive myself that it is not information that was available to me or that it was purposely hidden through labeling and advertising campaigns. In the same way, I am grateful that I now have the knowledge and that you will no longer be there to confuse my daughters now that they begin to learn how to be strong and healthy.

In this process of free choice, of love, gratitude, and mourning, I also forgive you for all the damages created. You can rest in peace and I can continue to build my future without burden of guilt or victimization. By saying goodbye to that past, I can now think about my future more clearly and fuel my body with new and healthier breakfast choices every morning.

Victor Saadia is a researcher and public spaker in the paradigmatic transitions of Health and Wellness.

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