Yes!! Not only is it my undying delight to see a new Monster grace shelves—the first since 1987’s Fruity Yummy Mummy—but to see an actual female cereal mascot for once is refreshing, especially in the sausage fest that is the breakfast aisle.
Furthermore, Carmella is just cool. Billed as the long-lost cousin of Franken Berry (however the murky genealogy of lab-created lifeforms works), she’s a hip ‘n’ happenin’ DJ who would never be caught un-undead with the likes of someone lame enough to still use the phrase “hip ‘n’ happenin'”. Though that wouldn’t stop me from uncool-ly inviting her to get gas station sushi and play Kirby Air Ride (she’d decline, but politely).
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Wait, you were asking whether Carmella Creeper the cereal is good?
For fifty years now, the General Mills Monster Cereals have been harbingers of Halloweentime. When they start popping up on shelves around late-August, a vortex of orange and black seems to seems to swirl outwardly around them. July 4th fireworks become Pop Rocks, watermelons become pumpkins, campfire roasters become big plastic devil pitchforks, and you can feel a palpable chill in the air—probably from Target turning up the AC because, y’know, it’s August, but still.
One might even call the Monsters the Five Horsemen of the Halloween Season, though I’m not sure how I’d assign them apocalyptic analogues. Chocula is definitely Conquest, since he’s the ringleader. Towering powerhouse Franken Berry feels built for War, while Boo Berry is Death because ohhh, you know how ghosts are. I guess we can say Frute Brute is Famine, since he’s the biggest cult favorite fans have hungered for, while Yummy Mummy represents Pestilence in the form of some ancient Egyptian plague unleashed when someone drank sarcophagus juice like it was Ghoul-Aid.
Anyway, now that we’ve picked a group Halloween costume for this crunchy quintet, let’s talk about their 50th anniversary mega-cereal: Monster Mash. Hotly anticipated for months now—I swear, people get more excited about Monster Cereals than 1,031 new Toast Crunches—Monster Mash Cereal, debuting on store shelves everywhere this month, brings all five Monsters together in one box, for the first time. But on a scale of “eerie sight” to “graveyard smash,” just how good is it? Well allow me to grab my finest aged sarcophagus milk and find out. Continue reading →
No, that’s not a typo: it’s a dumb pun, referring to a) the squishiness of these upcoming Monster Cereal fruit-flavored snacks, as well as b) the smushed state of any gravestone that dares bear the sheer squishy mass of ninety fruit snack pouches.
Seriously, these fruit snacks, discovered and kindly shared by Mikey H. on Sam’s Club’s site, are listed in four-pound boxes—no doubt big enough to serve as a fun-sized mausoleum. No word yet on whether Monster Mash Fruit Snacks—the sidecar to this Halloween’s massive menagerie of a Monster Cereal main event—are Sam’s Club exclusive and thus locked to such an insane per-box quantity, but hey, at just $9.98 (eleven cents a pouch!), maybe these are worth stockpiling. If nothing else, I’m sure they’re shelf stable long enough to outlast a Monster-pocalypse, and if not, they’ll probably ferment into Spooky Jungle Juice pouches you can stab with a straw, Capri-Sun style.
While Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Frute Brute, and Yummy Mummy all have iconic flavors associated with their namesake cereals, these fruit snacks seem to mix things up a bit to fit their ambiguous “Spooky Berry” name. Franken Berry, usually strawberry, now appears to be strawberry, cherry, or fruit punch. Frute Brute, typically cherry, is probably lemony here. Boo Berry, in blue, will probably be as vaguely fruity as usual, while Yummy Mummy too will retain his recent orange pedigree. Count Chocula, in an understandable adaptation, looks like grape here instead of chocolate, and we even get a gelatinous green cameo from the Monster Cereal Castle. No idea what green is supposed to taste like, but since green Scooby-Doo fruit snacks were always my favorite, I can see this castle fruit snack giving the gummy Venus de Milo a run for her artisanal money.
No word yet on just when Monster Mash Fruit Snacks will be available, but I’m at least happy we have one more new thing to look forward to this fall, as the summer heat continues to turn my brain into a grey matter Fruit Wrinkle.
