Canon Cereal Review: General Mills Monster Cereals

This review comes from an idea from reader Dickson S., who requested that I try all three of the General Mills 'Monster Cereals' and give my impression on each one. The monster cereals, otherwise known as Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry, have been off and on the market over the past few years, but are back on the market right now. It is uncertain how long they will be out, but if you like those cereals, than strike now while the iron is hot, that is, if the cereal is actually available in your area. If not, General Mills usually releases each cereal around Halloween. Each box costs just two dollars, which is a good deal for cereal. So yesterday I went to Dill's Food City of Lavonia, and picked up a box of each cereal.

I must say that this was a new experience for me in two ways. One is that I had never bought three boxes of cereal at the same time while buying nothing else, and the other is that I had never had any of the three cereals before. To be honest, I'm not sure why, as when I was a kid we usually had cereal for breakfast before school, and a wide variety of cereals at that. Just one of those things I guess. Anyway, enough chit chat. I'm going to dive right in

By the way, all of the images are courtesy of the site thecandymall.com. As you can tell, first up is Count Chocula, which is a chocolate flavored cereal with marshmallows. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of chocolate flavored cereals, I'm not really sure why, but that's just one of my quirks. This, unfortunately, is no exception. The chocolate part didn't taste much like chocolate at all. In fact, it had hardly any taste at all. The marshmallows tasted exactly like the ones in Lucky Charms, which is unsurprising since both cereals are manufactured by the same company. I will say that Count Chocula is better than Lucky Charms, but since Lucky Charms suck, that's not much of a compliment. Much like Georges St. Pierre, I'm not impressed by Count Chocula's performance. I'll give it a 4 out of 10.

Up next we have Franken Berry. I don;t know why Frankenstein looks so surprised, and frankly, I don't want to know. Franken Berry is a strawberry flavored cereal which also contains bits of marshmallow. Why General Mills decided that Strawberry should be the flavor that best represents Frankenstein, I'll never know. Anyway, I enjoyed this cereal much more than Count Chocula, which may strike some as strange since they're basically the same cereal with different artificial flavoring. Never the less, Franken Berry actually tasted like strawberries, and so it gets major props for that. I'd buy this cereal again, no question about it. Overall, Franken Berry gets a 7.8 out of 10.

Last, but not least is Boo Berry. Boo looks like he's been smoking grass recently, which also might explain the purple hat and bowtie. Boo Berry is a blueberry flavored cereal, again with marshmallow bits contained inside. What I remember most about Boo Berry is how sweet and sugary it was. Of course, all of these cereals are packed with sugar, but it seemed to me that Boo Berry had more sugar than the other two. The blueberry flavor was ok, but not quite as good as Franken Berry's strawberry flavor. Then again, I do prefer strawberries to blueberries, so perhaps that is skewing my opinion somewhat. One thing I noticed about each of these cereals is that they tend to scratch the roof of your mouth, making the whole cereal eating experience a little less enjoyable. For some reason, Boo Berry was more guilty of this infraction than the other two, although part of that might be because I ate this last. Anyway, Boo Berry is a decent cereal, not anything I would actively seek out, but if it's already there I would eat it. I'll give it a 5.8 out of 10.

So, to recap, Franken Berry is the best of the three cereals, followed by Boo Berry, and Count Chocula bringing up the rear. Interestingly, coming in to this review, I felt that Franken Berry would be the worst, and Count Chocula would be the superior cereal. But you never know until you try it. Well, since there's nearly three whole boxes of cereal left, I'm already pretty sure what this week's breakfast will be. Thanks for reading, and if you have an idea for a future review, than send me the details either by commenting on this blog or by e-mail at KtheC2001@gmail.com. I leave you with another commercial about cereal.