Breakfast Cereal Limbo
Where retired cereal mascots go when they die.
Written by Mike originally for Poprocks & Coke on February 2, 2002

Before we begin, do yourself a big favor & make sure you never spend the amount of time I did making sure that this first post went up on the calendar date 02-02-02 on anything, ever. Right, now let's get things started.

For me, cereal was actually more of a snack food than it was the most important meal of the day, & it still is. Right when I'd come home from school, or before I went to bed, I'd pour myself a bowl of Nintendo cereal... Mario side only. The Zelda side was just plain nasty. The box said "berry flavored," but I always thought it tasted more like a vomit flavored sponge. I hope you're not trying to eat or anything.

But I'm not here to just start rambling on about the cereals of the past. There are too many. They had a cereal for everything, from Batman to C-3PO, to frigging Urkel. No, today I'm here to pay a tribute to a few of the cereal icons we have lost along the way, who have since either dropped out of the industry altogether, or have been scrapped from their cereal's advertising campaign to make way for more modern, more hip alternatives. These legendary icons have no place to call home except the back of our very minds, in a place I like to call... Breakfast Cereal Limbo.

The Monster Cereals

Count Chocula.
As far as I know, the Count is the only cereal Monster that's still around all the time. If you put all the Monster Cereals on Survivor Island, Count Chocula would win the million, because tricking your parents into letting you chocolate for breakfast is totally rad. And there was enough chocolate in Count Chocula to turn the milk brown. As you can see, the Count originally looked a bit more sinister than his present-day form.

Below: The result of a twisted genetic experiment involving Bob Saget & Larry the Cucumber gone wrong.

Franken Berry.
The strawberry-loving Frankenstein monster always played second fiddle to Count Chocula, & it's pretty easy to figure out why. It's not so much the fact that he had a creepy, high pitched voice. I think that was intentional. No, it's the fact that his head is shaped like a butt. Look at it. It's ridiculous. Actually, it looks exactly like Jennifer Aniston's butt when she was on the cover of Rolling Stone. Except Jennifer Aniston's butt wasn't pink, & it didn't have a whistle attached to it.

Boo Berry.
To this day, I don't understand why people get all excited when someone mentions Boo Berry. Maybe it's because it was really hard to find, & I have a feeling that not too many people have actually tasted it. For some reason, Boo Berry didn't get around as much as Franken Berry or Count Chocula. I think it's because his blueberry-flavored cereal was COMPLETELY & UTTERLY NASTY. There's the truth, kids. I've been "lucky" enough to have sampled Boo Berry, & it's awful.

Fruity Yummy Mummy.
I remember the commercial for this guy. Franken Berry & Count Chocula were exploring the dark corridors of an ancient tomb. They didn't take Boo Berry with them, because his cereal sucked. Anyways, they come across a casket, it bursts open & Fruity Yummy Mummy pops out singing his crazy song that went something like "Fruity Yummy Mummy makes your tummy feel yummy." And he wasn't lying. The cereal bits had a fruit punch taste to them, & the marshmallows were vanilla. But they discontinued it around 1990. I hope whoever decided to ditch Fruity Yummy Mummy & keep Boo Berry going got fired.

Fruit Brute.
Now THIS is the cereal that time forgot. Fruit Brute was a werewolf, & I'm guessing his cereal & marshmallows tasted like assorted fruit. I've never seen or tasted it first hand. Fruit Brute died out in 1982. I was a year old in 1982. The only thing I remember about 1982 is that Mr. Hooper died. I only know Fruit Brute existed because it shows up in both Reservoir Dogs & Pulp Fiction. So if Quentin Tarantino likes it, it couldn't have been too bad.

The Cinnamon Toast Crunch Bakers

Look. Three bakers. We know the fat one on the right with the white hair's name is Wendell. I don't remember them ever giving names to the other two. They got shafted sometime in the late 80's by the Bureau of Census because no one ever figured out their stupid names. I believe they're still collecting unemployment.

UPDATE: After some looking around on the internet, I've discovered that the fat one was Bob & the skinny one is Quello. Quello?! Must be French or something.

Wendell is still in the commercials, but it looks like he's going to get the hook soon. Lately the commercials have been featuring more "real" human characters than cartoons. It's one of those "grown-ups don't get it" advertisements. You know what would be funny? If they had adult commercials that worked the same way. "Hey adults! Put the kids to bed, because the Spice Channel is JUST FOR ADULTS! And so is what's inside!" You can imagine how they'd visualize that last sentence on your own.

Cookie Crook & Cookie Cop

Cookie Crisp is an all time favorite of mine. The commercials today only feature Chip the dog, famous for his "COOOOOOKIE CRISP!" howl. But Chip was once the pet of Cookie Crook, a sneaky little dude with a bandit mask & a chef's hat. You're probably wondering, "Well if he's a chef, I don't see why he couldn't just make their own!" I always figured they were trying to bag some free Cookie Crisp to learn some sort of secret ingredient. Whatever their motive, Chip would always howl with joy at the sight of the stuff. That would blow their cover, & Cookie Cop, a portly old Irish bobby, that someone was after his precious cereal. It was a rare occasion when Cookie Cop didn't manage to catch Cookie Crook & Chip, & take them back to the station house, without breakfast. The two humans were dropped in the mid-90s. They are currently living together in an apartment in San Francisco. THAT IS FUNNY BECAUSE IT IS A GAY JOKE ON THE INTERNET LOL.

