In October, it's usually pretty easy to find the typically elusive General Mills Monster Cereals on grocery store shelves. I haven't seen any this month, but I was happy to find Boo Berry in January, so I know they are for sale somewhere. These characters are easily some of my favorite advertising mascots ever. I especially love the original "retro" character designs depicted here. Funko released a fantastic set of bobbleheads a few years ago, using the "old school" versions of the monsters.
Count Chocula the vampire and Franken Berry the Frankenstein-type monster were introduced in 1971. Of course, Count Chocula had chocolate flavored cereal, and Franken Berry had strawberry flavored cereal. It's fun to go on YouTube and see some of their old animated commercials. These guys used to be big TV stars. They had their own cereal prizes!
Boo Berry the ghost began haunting TV channels in 1973, scaring up sales for his blueberry flavored cereal.
Boo Berry seemed to be tougher to find than Count Chocula or Franken Berry. In the commercials, he often seemed to play second fiddle to the other characters.
Fruit Brute the werewolf first howled for his product in 1974.
I really don't remember ever seeing Fruit Brute in any advertisements. His fruit-flavored cereal was retired in the early 1980s. Fruit Brute may be gone from stores, but he's far from forgotten. He's something of a movie star, as his box of cereal appeared in Quentin Tarantino's film, "Pulp Fiction."
General Mills tried to relaunch the fruit flavor in 1987 with Yummy Mummy. I DO remember the ads for this cereal vividly. "Fruity Yummy Mummy makes your tummy go yummy." Catchy jingle!
Unfortunately, a catchy jingle could not save Yummy Mummy. His cereal was shelved (get it?) and the flavor was laid to rest shortly after the character debuted.
I think it's pretty impressive how these characters flawlessly represent their cereal flavors and still manage to make breakfast fun and just a little bit scary at all times of the year.
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I remember Count C., Frankenberry, Boo Berry and Fuite Brute, but not Yummy Mummy...I guess that one was "after" my time.
ReplyDeleteI just saw Count C. and Frankenberry at Target today after work. They had regular size boxes with new graphics and what looked like smaller boxes with the original/classic graphics. I walked by them very quickly and told myself I would loop back around and take a closer look at them, but I forgot!
Hey TokyoMagic! There's probably not that many people that remember Yummy Mummy---I was shocked that there was a bobblehead made of him, as he's pretty obscure.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Monster Cereal sighting! Wal-Mart usually has them, but I haven't seen them there this year. I did see an unusual Halloween version of Captain Crunch there, though!
My brother gave me a box of the Peanut Butter Capt'n Crunch a couple weeks ago that had the classic graphics on it. I guess he bought himself the Crunchberry version. He said Quaker has released several cereals with the classic boxes. He bought these because they were the ones that were around when we were growing up. I rarely go down the cereal aisle, so I had no idea. I wish I had taken a closer look at the ones at Target.....maybe tomorrow after work!
ReplyDeleteI would love to get ahold of the Count or Frankenberry. Looks like I'll be going to Target soon.
ReplyDeletexoRobyn
TokyoMagic!: Yes, those boxes of Cap'n Crunch are Grrrreat! (Whoops, wrong cereal). I first learned about them on Darrin's Dad's Dish Retro Blog. I love the Collector Cards on these boxes, featuring great characters like Smedley the Elephant and the Crunch Berry Monster (plus some I'd never heard of). There's two sizes of the boxes. I haven't got these yet, but Wal-Mart's price for them is the cheapest I've seen so far (I think it was $2.12---which is good for cereal!).
ReplyDeleteHey RawknRobyn! Yes, I really am craving some Monster Cereal now, too! :-D