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.

Random Cereal Commercials

Today, The Canon Review is going to feature a certain theme, breakfast cereal. In case you don't know, cereal is a food that usually comes in a box and is primarily consumed with milk. According to Wikipedia, cereal was developed in the late 19th century as a vegetarian alternative to the primary breakfast of the time, which was bacon, sausage, eggs, ham, all that good stuff. It eventually became popular due to the fact that no cooking was involved, so a family could have a healthy breakfast without using too much effort. Got that? Good. Anyway, in this review, I will be going on YouTube and watching old commercials for cereals, and then commenting on them. Let us begin, shall we?

Ad #1: Nintendo Cereal System

The great thing about the Nintendo Cereal System is that it's two cereals in one. Unfortunately, both cereals look about as appetizing as a bowl full of gravel. This commercial is kind of out there, as Mario traps a bunch of kids in televisions and leads them through the worlds of Super Mario Bros and Zelda. Why are the kids wearing television sets, exactly? Is that really neccesary. The commercial also has a crummy theme song in which Nintendo is chanted about eight times in thirty seconds. Also, look at the kids as they jump awkardly, especially the kid in the green sweater. That's not normal. Anyway, I never had the pleasure of having Nintendo Cereal System, but I'm sure it wasn't all that great. Maybe I'm wrong, but something tells me I'm not.



Ad #2: Lucky Charms Cereal

This commercial is from 1992. The concept is simple, there's a mountain of marshmallows, and Lucky is using his Irish magic to change them into his Lucky Charms. That's fine, but why doesn't Lucky spend some time on the rest of his cereal, because that's the part that could use some work. I don't know why the people of General Mills won't make Lucky Charms all marshmallow bits, because the only reason people buy the cereal is for the marshmallow, and besides, the rest of the cereal is just awful and barely fit for human consumption. Anyway, the commercial ends with a couple of kids successfully obtaining Lucky's charms, I guess, and there's free Play-Doh inside each box, so at least you have that to look forward to. 



Ad 3: Frosted Flakes Cereal:

This commercial is from 1984. Hey look, we're at the beach, and Tony and a girl are eating Frosted Flakes and watching two kids dominate at volleyball. I guess they get cocky, because they challenge Tony and the girl to a game. They accept, but only after they finish their Frosted Flakes because they're GRRREEEAAAT! The other team chuckles at the notion of the girl playing the net, but personally, I would bet my money on the team with the 6 foot tiger playing. Naturally, Tony's teammate, powered by a bunch of sugar coated corn flakes, gets a big spike, impressing her opponents and giving their team a 1-0 advantage. According to the commercial, Frosted Flakes brings out the tiger in you. That's GRRRRRRRRREAT! I've always wondered what could possibly possess a tiger to spend his days traveling the globe eating nothing but Frosted Flakes, but to each their own.



Ad #4: Apple Jacks Cereal

Apple Jacks had some interesting commercials back in the day, and by interesting, I mean they featured a bunch of smart-aleck kids who you wanted to smack upside their heads. This commercial is no different, as four lamebrain boys are sitting around when one of the kids' dads comes around, saying "I thought you were going to clean the garage" One of them says "we're just resting". Some other dummy starts impersonating the man or something, saying hey why do those kids eat Apple Jacks, they don't taste like apples. Another kid says well that's not why we like them. and a third one chimes in "then why?" The dad comes around, says "I know, I know, you just do" and everyone else says "yeah" in agreement. Why Kellogg's decided to advertise Apple Jacks as the cereal that people like but no one knows why, I'm not sure. I guess it worked, because they made like a 100 different types of the same commercial. This commercial is much more annoying than I just described, but your mileage may vary. As for the cereal itself, well, let's just say I'm a big fan.




Ad# 5: Mr. T Cereal

There's not a lot that can be said about this ad, or the cereal which contains nothing but T's. Just watch it once, and the song will be stuck in your head.



Well, that's it for now. Join us later when The Canon Review reviews three different cereals. What cereals are they, you ask? Well log in later to find out.