Name: The story behind Brett Hull’s cereal — and a taste test of 20-year-old Hull-O’s
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The story behind Brett Hull’s cereal — and a taste test of 20-year-old Hull-O’s

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May 20, 2020Soon after securing a box of 20-year-old Hull-O’s on eBay, I sent a text to my sister, who happens to be a registered dietitian.How old is too old to eat cereal?When you don’t have teeth to chew it.I mean, when is the cereal itself too old?Oh. Six months to a year after the bag is opened.Hypothetically speaking, if a bag has been sealed and the cereal is from 2000, could you eat it?20 years?? Probably stale. Make sure there is no mold or bugs.Two days later, the box of Hull-O’s that I bought on eBay arrived. The ‘best if used by’ date had passed more than two decades ago.But those dates are just suggestions, right? And technically, a dietitian hadn’t told me to not eat them.Before we get to breakfast, you need to understand why I even bought the box and where it came from. As part of The Athletic’s memorabilia blitz, we had an open competition that anyone could enter. The rules were simple: spend $50 on eBay and others will judge who comes out with the best sports memorabilia haul.It sounded fun, so even before looking at eBay, I signed up. Once I started browsing the site I ran into a problem — I don’t really want or need any more sports memorabilia, and I certainly didn’t want to pay for it.I have a box of old cards in my house that I occasionally flip through, but I see them more as tools to create art with my toddler during quarantine than something I cherish. Autographed artifacts have lost any value to me since I work in this business; a signature is really just another person’s scribbling, and at the heart of it, pro athletes are people just like you and me. I have a shelf of bobbleheads in my office, but those were all free giveaways at games I’ve attended or covered. I would never pay for a bobblehead — just a personal policy.The only types of sports memorabilia that actually interest me anymore are things that connect directly to an experience that I’ve had. I have a signed Vladislav Tretiak jersey in my living room; it’s framed with a picture of me taking part in his goalie camp as a teenager in 2004 and 2005.Nothing on eBay was going to have a personal connection for me. I looked for things from a specific World Cup, a game on June 25, 1994 between Morocco and Saudi Arabia that I attended as a five-year-old at Giants Stadium with my dad and grandparents. But no one had collected things from my experience at that game and saved it 26 years to sell on eBay.I was going to throw in the towel and quit; this really wasn’t my competition. But then I started searching for cereals on eBay — normal, right? That’s when I found a box of sealed Hull-O’s for $19.97. The description had said they’d never been opened, which made me wonder if that meant they were fair game to actually eat. Plus, it was an item that somehow connected my beat to cereal, so even if I lost this eBay competition I’d get a weird story out of it.(I also bought a vinyl copy of The Adventures of Ali and His Gang vs. Mr. Tooth Decay. It features songs sung by Muhammad Ali that was issued to raise awareness for dental health. It’s narrated by Howard Cosell and there’s a cameo by Frank Sinatra. It’s a weird record, but maybe it can be a parenting tool if my kids ever forget about the value of proper dental hygiene.)I feel fairly certain I’m the most recent and likely the last person to eat Hull-O’s. But if you were a fan and lived in the Metroplex in 2000, you may have had a bowl of the toasted frosted oats made by PLB Sports.After scoring the game-winning goal in 1999 Stanley Cup final, Brett Hull worked out a deal with PLB Sports to produce the cereal with his likeness. It was only sold in local supermarkets, and PLB Sports founder Ty Ballou remembers moving anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 boxes in the DFW area.When I called PLB Sports, Ballou answered the phone, and I mentioned I had a box of Hull-O’s. He said he’d call me back that afternoon because “anyone that has found a box of Hull-O’s, I want to talk to.”It’s ironic that Hull’s game-winning goal came against the because a Buffalo connection ultimately laid the groundwork for him to get his own brand of cereal.Ballou had originally gotten into the athlete-food business when he was working for Clark Candies and made a licensing deal with the . That led to a deal with Mario Lemieux for a caramel candy bar that started selling extremely well with the Penguins fresh off back-to-back championships. Ballou says over 500,000 bars were bought.