A look back at the discolored poops, antisemitism scandal, and commercial power of monster cereal
YouTube channel Toy Galaxy looked at the history of monster cereals like Franken Berry, Count Chocula, and Boo Berry
Aux Features Disney
It isn’t easy to be the kind of visionary breakfast cereal company that, Frankenstein-like, dares to sell morning meals to the public by associating them with famous creatures usually depicted in media having freshly risen from the grave or stalking the night covered in blood and gore. But General Mills dared to do so, creating a line of ghoulish favorites in the process.
YouTube channel Toy Galaxy looked back at how these grain monsters ascended, providing a brief history of cereals like Count Chocula and Franken Berry that covers everything from product evolution to kids reporting to doctors with discolored poop.
The cereals date back to 1971 when food companies had figured out how to advertise to kids with cartoon characters and properly pump a breakfast meal with loads of sugar. An advertising company was asked by General Mills to create compelling mascots for the impending launch of new strawberry and chocolate-flavored cereal and copywriter Laura Levine struck monstrous gold, as we’ve written before, with Count Chocula and Franken Berry.
Their visual design was created by a cereal veteran who first drew the Trix Rabbit and another, who worked with Disney and Warner Brothers, and led the studio responsible for the early Peanuts TV specials. After refining the concept for a while longer, commercials began airing that saw Count Chocula and Franken Berry fight over whose cereal tastes better, somehow claiming the cereals were “vitamin charged” in the process.
The cereal was a success, but that success came, at times, with a cost. For example, in 1972, a child was taken to the hospital after “passing pink stools for two days” that, we’re sorry to write, apparently “looked like strawberry ice cream.” After ensuring that he wasn’t bleeding internally, the doctors discovered that the kid had eaten Franken Berry. Testing verified that the cereal was the cause and that undigested food dye was responsible.
In the late ‘80s, as part of a campaign that incorporated the real Universal Monsters into its cereal advertisements, box art featuring Dracula showed the vampire wearing a Star Of David necklace, which, needless to say, wasn’t a great look either.
Undeterred by all of these scandals, General Mills pressed onward with its experiment, eventually unveiling further spooky cereals, like Boo Berry, Fruit Brute, and Yummy Mummy, making their products seasonally available instead of purchasable year round, toying with new flavors, characters, and spin-offs, and venturing into licensing the mascots for other, inedible forms of media.
To this last point: One day, perhaps, we’ll finally get the sexy, brooding Count Chocula streaming series the world deserves.
[via Digg]
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34 Comments
Ooh, this was my childhood. The television commercials were EVERYWHERE and grocery stores had stacks of the stuff in prime locations but MAD magazine had primed me for shit like this and it all seemed very, very dodgey even for the Froot Loops era. I’m always amazed to see the boxes show up in the grocery stores every fall and still find it unfathomable that any adult would buy this DOW Chemical-in-a-box for their kids.
I loved them as a kid but when I tried them as an adult I found they had changed the marshmallows and I absolutely hated it. Remember when when the marshmallows were tiny and round and packed with flavor? Those were the good marshmallows. The later ones can go kick rocks…
I used to spend my summers in southern Kentucky/northern Tennessee with my grandfather, and he’d always stock up on Franken Berry cereal, which was my favorite. Problem was, at Dale Hollow Lake, where he summered, they only had a tiny general store and the Franken Berry cereal was old and stale.But that was also back in the days of the small, big-flavored marshmallows, which meant that when I got the cereal they were hard and chewy instead of soft and slimy when they got in the milk, and my god did they ever taste amazing. And the cereal itself was way more sugar-coated (rather than slimed with corn syrup) so it was absolutely delicious, even if stale.Every Halloween season I buy the Monster Cereals for my family (currently have boxes of Frute Brute, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, and Count Chocula in my pantry) but they will never be the same as the originals.
I still like buying these cereals seasonally as an adult, but I agree about the change in marshmallows. I also liked that they often fell to the bottom. When I was a kid I never shook the box and I would slowly go through the box with each bowl having more marshmallows in it until the last bowl was like half marshmallow.
Eventually, Count Chocula curries enough favor at court that he is created Archduke Chocula.
Only to be assassinated a few years later, sparking Cereal World War I.
Which is weird because you’d think with all that cereal, Austria wouldn’t be hungry.
mmm, curry count chocula
Admiral Crunch? Caffeinated bacon? Baconated grapefruit?
Meh that stuff wasn’t as bad as Cap’n Crunch, the cereal that shreds your mouth like your chewing broken glass.
Delicious, delicious broken glass…
I had never heard of the mouth shredding thing until, I was like in my 50’s, about the same time I found out Circus Peanuts were “banana” flavored. I ate a lot of Captain Crunch and never had any shredding of my mouth. I went and bought a box just after reading about it. It was the first box of cereal, other than Mini-Wheats I had bought in a very long time. Just for shit’s sake, I asked several of my friends about it, and they all said, “What?”. I guess our mouths were/are tougher than you shredded people.
