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?
Not in a “physical scarcity” sense, mind you. Trix Yogurt took a 5 year hiatus from shelves around 2016, so yes, for a while, that nostalgic itch was impossible to scratch (unless you were a lunchlady, because you could still order the stuff from General Mills’ foodservice catalogue). But even since Trix Yogurt made its triumphant return in the spring of 2021, I still haven’t bought any. I guess I just unconsciously consigned it to the museum of memory: a glimmering pastel relic of a treasured past whose shine I dare not spoil by revisiting it with an adult’s jaded taste buds. Much like Oreo Cakesters, which I also haven’t eaten since their re-continuation, I simply doubted I could go on living if my favorite childhood yogurt wasn’t as good as I remembered.
But with the launch of these new Franken Berry and Boo Berry Yogurts from Yoplait, I finally have an impossible-to-ignore reason to try these two-toned treats again. See, when Trix Yogurt returned last year, they came back in “Strawberry” and “Berry” flavors, making it pretty clear that “Screamin’ Strawberry” and “Boo Blueberry” are just the Trix Rabbit’s cultured progeny wearing Monster Cereal masks.
That may be a little lazy, but I’ll never blame General Mills for expanding the Monsters’ reach beyond the cereal aisle, whether that’s in the form of cookies, Fruit Roll-Ups, or otherwise. Long live the Count & Co.! Continue reading →
I’ll just say it: Count Chocula and Franken Berry don’t understand Halloween. Fun-sized Snickers and whimsical apple-Roberting aside, the holiday is supposed to be scary: slashers, head bashers, teeth gnashers and all that heebie-jeebie jazz.
Yet this toothsome twosome is hawking us Pillsbury shaped sugar cookie dough that’s safe to eat raw? Where’s the danger? The thrill? Risking salmonella is half the fun—I mean, at least throw a couple loose jagged metal shavings into the mix, keep it interesting. Some eccentric bug larvae, or mutagenic research chemicals, maybe.
Oh well, I guess I’ll have to manufacture my own danger by eating these aw shucks sugar pucks fresh out of the oven, while they’re still monstrously molten. Continue reading →
No? Well you’d better start huffing, puffing, and ruining some porcine architecture, because by the time this Halloween rolls around, our dearly departed Monster Cereal Frute Brute will be back on shelves with a cherry-flavored vengeance. Not counting his half-hearted marbit cameo in last year’s Monster Mash Cereal, it’s been almost 10 years since we last saw this ’70s cereal icon get his own spotlight spooky-time cereal.
And I’m so excited, I don’t even care that the cereal will still be corn-based, and that Brute’s only been reanimated as part of a Monsters x KAWS promo contest. KAWS is an artist and designer known for parodying pop culture icons and putting Xs over their eyes. He’s already gotten his own Reese’s Puffs box, so this General Mills collab isn’t a total surprise. The full nature of the Monsters promo isn’t clear yet, either, except that you’ll be able to enter to win a KAWS prize on the (not yet live) site kawsmonsters.com.
The other thing that’s abundantly (and abominably) clear is that Fruity Yummy Mummy, Frute Brute’s ’80s Monster Cereal counterpart, is no where to be found in this KAWS campaign. As someone who prefers both Yummy Mummy’s design and orange flavor to Frute Brute’s (it’s too similar to Franken Berry), I’m disappointed, but hey: I’ll take the fan service I can get in this lifetime. Maybe next year, Mummy.
The above Monster Cereal variety 4-pack should be hitting Sam’s Club stores any day now, while individual boxes at major retailers will soon follow as summer wanes. Let’s just hope hypebeast scalpers don’t poach our big bad wolf entirely off shelves before the rest of us can grab a box.
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.
And on this day, Mother’s Day 2021, General Mills delivered something beautiful into this world.
Well, sort of. It’s complicated.
First off, we’ve known about the above Monster Mash Cereal—which brings all five iconic Halloween cereal mascots together—for some time now, but it was always shown with placeholder box art featuring Monster renders taken from collectible pins. This raised alarm bells among skeptics, but now thanks to Cerealously reader Mikey H. (seriously: thank you!), we can put all doubts about Monster Mash cereal to a peaceful rest.
See, the stuff is now listed on Instacart, and in addition to featuring this clearly more-finalized box art, this listing gives us a few more hints about the broader Monster Cereal 50th anniversary that prompted this gift of a quintuple feature.
“…the world’s most monster group is back together for a limited-edition cereal, and to record their own version of the greatest monster anthem of all time.”
There’s also a mention of MonsterMashCereal.com, where you can listen to the Monsters cover the actual Monster Mash classic, but the site isn’t live just yet, so you’d better develop some werewolf’s paw-thick finger callouses and start pressing CTRL+R between now and late summer, which is when each year’s Monster Cereals typically get formal announcements.
However, I think the most fun thing to speculate for now is just what this cereal will look like in a bowl. Besides the claim that marshmallow shapes and colors may vary, the lineup at the box’s top suggests a very marbit-heavy cereal with just two ghost pieces. These two appear to be Boo Berry and Franken Berry pieces, with the other Monsters represented by respective marbits.
I’m torn on this: on one hand, it’s smart to leave Chocula ghosts out of the mix, since every other Monster Cereal is fruit forward. But at the same time, I really hope the marbits have unique flavors, otherwise this is just another generic berry cereal with Brute and Mummy painted on for nostalgia value.
Guess there’s nothing left to do but wait and find out. If you need me, I’ll be in a sensory deprivation mausoleum to prime my autumnal appetite.
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.
