Knock knock.

“Who’s there?”

Boo.

“Boo who?”

That’s for me to decide, ma’am. Now step aside so me and the ‘buster boys can exorcise the restless dust bunnies haunting your droppings-dropping vacuum.

But the question does remain: will Boo Berry make me weep tears of mirth or mourning this year? It’s been two years since I did a write up of a General Mills Monster Cereal—I took 2018 off out of protest, as Brown Vampire, Pink Abomination and The Blue Guy have continually grown less inspired year after year.

Of course, my Boo-cott didn’t affect this year’s release, which features perhaps the lamest “theme” in recorded Monster history: digital pumpkin stencils featuring Count Chocula, Franken Berry & Boo Berry, as well as members of the Addams Family, who doubtlessly left a few cash-stuffed gourds on General Mills’ porch to make this happen. I was tempted to continue my autumnal abstinence for 2019, but after realizing that cereal companies aren’t throwing me a single femur this year when it comes to new fall cereals—seriously, don’t be surprised if I sleep upside down in my pantry for most of October—I decided it was worth exhuming and examining at least one of the gang, just to see if it’s changed at all.

I picked Boo Berry, because aside from being my favorite non-mummified Monster Cereal, he’s also been the most inconsistent. It seems every year the cerulean specter either possesses my Halloween excitement like something out of Hereditary during sloppy years, or a JoJo Stand in more crunchily coordinated seasons.

So what’s it gonna be, my ectoplasmic little friend? King Paimon or King Crimson?

Hmmm…

Well, on the scale of drawn-out vowel sounds (which goes from “ahhhh! (of fear)” to “ahhhh! (of jubilation)”), I’d give 2019 Boo Berry a solid “ehhhh…”

What this bowler-wearing boogeyman lacks in an appetizing smell—cracking the bag is downright sarcophagulogical—he makes up for in lowered standards. See, in recent years, Boo has had to make do amongst an influx of more-interesting pumpkin spice and apple cinnamon fall cereals. But this time, his nostalgia-forward platform has no fresh ‘n’ shiny competition to shred through him like a paper bag made damp by the leakings of a stale PB & Blueberry J sandwich—a confection which must never be acronymized.

Beyond that, my own baseline for what constitutes a tolerable cereal has been gruelingly worn down this summer by a swarm of sucky sugar ring cereals. And while Boo Berry’s base is as vapidly corny and obnoxiously starchy as ever, at least he’s better than this, this, this, this, this or this.

Since this past year has also brought me the joy of cohosting The Empty Bowl, I can say that said show has made me more comfortable being Frute-Brutally honest with cereals I may have previously softballed for fear of offending their sacred ancestral legacies (which would, presumable lead me to be cursed with spontaneous palate lacerations and other such cereal stigmata).

With this no-nonsense perspective, I can candidly assure you all that this Addams Family schtick is downright dumb. Worse than being simply lazy, the website that goes along with the gimmick reads both robotically and falsely. Between a typo’d “who’s” and a cruel lie stating that these are oat cereals, you can tell this bad (bad, bad) boy was slapped together by an intern on a single summer Friday cut short by mandatory poolside fun.

And if this stoking of the ever-burning oat vs. corn flour Monster Cereal controversy wasn’t bad enough, the site also explicitly claims what even Boo Berry’s box will not: that both the ghost pieces and marshmallows taste like blueberries.

After having eaten an articulately blue-berried cereal of late, I’ll again make my annual admission that the ghosts here smack only of some cartoonishly oversimplified “mixed berry” witch’s brew, while the marshmallows call to mind the chunky shampoo your mom left beneath the bathroom sink back when Boo Berry was but a twinkle in his father’s eye—which was later touched by shrieking, spaghetti-manhandling schoolchildren who were told it was “just a peeled grape.”

This may sound bad for Boo, but his in-milk performance begrudgingly pulls his cereal back into passable pastures. As always, milk erodes the more detestable notes of corn, plastic bag, throat drops and soggy laundry in favor of a boiled-down berry amalgam that, though it also becomes slurried in a hurry, is almost a welcome balm of flavor minimalism during this globally harrowing Halloweentime.

In the end, I’ll still hold onto hope that General Mills won’t give up the ghost on this ghost and his Monster pals—whom I may or may not review also this year, depending on whether Corn Pops comes out of left field with another Candy Corn Pops. While Boo Berry cereal loses several points for its persistent bad ingredient habits and pathetic box theming, Boo is still a personal favorite of mine, meaning I’ll keep taking a shine to him and overlooking his caretakers’ wrongdoings ’til the day I die and am resurrected to haunt cereal aisles everywhere (mostly by giving unsolicited purchasing advice).

So if you’re sick of pumpkin spice and just want to think of nicer times, it might still be worth spending a few blanket-forted evenings with Boo and an old VHS of Ronald McDonald’s Scared Silly.

How necromantic!

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The Bowl: Boo Berry Cereal (2019)

The Breakdown: Boo brings the same tepid mixed berry taste and uninspired marshmallows we’ve seen for the past decade and pairs it with an instantly forgettable theme. But with a character so sentimental, even if Boo’s true memory has left us as a phantom, he can still be trusted to lead us into autumn, with its many orange and black parades.

The Bottom Line: 6 grimaces (of anguish) and Grimaces (of milkshakian myth) out of 10