Remember those compressed blocks of cardboard that have masqueraded as edible breakfast food in every Australian household, hotel, motel, boarding house and - dare I say it? - construction camp since time immemorial?
Boxes of this travesty of food, also known as Australia's iconic cereal Weet-Bix, are being cleared from supermarket shelves — and secretly sold to Chinese consumers for as much as $50.
Such is the demand for the bite-size treat, savvy sellers are systematically raiding a variety of stores and stockpiling the product in homes and warehouses.
The Chinese appetite for Weet-Bix follows the backyard baby formula scandal which led to nationwide shortages and forced the government to stop thousands of tins from illegally leaving for China.
Demand for Weet-Bix has seen a recent sharp increase and enterprising sellers are capitalising on a growing demand, onselling boxes online at huge marked up prices.
On the website Yoycart, which operates similar to eBay, 1.4kg boxes of the cereal were listed as high as $US39, roughly $50, while 1kg packs were going for $US28 or $37.
Domestically the 1.2kg box sells for only $4.50 at Woolworths and the 1.4kg box will set you back just $5 in Coles.
The site also lists some creative descriptions of the simple cereal, with one seller calling it “Advance Australia Weet-Bix sugar cooked ready to eat cereal” and an “ode to joy with breakfast”.
A Coles spokesman said the chain had seen a spike in sales in recent weeks. “We have seen an increase in sales of Weet-Bix in a number of stores over recent weeks.”
Pictures have emerged of shoppers bulk-buying trolleys full of the wheat-based cereal made by Australian company Sanitarium, similar to what was seen in the baby-formula saga.
One photo shows a customer in a Melbourne supermarket using a self-serve checkout to buy an entire large trolley worth of the cereal.
Figures reveal China is the biggest export market for the popular cereal for Australian -owned Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company.
Woolworths, who were forced to place a limit of four baby formula cans per customer after bulk-buying of the product to onsell to China caused supply issues late last year, declined to comment on the trend.
Invented in 1926 (by a cardboard manufacturer who'd gone out of business and wanted to get rid of his remaining stock), the popular breakfast cereal was picked up by the Seventh Day Adventist-owned company Sanitarium two years later.
Now a billion Chinese want to eat this stuff smothered in milk. As for me, instead of milk with my cereal I use wine and then also instead of my cereal I use wine.