“We sold 300,000 here in Pittsburgh and another 200,000 up in Canada, in the Montreal area,” Ballou said. “That was the jettison for me to get into sports, I had never been in sports or anything like that before.”Ballou then started his own business in 1996 and introduced products like ’s creamy peanut butter. There were also products featuring Sandy Alomar and Omar Vizquel. Those things did well, but the PLB Sports really grabbed public attention with Flutie Flakes.“I was a big Doug Flutie fan. I actually grew up in Chicago when he was with the Bears and always liked the story,” Ballou said. “Doug had come down from Canada and was signed by the Bills … Doug wanted to highlight the foundation he was just starting in 1998, the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation, so we put that on the side panel.”Ballou remembers the forecast for the product was to sell between 25,000 and 50,000 boxes of Flutie Flakes.“Nobody in Buffalo would buy it,” Ballou said. “The Bills were horrible. Rob Johnson was horrible and was named the starting quarterback. Doug Flutie then did something great for us: he made a sales call to a retailer by the name of Topps Markets … out of being wonderful or maybe out of pity, they bought 10,000 boxes of cereal. Doug then got into a game, had a typical Flutie crazy game and won. ESPN somehow got a box and it was on SportsCenter and today we are up over 2.7 million boxes of cereal sold.”There have now been six different versions of Flutie Flakes released. They have been the driving force that allowed Ballou and PLB Sports to really grow. His best-selling product isn’t even Flutie Flakes; it’s Ed McCaffrey’s Rocky Mountain Mustard. More than four million bottles have been sold across Nebraska and Colorado.When Hull scored the game-winning goal in 1999, Ballou approached Hull about celebrating a championship with something else that goes in a bowl.“Bobby Hull was my guy when I was growing up — there was nothing better than watching Bobby Hull go down the ice with Stan Makita and Eric Nesterenko and Glenn Hall. I went to many games at the old Chicago Stadium, so I already had interest that way,” Ballou said. “Brett had a great name and we came up with Hull-O’s rather quickly.”When creating a product with an athlete, Ballou says it’s important to have their input on creating something that fits. It needs to be something that they would be happy promoting. There needs to athlete buy-in before the consumer follows suit.“We very much collaborate,” Ballou said. “They need to own it. Unless they have direct input it really doesn’t work as well.”I tried to call Hull about the product but he never answered or responded to texts. If Hull picks up the phone he has no issue speaking his mind, but he can be hard to reach.That brings us back to breakfast and a 20-year-old box of cereal. I had done some research, and a Google search revealed that in 2018 a family in Illinois had mistakenly purchased a 21-year-old box of Quaker 100 percent Natural Granola. .They seemed fine, but I also made sure that my daughter was in the other room watching Sesame Street so she wouldn’t wander in and ask for a bowl of cereal 18 years her senior.Let’s start by saying the bag held up well — nice job, PLB Sports. The contents had been preserved well, and when squeezing the bag, air didn’t escape. Even when squeezing harder to really test the product.Apparently, preservation only goes so far. When I opened the bag, it smelled old — not moldy or foul, but stale, like there hadn’t been any new airflow in two decades.I took out an individual Hull-O for the first bite. The frosted part still tasted normal, but the aftertaste was once again stale and just felt off. I still poured a bowl and added macadamia milk (I’m allergic to real milk), before taking a bite.It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either. The first few bites were slightly thrilling. After all, this was a story — how many people have eaten food this old? But the last couple were paired with thoughts of how idiotic this whole exercise really was, and hard evidence for the future. ‘Best by’ dates on cereal may actually mean something.

May 20, 2020Soon after securing a box of 20-year-old Hull-O’s on eBay, I sent a text to my sister, who happens to be a registered dietitian.How old is too old to eat cereal?When you don’t have teeth to chew it.I mean, when is the cereal itself too old?Oh. Six months to a year after the bag is opened.Hypothetically speaking, if a bag has been sealed and the cereal is from 2000, could you eat it?20 years?? Probably stale. Make sure there is no mold or bugs.Two days later, the box of Hull-O’s that I bought on eBay arrived. The ‘best if used by’ date had passed more than two decades ago.But...

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Sean Shapiro

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The story behind Brett Hull’s cereal — and a taste test of 20-year-old Hull-O’s

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