About

“Why Do Kids Love the Taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?” is a memorable quote from a series of television advertisements for the Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast cereal. The phrasal template “X can see Y / But can they see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?” is often found in discussion forum posts and image macro captions.
Origin

The phrase originated from a series of Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials aired during the 1990s, which featured children asking adults to explain why children enjoy the taste of the cereal (shown below).

On April 19th, 2005, the Comic Book Resources Forums[5] member BitVyper started a thread titled “Can they see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?”, which encouraged users to explain how various comic book superheros would discover why kids love the breakfast cereal.
Spread

On December 18th, 2006, Yahoo Answers[6] member winder1time posed the question “Jesus may know alot [sic] but does he know why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?” On July 9th, 2008, Yahoo Answers[4] member Tommy2tone submitted the question “Why do kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” to which member Stephen K posted the top voter answer “It [sic] part of a complete breakfast?” On December 15th, 2010, a thread was submitted to the 4chan imageboard asking “Does Batman know why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?”

On December 10th, 2012, Redditor cottonheadedninnymug submitted a post to the /r/shittyaskscience[9] subreddit asking if hawks can see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which gained more than 2,500 up votes and 35 comments prior to being archived. On March 17th, 2013, the Tumblr ask blog Ask Hotblooded Pinkie[10] uploaded a post featuring the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic character Pinkie Pie being unable to see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch (shown below). The post managed to gain more than 3,000 notes in 3 months. The final part of the post was also highlighted two days later on the Cheezburger site My Little Brony,[3] which garnered upwards of 1,000 up votes and 40 Facebook shares over the same period.

On June 12th, Redditor kyari05 submitted a post to the /r/circlejerk subreddit[8] asking if the U.S. National Security Agency can see why kids love the taste of the breakfast cereal, humorously alluding to the widespread paranoia in the wake of the 2013 NSA PRISM scandal. In the first eight days, the post received more than 10,400 up votes and 300 comments. In addition, several Facebook pages[7] have been created after the phrase, the most popular of which has accumulated over 110 likes as of June 2013.[2]