Cuz Breakfast Just Wasn't Spooky Enough...
Kids love cereal, kids love monsters! I wish I was at the board meeting at General Mills when that idea came to light. Yes, we all love the cereal that had monsters with cereal-pun names as mascots (or at least I do, and it’s my webpage, so there). They’re still around (well... one of them is...) But they had their hay-day back in the 80s. When they actually had commercials for them. Commercials with long, drawn out plots, especially around Halloween. So, as it is almost Halloween, I decided to pay homage to these, the important part of a frightening breakfast.
Count Chocula
The kingpin, and easily the most popular member of the monster cereal family is Count Chocula. Really, this was a no brainer. The other guys all have fruits in their names. Kids are gonna go for the chocolate guy... especially when he had the best commercials. He would be a bat, then fly in, and give kids breakfast. I always secretly hoped he’d jump one of them, and drain them of their vital essence, or at least bash their head in with the jug of milk, but it was not to be. For those who’ve never had a taste of the Count, let me describe. It’s cocoa bits, shaped vaguely like little ghosts, with chocolate marshmallow bats. Occasionally, for special promotions, they would also have marshmallow ghosts, as most of the cereals do nowadays around Halloween. The Count came up with it, baby!
Frankenberry
The ‘runner-up’ for most popular cereal was Frankenberry. The reason: people love strawberries. However, his name brings up a very important Halloween-pet-peeve of mine. Frankenstein is just a guy. The monster is just ‘the monster’. Not the other way around. Remember that. Anyways, even since this guy IS the monster, I don’t really get it... He’s supposed to be mixed up parts, yeah, but HUMAN parts. This guy is made from parts of a stove. I guess seeing a corpse in front of you at breakfast isn’t exactly appealing... or so General Mills would have you believe. I actually always liked Frankenberry, it was pretty tasty. He was the lovable idiot in the line of commercials. Chocula was the brains.
The other 3 cereals, I know very little about, as they went off the market LONG before now. Like in the 80s. So yeah - this will mostly be a review of the commercials/characters on the box. Werd.
Boo-Berry
From what I remember, Boo-Berry was the “guy that’s supposed to be scary, but just comes off as the comic relief” guy. Not much is known about him, ‘cept he wore a funny hat, and tasted like strudel. The funny thing is, I think Boo-Berry might actually still be around, just no one cares. Mostly because people love pretty much everything ‘blueberry’, but I guess not soggy flavored oat-bits.
Fruit Brute
I never even heard of this guy til I went looking for the other pics. He looks like a prick though, so I say screw him.
Fruity Yummy Mummy
The mummy lasted longer than at least Boo and the Brute did (at least around here). I never had it, btu I could see liking it, as it was pretty much the same thing as Fruity-Pebbles. Only with less star-power than the Flintstones. That and having the misfortune of a rotting corpse on the box wrapped in multi-colored toilet paper sealed his fate as one of the cereals not meant to be.
How do I wrap up my article about monster cereals? Since nothing else is coming to mind, I’ll do it with a little poem I’ll write right now, on the spot:
Cereals with dead guys
pictured on the box
makes me want them back again,
Frankenberry rocks.
What the hell is Fruit Brute?
Is he supposed to be the ‘Wolfman’?
Wear plenty of sun screen
when you go out to get a tan.