Big G Cereal Thrillers: Breakfast Monsters

In October, it's usually pretty easy to find the typically elusive General Mills Monster Cereals on grocery store shelves. I haven't seen any this month, but I was happy to find Boo Berry in January, so I know they are for sale somewhere. These characters are easily some of my favorite advertising mascots ever. I especially love the original "retro" character designs depicted here. Funko released a fantastic set of bobbleheads a few years ago, using the "old school" versions of the monsters.


Count Chocula the vampire and Franken Berry the Frankenstein-type monster were introduced in 1971. Of course, Count Chocula had chocolate flavored cereal, and Franken Berry had strawberry flavored cereal. It's fun to go on YouTube and see some of their old animated commercials. These guys used to be big TV stars. They had their own cereal prizes!





Boo Berry the ghost began haunting TV channels in 1973, scaring up sales for his blueberry flavored cereal.






Boo Berry seemed to be tougher to find than Count Chocula or Franken Berry. In the commercials, he often seemed to play second fiddle to the other characters.

Fruit Brute the werewolf first howled for his product in 1974.





I really don't remember ever seeing Fruit Brute in any advertisements. His fruit-flavored cereal was retired in the early 1980s. Fruit Brute may be gone from stores, but he's far from forgotten. He's something of a movie star, as his box of cereal appeared in Quentin Tarantino's film, "Pulp Fiction."

General Mills tried to relaunch the fruit flavor in 1987 with Yummy Mummy. I DO remember the ads for this cereal vividly. "Fruity Yummy Mummy makes your tummy go yummy." Catchy jingle!




Unfortunately, a catchy jingle could not save Yummy Mummy. His cereal was shelved (get it?) and the flavor was laid to rest shortly after the character debuted.

I think it's pretty impressive how these characters flawlessly represent their cereal flavors and still manage to make breakfast fun and just a little bit scary at all times of the year.

Headhunter Helper and Count Funkula: Wacky Packages

Many years ago, I collected Topps Wacky Packages.  This was a line of trading card stickers that got started in 1967.  Wacky Packages were spoofs of everyday products.  I still have a book of my 1980s era Wacky Packages somewhere.

Here we have Headhunter Helper from Betty Chopper (Shrunken Head Sauce Mix!  Just Add Noggins!).

"You've Been Served" Count Funkula from Gangsta Shizzle.  Enjoy the Bits of Bling Bling!

These two stickers are from a 2005 release that my sister-in-law gave me.  I have more from this run, but these two just struck me as being really funny for some reason.  This is a clever twist on Hamburger Helper and Count Chocula.

I also collected Topps Garbage Pail Kids.  My mother hated Garbage Pail Kids, and she got rid of mine very quickly when she heard I wasn't interested in buying any more.  I had a ton of them!  I really should have kept my big mouth shut, because I think it would be fun to look at those again.

Magic Trix Aren't Just For Kids

Now you can get Lucky with a cheap trick.  Lucky the Leprechaun, that is!

The gang from the "Big G Cereals" is featured here in Magic Show tricks created by Dan Witkowski.  There were 6 of these books available inside specially marked boxes of General Mills Cereals back in 1987.  I only got this one.

There used to be three Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal baker characters, but only Wendell, the one with glasses, survived (and became much cartoonier).

This version of Lucky the Leprechaun was cute.  I believe they'd sell more Lucky Charms with this appealing character design.  Time to go retro, General Mills!

Of course, you can't have a General Mills Magic Show without the Trix Rabbit.  Count Chocula, Frankenberry, the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee (before he got named BuzzBee), Lucky the Lucky Charms Leprechaun, Sonny the Cuckoo Bird from Cocoa Puffs, and Ice Cream Jones are represented here.  There's also a character that I can't identify--the guy with the white beard.  Who is this?

New for 1987 was Ice Cream Cones Cereal, with a new character named Ice Cream Jones.  This cereal was available in Chocolate Chip or Vanilla (sold separately).



I always liked the "Big G" characters.  Many years ago, they were also the mascots of the now-closed Opryland theme park in Tennessee.


General Mills developed many creative (and sometimes unusual) cereals over the years (especially in the 1980s).  Check out more at Topher's Breakfast Cereal Character Guide.

Contemporary Boo Berry

Boo Berry Cereal from General Mills is tough to find where I live, so when I saw a box of the blueberry-flavored breakfast treat while I was shopping this evening, I snatched it up without hesitation. Ironically, I found it at a grocery store called Bruno's, which was once a major chain, but they recently closed many locations, making the store difficult to find these days.

Boo Berry was first introduced to the line of Monster Cereals in 1973. His look has been changed over the years, evolving into a friendlier-looking ghost. He got a retro re-design not too long ago, and I really like his new appearance! It is very much in the "spirit" of the original look, but it has been tweaked and updated.

The back of the box features a cut-out Scary Monsters Poster. Count Chocula and Frankenberry were not available at Bruno's, so I did not get to see their posters.