The Top 10 Delicious Cereals That Died Before Their Time

Posted at 5:01 AM Jun 23, 2008

By Jesse Thompson

When it comes to the wide variety of cereal that most of us have been consuming on a daily basis for roughly a quarter of a century, fate can be a cruel bitch. When new products emerge, with their sugar-blasted flavors and snazzy box art, they often seem like a surefire blockbuster, the cereal equivalent of an Armageddon if you will. But they can just as easily wind up like The Island, cast aside with indifference, left to collect dust on a Piggly Wiggly grocery-store display. Others are movie, TV show or toyline tie-ins that are given the axe mere months (sometimes less!) after debuting. Sad as it may seem, there are many of us who have fonder memories of the sweet taste of Donkey Kong Cereal than the first time we copped a feel.

So while disgusting crap like King Vitamin and Kaboom! can still somehow get shelf space after decades of making kids gag, countless others, like our beloved Mr. T Cereal, have seen their assembly lines crawl to a heartbreaking halt. Here we pay tribute to the 10 taste-bud tantalizers that should’ve been given a stay of execution. To paraphrase their commercials, they’re part of this complete wish fulfillment.

10) Pop Tarts Crunch

It’s been long been a tradition of cereal manufacturers to take something kids love and just make the damn things smaller. (See Cookie Crisp, Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs, Oreo O’s, etc.) Shockingly, it took up until 1995 for Kellogg’s to realize that Pop Tarts – second only to cereal, and possibly chocolate-chip pancakes, when it comes to what brats want for breakfast every day—could be shrunk down, drowned with milk and utilized for raking in mad dollah dollah bills, y’all. But even with two varieties, Strawberry and Cinnamon, Pop Tarts Crunch died on the vine pretty quick, and the crestfallen Tarts slinked back to Toaster Land. We’ll blame the irritating commercials for ruining their crossover appeal.

9) Smurfberry Crunch

Peyo’s posse actually outlasted most of their cartoon breakfast rivals, as Smurfberry Crunch slogged—and sogged!—it out for a few years. (It was renamed “Smurf Magic Berries” in 1987.) Post had already enjoyed wild success for 10 years by plastering Fred and Barney’s mugs all over Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles—a liaison that somehow continues to this day, even though most children wouldn’t know Mr. Slate from their head up their ass. But the Smurfs just weren’t destined to join the upper echelon of cereal fame, even though their Crunch was fantastic, in a “Crunchberries without the annoying Cap’n Crunch cereal” kinda way. Maybe Gargamel shoulda tried this stuff instead of trying to eat the friggin’ Smurfs themselves all the time.

8) Fruit Brute

Like the long-rumored third Summers brother, Fruit Brute has long been discussed but rarely seen—save for a couple of appearances in the background of Tarantino films and a bobblehead baring his lycanthrope likeness. He was part of the original General Mills Monsters lineup, but Count Chocula, Frankenberry and Boo Berry pulled a “Planet Hulk” and jettisoned his furry fanny off into parts unknown. (Wow, two Marvel references?) This was likely due to the fact that his cereal had lime-flavored marshmallows, and most kids weren’t ready for the Miller Chill equivalent of breakfast. Still, the Brute had a decent shelf life—1975 to 1983, roughly. We don’t care if it tasted like crap or not; we just want a werewolf-themed cereal back out there, and something tells us that Benicio Del Toro ain’t gonna come to our rescue. Still, how awesome would “Del Tor-O’s” be?

7) Bill & Ted’s Excellent Cereal

Even though their second flick sucked, Bill and Ted had a crazy-ass amount of tie-ins and licensed products. Remember their cartoon? Their toyline? Their kickass albeit short-lived Marvel comic, which actually garnered an Eisner award nomination for Milk & Cheese creator Evan Dorkin? A cereal of their own was a logical step, and it was most excellent, as well. Too bad – or good, if you’re a glass-half-full type - it could be found in massive quantities at Dollar Tree stores around the summer of ’91. (Oftentimes shrinkwrapped with a “Bill & Ted Cassette Tape Case” that was shaped like their teleporting phone booth.) But like the chemistry of Reeves and Winter, “cinnamon oats with marshmallow notes” were a combination that could not be denied.

6) Oops! Choco Donuts

Apparently the good Cap’n Crunch and his slavemaster bosses at Quaker take us all for a bunch of morons. In 2001, they had an inspired idea. A new animated commercial aired showcasing the Crunch factory at work – but do to some sort of error, boxes of the Cap’n’s Crunchberries cereal were filled with nothing BUT the berry cereal pieces. Hence, a new cereal was born: Oops! All Berries. (How many of us would eat around the regular Cap’n Crunch cereal and save those precious Crunchberrries for last, anyway?) Well, in early 2002 they tried this trick again with another new cereal, Oops! Choco Donuts. Now, are we to believe that the Cap’n somehow ACCIDENTALLY mass-produced chocolate-doughnut cereal, that his assembly lines were somehow equipped to fuck up this royally? We’d say the Cap’n deserved to be keel-hauled, but you really can’t go wrong with cereal that tastes like chocolate doughnuts. Especially when it’s given an extra layer of crunch thanks to sugar sprinkles.