When I was a kid, I ate cereal for breakfast almost every day. As far as I was concerned, the more sugar a cereal had, the better it was. I was a big fan of Cookie Crisp, and loved cereal with marshmallows like Lucky Charms. One of my favorite cereals was Count Chocula. It was full of sugar, it had marshmallows, and if you waited long enough, it turned your milk into chocolate milk. On top of all that, its mascot was a vampire. Count Chocula had it all.
I never associated Count Chocula or General Mills’ other monster cereals like Frankenberry and Boo Berry with Halloween. I watched horror movies all year long, read scary books all year long, and so no reason to not eat monster cereal all year long. In 2010, General Mills changed all their monster cereals to seasonal offerings, limiting sales to September and October. It’s hard for me to believe that there isn’t a market for monster cereals all year long. Maybe cereal isn’t as popular as it used to be.
For the past ten years, General Mills has rolled out the monsters on September 1st, combining them with different promotions. One year they brought back some of their vintage cereals like Fruit Brute that had long been out of circulation. Another year they gave all the mascots and artwork modern, three dimensional facelifts. This year, for the monsters’ 50th anniversary, General Mills went all out.
Right out of the box (no pun intended) and on cue, General Mills began delivering boxes of Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry to stores. The three different cereals could be purchased separately, or together as a bundle.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary, General Mills introduced a brand new cereal called Monster Mash, which is a combination of all five monster cereals (Count Chocula, Boo Berry, Franken Berry, Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy) combined. I’m not sure if there were production issues, delivery problems (a lot of things are currently hard to find due to COVID-19), or if they were intentionally limited, but finding boxes of Monster Mash was much more difficult than it should have been. People have been sharing tips and sightings online, helping other fans find the cereal. In the past I spent a lot of time racing around looking for rare or exclusive Star Wars toys. I never thought I would be doing it for a box of cereal! Fortunately, Susan was able to obtain one box of all the monster cereals and two of Monster Mash for me.
ALSO new this year were these boxes 30 packs of individually bagged cereal treats, also confusingly named “Monster Mash.” I found these at Sam’s; each box contains 30 packs (10 Count Chocula, 10 Frankenberry, and 10 Boo Berry), and the boxes were wrapped and sold in pairs. The little pouches are designed to be handed out on Halloween, but don’t contain anywhere enough cereal for a bowl of cereal, even for a toddler. They’re a delicious snack that will have you wanting an entire box. Hopefully a few boxes of cereal remain on shelves the first week of November.
This year’s Monster Cereal marketing has the feel of a “collect them all!” campaign, which feels weird when you’re talking about food. It easy to get caught up in collecting each of the available cereals without considering what you’re going to do with all that food. Are people planning to stockpile months worth of cereal? Are they planning to hold on to it for years? Will there ever be a market for unopened boxes of vintage cereal?
Over the past month we’ve eaten three boxes of monster cereal, and are on pace to finish the last two before Halloween. Each box was opened carefully so that the boxes could be displayed if I choose to do so, although the more I think about it, I feel like I’m being tricked into collecting something that isn’t that collectible. Maybe I’ll stick to eating cereal instead of collecting it.