Do Froot Loops Have Individual Flavors, Or Are They All The Same?
Usually, when processed foods come in a rainbow of colors (like gummy bears), each color corresponds to a different flavor — or scent, in Skittles' case. You can pretty easily guess that the red ones will be either cherry or strawberry, the green ones will usually taste like apple or lime, and the yellow ones will be lemon- or banana-flavored. The same can't be said for Froot Loops, however.
Even though there are six different colors of cereal in Froot Loops, all of them taste exactly alike. Not only has this been proven in taste tests by consumers, but Kellogg's, the company that manufactures Froot Loops, confirmed it in a 1999 interview with Straight Dope. In 2015, the company announced it would be changing the Froot Loops formula by 2018, but this was only to switch from artificial flavors and colors to natural ones and had nothing to do with making each Froot Loop a different flavor.
The Froot Loops flavor mystery
As you might assume based on its name, Froot Loops is fruit-flavored. As for what flavor of fruit it actually is, that's more of a mystery. Unlike Trix, which specifies every fruit that goes into its cereal, the Froot Loops label only discloses that it's made up of "natural fruit flavors." The ingredients list doesn't offer much information either, naming only "natural flavor" as the ingredient.
A more promising clue lies in some of the first Froot Loops commercials. Upon its release, Froot Loops was advertised as having "real orange, lemon, and cherry flavors." Through the 1970s and '80s, commercials continued to describe it the same way. But in the '90s, commercials started to mention lime and berry as well. From then on, Froot Loops switched to much more generic descriptions like "flavors that can drive you wild" and "a fruity taste that shows." It's hard to say what the current flavor combination might be, but it's safe to assume it's at least something fruity, despite an unfounded lawsuit that made Froot Loops change its name because it claimed otherwise.
Why Froot Loops is just one flavor
Froot Loops aren't made up of individual flavors because it's entirely unnecessary. For starters, taste and sight are connected senses, which means the color of something largely influences what flavor is perceived, and Froot Loops are no exception. When you eat a bowl of fruit-colored cereal, your brain will associate the red ones with red fruits, the green ones with green fruits, and so on. There's no point making each one a different flavor because your brain does all the work anyway.
In general, it's also cheaper for companies to manufacture food products that only have different colors rather than entirely different flavors. Using only one flavor simplifies the production process, and considering how big of a brand Kellogg's is, it wouldn't be surprising if this plays a role in why the Froot Loops are all one flavor. Even if Kellogg's were to change its mind in the future, consumers probably wouldn't notice.