At the start of the 2010 Miss America pageant on Saturday, the introduction portion of the show lets contestants come out and give an upbeat intro for their state, which usually consists of something along the lines of “I’m XXXX from the great state of XXXX home of [insert famous food, product, company, celebrity, historical figure, sports team]“  Innocent enough, and a nice way for each contestant to share something their state is famous for.

Miss Michigan, Nicole Blaszczyk, perhaps with consideration for the ailing Michigan economy, decided to highlight a particular Michigan based company: Kellogg’s cereal.  While I can’t find the transcript online, and the video clips of the introduction portion on YouTube are mysteriously missing Miss Michigan, to paraphrase she came out and essentially said:

“From the birthplace of breakfast cereal and home of Kellogg’s, did you eat your Wheaties this morning?”

Cute right? And a nice shout-out for Kellogg’s. There’s just one problem: Kellogg’s doesn’t make Wheaties. It’s biggest competitor, General Mills does (which is based in Minnesota). Wheaties is also considered to be huge direct competition for one of Kellogg’s flagship cereals, Corn Flakes.  Whoops!

Seems like an innocent mistake, but she probably had weeks to work on that intro.  Wouldn’t it have made sense to make sure you were actually citing a Kellogg’s brand cereal in the intro?