Those who eat cold cereal often have a favorite. For many years, mine was regular Cheerios. After college, my tastes changed to favor Back to Nature Flax and Fiber Crunch.

Despite the unappealing name, the product is quite good. My preferred grocery store, Super Target, sold the 14 oz. boxes for $2.29, so all was well in the world. Unfortunately, my peaceful bliss was shattered this week by the disappearance of the familiar boxes from the shelves.

Where there had once been 14 oz. boxes, there were now 10 oz. bags. That wouldn’t have been too bad, except they seized the opportunity to boost the price to $2.99. That represents an increase of 82%, from 16.4 cents per ounce to 29.9 cents per ounce. Oh, the injustice! That’s on par with the recent run-up in orange juice prices, but it might be nothing compared to the fallout from the honey bee population collapse.

Regardless, I’m left with a quandry: I can pay the newly exhorbitant price at Target, or I can find a new supplier. Amazon looks promising, but I would need purchase a three-month supply to make it worthwhile. I suppose that I could simply find a new breakfast cereal, but I would rather avoid that hassle. The good news is that it will be a few weeks before my stash runs out, so I have time to find a solution.

In other words, I’ll forget about the problem until I have no more cereal, then I’ll buy whatever’s on sale.