Well to be fair I was never a Cap’n Crunch person, I’m a basic bitch just give me honey nut Cheerios lol. But it’s been a long running ”joke” about Cap’n Crunch “shredding” you mouth
I kind of figured it was kind of like the “Grape Nuts” are like eating BB’s” thing. Some people had more delicate mouths or whatever and eating GN’s too much for them. Like “my steak isn’t tender enough, I have to chew it!” folks. I like chewy steak, along with Captain Crunch, and have eaten a lot of Grape Nuts over the years. I would just put them into a cup with some sugar in it, and stir it up and eat them and watch cartoons on most Sat mornings. I always thought Cheerios were very odd tasting, regardless of what variety they were. It seems almost a requirement for babies to have some on their high chair tray. I remember tossing them to my dog when I was like a year old. I don’t know why that has stuck in my head all those years.
Oh I loved Grape Nuts, it’s like the ONLY cereal that will never ever get soggy lol. I used to do Raisin Bran and Grape Nuts pretty often.
I bought raisin Bran pretty often, and one time when I lived in Vegas, I went to the store and bought a bigger box than normal, just because it was on sale, and I figured I would get rid of it before it went stale or the rasins totally dried up. So I put it into the cupboard, and the next day I took it out, opened it up and about 100,000 fruit flies flew out. What a hassle they were to get rid of. I got the majority of them by turning off all the lights in the house except the kitchen ceiling light, and a huge crowd of them flew to it. A spray bottle filled with 50/50 rubbing alcohol and water killed them and I sucked them into my shop vac. It didn’t get all of them, and for weeks on end, my dogs were snapping at almost invisible flies. I thought they only lived a few days, but they hung around somewhere and bred, I guess. I stayed clear of the RB for a while after that. At least I didn’t bring home (from the same store about a year earlier) a box of cereal with a load of Vinegaroons like a lot of people did. They ended up trashing the entire stock of cereal both times they had invasions. Supposedly, a Kellog’s factory in TX was the culprit. The employees and customers were picking out a Vinegaroon and fighting them in a fishbowl. I had a really mean one, but I fought him one too many times and he lost his head.
More foods nowadays should offer to turn your poop different colors. It’s sad that it’s 2022 and we still only have the normal white stuff.
What foods turn your poop white?
Pet foods with bone meal in them are why you occasionally see white dog feces. Humans should not be eating foods with bone meal in them though.
Cereal ad campaigns were so great back in the day. I remember a seemingly years-long series where kids voted to decide whether the Trix Rabbit would FINALLY get to taste Trix. (Which leads one to wonder – why did he so fervently pursue the stuff if he didn’t know what it was like?)My favorite was Quisp and Quake. The former was an effeminate alien, the latter was a burly hardhatted miner. Their cereals? Made from the same stuff, same amount of sugar and all, but they were differently shaped. The genius of the campaign was that it told kids they had to choose one or the other – the characters fought and argued in the commercials all the time. Even when I was little I thought it was a neat trick- Quaker Oats made money no matter which cereal won.
The fact that the Trix Rabbit was thwarted in his quest to taste the sugary cereal at every turn, alas, only made him desire it more. Sadly, it became an obsession. Mere fresh produce no longer did it for him. He’d prowl the streets at night, digging in dumpsters seeking morsels left behind by kids who were sloppy eaters. He was eventually found in a back alley, an emaciated shadow of his former self.
I remember a competitor had the Grape Baron
I must admit this was not the headline I expected to be reading today.
If Count Chocula was anti-Semitic why would he wear a star of David necklace?
Maybe he’s like those evangelical Christians who are really into the Old Testament and think they are better representations of the ancient Israelites than the current Jewish community which they look down upon.
It was probably more that he was an antisemitic stereotype of a Jewish person committing blood libel or what have you.
Probably something to do with blood-libel. He is a vampire, after all.
I think the motivating idea was “he can’t wear a cross, so what’s the opposite? a Star of David!” which unfortunately suggests that Jews are bloodsuckers.
Yes, what could possibly be wrong with implying that jewish people are large-nosed blood drinkers?
Ok the nose thing makes sense, although I wasn’t aware that drinking blood was a Jewish stereotype.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
I don’t like how modern cereals don’t have toys in them anymore. At most they’ll have a url to some downloadable content. That’s not the same. And the same thing has happened to Cracker Jacks!
As a young grown up, I would buy my favorite, Boo Berry, as a treat around the holidays. Can’t find it anymore!!
The two local Acme supermarkets had them the weeks leading up to Halloween…they had Boo Berry, Count Chocula, and Frankenberry (which I, of course, purchased and thoroughly did not enjoy…but it’s a thing I do every year). I only ever see them around Halloween, and only those three…They are sneaky, though…they only get a bit of each, and they don’t put them in the cereal aisle. They do one of those ‘end of the aisle’ displays. I just happened to stumble on them at the one store, then the other store I made a point to search and finally found them, nowhere near the other cereal (ok, so it was the candy aisle, so it made some bit of sense).