Poppy the Porcupine

Poppy represented Corn Pops in the early 80s. She carried a suitcase around with her, & when she opened it up, an entire breakfast table would pop out, complete with a cereal bowl, full glasses of milk & orange juice, a piece of buttered toast, & of course, a box of Corn Pops. I never really thought keeping all that stuff in a suitcase was a good idea. I'm sure the toast was stale & the O.J. was lukewarm by the time Poppy popped open that case. And should the milk be lumpy like that? That's one nauseating part of a complete breakfast right there.

Cocoa Krispies

Cocoa Krispies has had the most trouble keeping a regular mascot, going through more than half a dozen in the last 50 years. Pictured above, from left to right...

• Jose the monkey (50s)
• Coco the elephant (Late 50s - Early 60s)
• Ogg the caveman (Late 60s - Early 70s)
  Not pictured: Ogg's friend, Kell. OMG GET IT?!
• Yup, that's Snagglepuss (Mid 60s)
• Another elephant named Tusk (70s - Early 80s)
• Snap, Crackle & Pop (80s, 2000s)
• Coco the Monkey (Late 80s - 90s)

I can only remember as far back as Snap, Crackle, & Pop... the logical choice for mascots of a cereal with Krispies in its name. In the late 80s, Coco the stupid monkey took over, singing songs about swinging from branches & trying to keep his Cocoa Krispies away from the other animals in the jungle. Coco later became a real chimp in the late 90s, complete with hat, t-shirt, & jeans. Today, Snap, Crackle, & Pop are back on the box, only now they have sexy man voices & are in a boy band. I'm totally being serious.

The Lucky Charms Marshmallows

Lucky the Leprechaun could never leave the stupid cereal alone. He was always changing the marshmallows around & confusing the crap out of us kids. He started out with 4 marshmallows: pink hearts, orange stars, yellow moons, & green clovers. Blue diamonds were introduced in the mid-70s, so my earliest memories include those 5.

Then around 1985, they added a purple horseshoe, which originally belonged to a pissed off purple horse. Then later that decade, Lucky decided to add red balloons to the mix. Ok, fine. 7 marshmallows. There's your rainbow. You'd think they'd leave it go, but no, the addition to the balloon marked the beginning of the downfall & utter corruption of Lucky Charms.

Rainbows were added in the early 90's. You'd think some dork like Jerry Falwell would notice something like this, but I guess not, because they're still in there, teaching kids everywhere to be proud of who they are. SEE THIS IS ANOTHER GAY JOKE ON THE INTERNET, GET IT RAINBOWS LOL.

It wasn't long before Lucky felt the obsessive-compulsive need to add yet another marshmallow. "Well look here, laddies! What have we at the end of me magic rainbow? Why, it's me pot of gold! And it's magically delicious, too!" Of course, now that Lucky has his pot of gold, he doesn't need his silly blue diamonds anymore, right? So he got rid of those. Then he got rid of the orange Star of David & put a regular 5-pointed star inside the red balloon. Then he took the star back out of the balloon. Then he added a white tail to it & called it a shooting star. In the midst of all this, the yellow moons changed to blue & Lucky put the clover inside his stupid hat.

The latest addition to Lucky Charms is... well it's the moon again, only now it's orange. Oh, but that's not all. When you pour milk over it... star-shaped holes appear in the middle of the moon! This presents a problem for guys like me, who I never pour milk on Lucky Charms, because then they get all soggy. But I really needed to see this star in the moon thing, so I put one in the sink & sprayed water on it. I haven't been the same since.

The best part about the whole star in the moon thing is the commercial for it. The moon is sad because the kids are looking at the stars, & nobody pays attention to poor him. So Lucky offers to make him a star... & BLASTS A FRIGGING STAR-SHAPED HOLE THROUGH HIS CHEST. "So, ye want to be a star, eh laddy? Take THIS!! That'll be teachin' ye for bein' a whiny little banshee!" Oh yeah, the blue moons are still in the cereal, too, so there are now two moon marshmallows. That's right. Lucky moved to Tatooine.

You'd think it would be easy to just tell the guy, "Hey, leave the cereal alone! Just leave it alone, dude!" Somehow I don't think Lucky would take it that well. It seems to me that Lucky has some sort of condition, maybe even an illness of sorts. There's a guy that comes into the bank I work at every single day & transfers money back & forth between his checking & savings accounts. One time, I swear to Jesus, he actually wrote out a check for $20 to deposit into the same checking account. You really want to say something to the guy, like "What's wrong with you, you freak?!" But you just can't find it in your heart to do so. Something inside you tells you that the only thing you can do is offer him your kindness & bite your lip. No matter how much you'd like to kick him in the head.

I guess that wraps up my premier post. I have a bunch of ideas I want to work with, so stay tuned for new stuff soon.