Alright nobody panic!!
I say, as I shotgun a half-gal of 2% and punch Boo Berry-shaped holes in my drywall. But really: Monster Mash Cereal could prove to be the biggest cereal headline since General Mills first revived Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy for one year in 2013.
To quickly summarize the wholly grainy image above’s significance, General Mills’ seasonal Monster Cereals, which appear each Halloween season, are nostalgic cultural touchstones for cereal lovers the world over. While Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry are regular spooky shelf fixtures, cherry-flavored Frute Brute and orange-flavored Yummy Mummy were discontinued in the ’80s and ’90s respectively, having only returned once in 2013—though recent Monster box art loves to make nods to them.
Brute and Mummy or not, the expectation is usually that General Mills will do something different for the Monster Cereals each year, whether that’s mixing up the marshmallow shapes or bringing in guest artists to do the boxes. Sadly, in recent years a malignant malaise has surrounded the cereals, which keep recycling the same box art and continuing to use controversial corn ingredients instead of the oat flour that made 20th century Monster Cereals so memorable.
However, for once, we’re entering a new year with a monstrous helping of hope. Thanks to Michigan Ghostbusters, who first shared the below image, we now know that some sort of 5-in-1 “Monster Mash” cereal is planned for next autumn. This isn’t 100% surprising—I sort of predicted that 2021 could mean something special, since it’s the 50th anniversary of Count Chocula and Franken Berry’s 1971 debut.
Now I have to admit I buried 2/3 of the lede here. This stunning revelation also suggests we’ll be getting a new Ghostbusters Cereal and a presumably Almond-flavored variety of Cheerios Oat Crunch—a Cheerios spinoff that’s brought us two impeccably awesome varieties already.
But without a look at the Ghostbusters Cereal, and with the already assumed goodness of Oat Crunch, it’s Monster Mash Cereal that invites the most speculation. Will all five Monster Cereals be in one bag, or will there be five mini-boxes, a la All Together Cereal? The cluster of blurry pieces we see above is perplexing: I can definitely recognize a few familiar ghost cereal shapes, as well as one of Boo’s marshmallows(?), but as a whole this seems like an incomplete or at least irregular representation of the whole Monster menagerie. Though we can probably safely assume this box art is far from finalized, as we’ve seen odd placeholder art many times in the past.
Perhaps the most important question of all is whether General Mills will prove they’ve actually been listening to Monster Cereal fans by reformulating Monster Mash with oat flour. Sadly, I feel historical precedent suggests this isn’t likely, but maybe we can get #MonsterCerealOatFlour trending online or something.
That’s all I’ve got for now, but I’ll be sure to update you all if I learn more about Monster Mash Cereal. Thanks again to Michigan Ghostbusters for the find—if any of you out there have a hot lead to leak, you can reach me at our Submissions page, or on Twitter.
It follows the monster formula for movies of this kind. Strange occurrences, outlandish theories, disbelief, mounting unexplainable clues pointing to the scientists being correct, the monster reveal, a plan to destroy the creature, a thrilling monster mash climax with destruction, the monster being killed and our heroes surviving. Tobey, Curtis and the majority of the characters don t really stand out during all this. He s a standard leading man, he s the nice scientist, there s the no nonsense military men. The male characters are quite cookie cutter types from films of this era and aren t memorable at all. They do what is required of them give exposition, argue the dangers of this monster, try to save the day in the end. They do it all in the most perfunctory way.
Ugh, next October seems like a long time away, but with how quick a year goes these days, it’ll be here in no time. I’d love for Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy to come back again. Not sure why it took them this long to even consider it.
I reached out to a General Mills representative back in 2017 about them re-releasing both Yummy Mummy and Frute Brute again and the rep told me that even though they saw a rise in cereal sales for both products back in 2013, they weren’t sure when or if they were going to release them again. Not sure how a cereal company can be fickled over something that is a money maker for them. It feels like they do the exact opposite sometimes to please the cereal fans.
But as much as I love Yummy Mummy cereal, the Orange & cream flavored release in 2013 wasn’t as good as the vanilla flavored original from the late 1980s. I wish they’d release the original formula of the Monster cereals again. I guess we’ll never see that again in our life times.
Yummy Mummy wasn’t vanilla flavored. It was just fruity flavored originally.