— Positively Ghostbusters (@PositivelyGB) July 25, 2020
With a crunchy creak, the Count’s fudge-encrusted crypt has opened again, and with only one cocoa-buttered fingernail poking out so far, the news is…promising.
Thanks to Positively Ghostbusters, we have our first look at what 2020 has in store for Count Chocula plus his fellow Monster Cereals Franken Berry and Boo Berry. While I’m not holding out hope for a Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy return, much less a reversion to these now-corn-based Monstrosities’ former oat flour glory, the ear-shaped head of a vintage Chocula is enough to leave me spooking my pants about Halloween in July. Continue reading →
Happy Halloween! Boy do I have a trick and a treat up my sleeve (where it isn’t melting; just in my mouth) for you. In fact, the trick is the treat:
BOO! I’m not actually reviewing a cereal today! In fact, it’s nothing you should eat for breakfast at all—well, except on Halloween, when all servings can be called “fun sized” as long as you’re having fun eating them.
They’re called Creepy Cocoa Crisp M&M’s, and based solely on the Faux-coa Krispies rendered on the bag, I’m calling this an officially unofficial Halloween Cereal. In vaguely spooky colors of red, orange and brown (why can’t they release special edition jet-black M&M’s filled with, oh I don’t know, glowstick juice?), Creepy Cocoa Crisp M&M’s, otherwise known as C³M², are jumbo dark chocolate morsels filled with an aptly and vaguely named “Cocoa Crisp Center.”
All I’m gonna say before opening the bag is that, since Mars couldn’t be edgy enough to give Red the Beelzebub costume he was born to wear, they better at least make his bat-winged brooch the prize inside. Continue reading →
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? Continue reading →
I was going to ask why we’ve never gotten an M&M’s cereal yet, given that M&M’s Cocoa Krispies Treats exist and would make for a logical in-bowl deconstruction. But then I remembered that I’ve already put M&M’s on cereal before, during an ill-fated attempt at cereal trail-mixology that resulted in a food dye-streaked sea of milky raisin anchors. It had a sort of radioactive beauty.
Now that I’ve spread that memory contagion, I can move on. Perhaps testing the borders of what this blog will continue “cereal news,” Mars is releasing Creepy Cocoa Crisp M&M’s, which have already been spotted at Target. This means that either the Halloween season has annexed half of summer, or we’re about to waste away the dog days with werewolves.
Of course, Crispy M&M’s have been around for a while (after not being around for a bit), but Krispies be darned, their branding isn’t as overtly….Cerealous (I’m allowed to say that) as Creepy Cocoa Crisp.
Now, the gentle M&M’s consumer—who feels like inspiring autumnal dread in even the sunniest day—can more viscerally picture themselves carving open an M&M lengthwise to make two edible mini-bowls of chibi cereal crumbs. But hey, that Seymour-pleasing borealis coming off the spoon? And that nugget of a cloak clasp that is apparently giving Red nefarious spectral privileges?
You know what, I’m on board. Let’s skip past Emperor Augustus’ month and autumn’s crimson entrance, landing fudge-filling-first into Halloween’s now-crisper winds. Heck, let’s do the M&M’s Cereal too.
Phew. If just thinking about these cereal-adjacent M&M’s gets me this imaginative, eating them might make me drool auroral energy. But luckily, most of America probably has until September until this cereal–creature confection hits shelves. Our thanks to Munchie Bunchie for sharing the first spotting, from notoriously pro-M&M retailer Target.
Last chance to tuck in your inner child somewhere beneath your liver.
Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you…
If you’re unsure why the above cereal box art sparks so much primal revulsion in the pits of my soul, you’ve got a few decades of creatively Choculated lore to catch up on. For so long, General Mills’ MonsterCereals—and especially Count Chocula, as their de facto fanged leader—have returned during the Halloween season with new charming box themes and art styles, making them reliably nostalgic accent pieces for any reboot-free horror movie marathon.
But ever since the Monster Cereals’ oat flour formula was infamously changed—a decision that likely fractured us into the darkest timeline—their theming has gotten as inspired as the Children of the Corn franchise. At least to me, it feels like a palpable loss of innocence, especially since 2013’s gave false hope by bringing back Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy for just one year. Continue reading →
