It’s a dream—err, perhaps a nightmare on Elm Street—come true!
Funko, the maker of those ubiquitous Pop toys who have immortalized nearly every influential pop culture character from Count Chocula to Cap’n Crunch (and a bunch of other non-cereal ones, I guess) in chibi plastic action figure/doll/toy/collectible form, are now entering the cereal game.
Can’t wait to find a shipping container’s worth of them on clearance at FYE next year.
All jokes aside, Funko’s upcoming cereals, the first line of which includes Elvira, Freddy Krueger, Beetlejuice, and Cuphead, echo FYE’s own foray into licensed cereals. But where FYE’s Reptar, Rick & Morty, and even Five Nights at Freddy’s cereals boasted daunting price tags of $12.99, Funko’s will slightly more reasonably sold for $7.99, at collectibles stores only.
I guess $7.99 is about how much it costs to get Cracklin’ Oat Bran at an off-grocer retailer like Walgreens, so I’ll give Funko a pass until I try these—especially since each box includes a mini Funko figure, too.
It’s too soon to see what the flavors will be —I’m hoping Beetlejuice’s tastes like a boatful of bananas—but early word says that Elvira, Freddy, and Mr. Juice’s cereals will turn the milk in their respective cereals black, red, and slime green.
For info on their launch date and upcoming varieties, I defer to a recent interview with Funko founder Michael Becker:
“One of the fun things is we are about to release our own line of cereal, with a mini-Pop inside. We got all the cool licenses like He-Man, Wonder Woman, Elvira Mistress of the Dark, Freddy Krueger and our own Freddy Funko. We start shipping to stores in June and we have the distribution set up and the product is pre-sold. It’s just one more of those feel-good Funko items. I used to watch cartoons on Saturday mornings while I was eating cereal. There are prizes in the cereal and it will sell for $7.99 a box. When you add milk to the Freddy Krueger cereal, it looks blood red. With the Beetle Juice cereal, when you add milk it looks like slime. The idea is to sell the cereal to retailers who carry collectibles. We can’t compete with Kellogg’s at Ralphs. We think people will buy one box to stock and one to rock. They’ll probably open one box and enjoy it and never touch the other one, because it’s a collectible.”
I’ll allow a He-Man Cereal, Mike, but only if it’s followed by Skeletor’s Crunchy Bones. For now, I’ll plan to start reviewing these in June. Who knows: maybe a Beanie Baby Cereal will come out in the mean time.
Yeesh. On principle, I don’t know what my takeaway is with cereal that turns your milk black. Lol. great gimmick, but I think I’ll pass.
This has to be an April fool’s joke. I remember when I fell for “Spawn Pockets” (read and green hot pockets)