Once a year I get to indulge my love of the Monster Cereals—Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry, and once a year I’m disappointed that they never bring back Yummy Mummy or my personal favorite Fruit Brute.
And this year they’re even more disappointing because General Mills has scrapped the dark and usually well-drawn boxes—back in 2014 they even got DC artists, including Jim Lee and Rachel Dodson, to draw some really great designs—and gone retro. Really retro.
Not that going retro is necessarily bad, but just repeating the past is lazy even if it is the 50th anniversary. There’s a reason the 1988 remake of The Blob is still worth watching Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho isn’t.
Then I turned a corner and there was this:
NO NO NO. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? THIS IS AN ABOMINATION AND SHOULD NOT EXIST. NOT IN ANY SIZE.
So when I got home the first thing I did was check out the “ghosts”, which seem to have replaced the standard crunch berries.
If you look carefully the ghosts have green spots because, hey, if there’s one thing kids love it’s green stuff in their food.
These become more pronounced when you add milk. I also let it sit for a few minutes because Cap’n Crunch is also known as “the mouth shredder”.
And I’ve gotta give ‘em credit—truth in advertising. The cereal turns the milk a sea foam shade of green that’s almost but not quite entirely unappetizing. It also makes the milk a little slimy in a wow-do-I-need-to-brush-my-teeth kind of way.
It does the same if you add it to water.
That’s where the real fun comes in. You can make the milk, or water, an even darker shade of green by filtering out the cereal and adding more. I didn’t go too far because I was already getting a sugar buzz by my seventh bowl, but this is a fun cereal for the mad scientist, or pretty much anyone who likes to play with their food. And check out the artwork on the box: the shading, the coloring. They’ve turned the staid old cap’n into a demented Victor Frankenstein unleashing a slimy green milk horror on the world. Every part of it is a damn work of art.
Yummy Mummy? How did I manage to miss that as a child?
I’ve been known to eat a few junky cereals in my time, but I’d have to draw the line at green milk.
?
Yummy Mummy came along in 1988, after I was a child, and was discontinued a few years later, and was brought back in 2014 only along with Fruit Brute. And I started to draw the line at green milk but then I remembered Luke Skywalker drinking blue milk in the original Star Wars, and I decided I had to try it.
I liked the DC drawn characters much better, but as a kid Count Chocula was my favorite. Yeah, Yummy Mummy and Fruti Brute haven’t been seen in ages. And I’m not sure green slime milk seems very appetizing.
I can understand liking Count Chocula best. The truth is if you blindfolded me I don’t think I could tell the difference between Frankenberry and Boo Berry, but Count Chocula is at least distinctively chocolate.
The DC characters were really cool and 2014 was the only year that all five monster cereals were on sale at the same time. This year I had to go for the green milk slime just for the fun of it.
We can always depend on you, Chris, when crunch time is here.
ANN J KOPLOW recently posted…Day 3206: Do you realize how lovable you are?
Cereal should be my only crunch time, but I have a bad habit of leaving things ’til the last minute. Thanks for crunching in here.