A student found a gecko in her Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and was offered vouchers as compensation.
Sharing the ordeal on X (formerly Twitter), the student posted photos of the gecko floating in milk and being retrieved with a spoon, captioning the post: “There’s no f***ing way this happened to me.”
“I noticed a lizard in my cereal when I was halfway done,” they added, writing it might’ve crawled in while she was preparing it. “I think it did crawl [because] I left it unattended for like 10min maybe ??? but I [generally] don’t know I’m gonna cry i don’t want to think it was in my milk carton the whole time just floating.”
Some people commented that they would be shocked if they would ever encounter something like that.
“This would be enough to never make me eat again,” one person wrote.
“girl please sue someone LMAOO,” another added.
“There’s no way in hell I’d survive this,” someone else joked. “But then again think about a major lawsuit and the bag you could win here.”
Meanwhile, others ridiculed the poster for making a big deal about the situation.
“I mean, the cereal box said it comes with a free prize,” someone wrote.
Another referenced Geico’s gecko mascot, joking: “The new geico marketing is crazy.”
“Just eat around it why do you people have to complain about everything,” one person said. To which the student replied, “I just think there shouldn’t be a lizard while I’m trying to enjoy cereal my bad.”
As it turns out, the cereal brand’s social media team reached out to them on the platform.
“We would like to apologize for this unpleasant experience,” the team wrote in the message the student screenshotted. “We take this matter seriously and you can be sure that we will send a report to our Quality Control Team to advise them of your experience.”
They added that they would send the poster some vouchers as a “gesture of goodwill” given the student’s experience.
The student jokingly considered asking for tuition money instead. “Is it too much if I say instead of vouchers can I get money for [university]?”
The internet was quick to weigh in, with many urging the student to demand more.
“VOUCHERS????? demand more omfg,” one user wrote.
“They gonna send you vouchers so you can buy more of their product?” another added. “The product that just had a GECKO in it?! Hell nah.”
Other people shared their own experiences of finding random creatures in their prepackaged foods, primarily coffee.
One user noted that her father had also found a “whole gecko” while drinking coffee, while she had found a gecko inside a brownie package she’d been snacking from. Another person noted that they found a mouse in their Starbucks cold brew coffee. In the video footage, a mouse could be seen floating at the bottom of the drink.
Though the student’s breakfast fiasco is resolved, the incident has left many questioning just how safe their favorite packaged foods really are. According to a 2024 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report on food contamination, foreign objects like insects, rodents, and other small creatures are among the most commonly reported complaints.
Incidents like this have drawn attention to the importance of rigorous quality control in food production, as seen in past cases like the 2021 viral story of shrimp tails allegedly found in Cinnamon Toast Crunch and other consumer complaints about unexpected discoveries in popular products.
