Question: What year did General Mills buy out the company in which Charles Pillsbury's grandfather founded?
Context: Carole MacGillvray Rappeport was an employee of the General Mills Toy Group.  As early as 1978, she was associate vice-president of Hasbro's toy marketing unit; in the early 1980s, she served as vice-president of U.S. marketing at General Mills' CPG (Consumer Products Group) division.  In February 1984, she became president of General Mills' M.A.D. (Marketing and Design) service, replacing Bernard Loomis.  In the mid-1990s, she ran a toy consulting company in Santa Barbara, California. Pillsbury is an American brand name used by Minneapolis-based General Mills and Orrville, Ohio-based J.M. Smucker Company.  Historically, the Pillsbury Company, also based in Minneapolis, was a rival company to General Mills and was one of the world's largest producers of grain and other foodstuffs until it was bought out by General Mills in 2001.  Antitrust law required General Mills to sell off some of the products.  General Mills kept the rights to refrigerated and frozen Pillsbury products, while dry baking products and frosting are now sold by Smucker under license. Charles A. Pillsbury is a mediator, lawyer, and community activist in New Haven, Connecticut, where he is the co-director of the Center on Dispute Resolution at Quinnipiac University School of Law.  He also served as the first executive director of Mediators Beyond Borders International from November 1, 2009, through January 31, 2014.  He is the great-grandson of Charles Alfred Pillsbury, founder of the Pillsbury Company in 1872.  He is also the source of the surname (and some perceived character traits) of the comic strip character Mike Doonesbury, created by Pillsbury's college roommate, Garry Trudeau. General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded consumer foods sold through retail stores.  It is headquartered in Golden Valley, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.  The company markets many well-known North American brands, including Annie's Homegrown, Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Colombo, Totino's, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs, Cheerios, Trix, Cocoa Puffs, and Lucky Charms.  Its brand portfolio includes more than 89 other leading U.S. brands and numerous category leaders around the world. Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company was an American flour milling company that operated about one quarter of the mills in Minneapolis when the city was the flour milling capital of the world.  Formed as a business entity, Northwestern produced flour for the half century between 1891 and 1953, when its A Mill was converted to storage and light manufacturing.  At its founding, Northwestern was the city's and the world's second largest flour milling company after Pillsbury, with what is today General Mills a close third.  The company was touched by an attempt at U.S. monopoly and became part of a Minneapolis oligopoly that valued in 1905 owned almost 9% of the country's flour and grist products. Wanchai Ferry is a brand of Chinese food dinner kits owned by General Mills.  The company's roots began in 1972 when Chong Kin Wo – often known as Madame Chong – began selling dumplings, a business that led to her "dumpling queen" nickname and the 1985 establishment of the Wanchai Ferry Peking Dumpling Company.  In 1997, Pillsbury Company entered a joint venture with Wanchai Ferry which led the brand to become part of General Mills when Pillsbury was acquired in 2001. The US Bank Plaza is a two-tower high-rise building complex in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  US Bank Plaza I is a 561-foot (171 m) tall, 40-floor skyscraper.  US Bank Plaza II is a 321-foot (98 m) tall, 23-floor skyscraper.  Originally called Pillsbury Center, the complex was completed in 1981.  The complex has a 500 car parking garage below and is connected by skyway to the Capella Tower, Hennepin County Government Center, Canadian Pacific Plaza, and the McKnight Building.  Tower I served as the corporate headquarters of the Pillsbury Company from its 1981 completion until Pillsbury's acquisition by General Mills in 2001.  The name of the building subsequently changed to US Bank Plaza the summer of 2004.  The towers are clad in travertine marble and have bronze-tinted reflective windows. Reatha Clark King (born April 11, 1938) is an African-American chemist, the former Vice President of the General Mills Corporation; and the former President, Executive Director, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the General Mills Foundation, the philanthropic foundation of General Mills, Inc. Total Television was founded in 1959 by Buck Biggers, Chester "Chet" Stover, Joe Harris, W. Watts Biggers, and Treadwell D. Covington.  They were executives in the advertising agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample who had the account for the General Mills food corporation.  Total was formed to create cartoon characters encouraging children to buy General Mills breakfast cereals and other products. Rainbow Crafts Company, Inc. or, Rainbow Crafts was a toy manufacturing company created and operated by Noah McVicker and his nephew Joseph McVicker as a subsidiary of the midwestern soap company, Kutol Products.  The company manufactured Play-Doh, a modeling compound for children.  Rainbow Crafts operated under the McVickers from 1956 until 1965 when it was sold to General Mills with all rights to Play-Doh.  In 1971, Rainbow Crafts and Kenner Products (both subsidiaries of General Mills) merged, and, in 1987, Tonka Corporation bought both subsidiaries.  Hasbro currently manufactures Play-Doh.
Answer: 2001