The 10 Greatest Breakfast Cereal Shills
Posted at 5:05 AM Aug 28, 2008
By Brian Heiler
Most breakfast cereal is a bunch a processed sugary slop injected with some token vitamins (well the good ones anyway). It’s hard to differentiate any of them, so corporations thought up a trusty way to get you brand loyal at an early age. While you’re parents are sleeping one off on Saturday mornings, they’d pump animated commercial after commercial into you until you their pawn. Cereal mascots are as identifiable as real celebrities in our world and here are the ten best.
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10) Sonny the Cocoa Puffs Bird
Placed on this list for pity more than anything else, Sonny is the twitchy meth addict of the cereal world. The only thing he knows is his need for Puffs; when he gets them, all is right, but when the rush is over, he do anything for his next hit. Much like that shell-shocked solider in almost every World War II movie, you know he’s not going to make it back. Also, Cocoa Puffs are pretty damned delicious, even if they aren't worth losing your mind over.
9) The Trix Rabbit
The ultimate sad sack of the group, the Trix Rabbit is obviously a fan of his cereal but he's denied it at every turn by a bunch of asshole kids, who refuse to let him eat Trix purely to be cruel. Adding insult to injury, his freaking face is on the box, constantly mocking his inability to eat his own cereal. The Trix Rabbit is a ticking time bomb, drinking Popov vodka from the bottle every night, cleaning his gun, and ready to erupt in a murderous rampage in some suburban grocery store.
8) Snap, Crackle and Pop
The elder statesmen of the cereal mascot world, these three have been shilling Rice Krispies for over 70 years. They aren't crazy, obsessive, on the lam, or any of the other qualities that usually define cereal spokespeople, which makes sense, since they’ve been selling a bland cereal that only tastes good when covered in copious amounts of sugar or is covered with marshmallow goo.
7) Toucan Sam
Sam is the most arrogant of all cereal shills, what with his hoighty-toighty faux-English accent and annoying insistence on never being wrong. No one seems to question that maybe he planted all those fucking Fruit Loops in the jungle to begin with. Also how come Disney hasn’t sued him back to the stone age for his “nephews “ Puey, Susey and Louis, whose names sound like a '70s Cracked magazine parody? Toucan Sam, you're a dick.
6) Cap’n Crunch
Dressing like Napoleon is never a good sign of sanity, and the “Cap’n” (If you’re going to declare a title, at least spell it right) didn’t need much more evidence against him. Utilizing exclusively child labor on his fleet, it’s largely believed that Cap’n Crunch secretly hates children, which is why his tasty barrel-shaped (get it? Because ships often have barrels?) cereal cuts the roof of a child's mouth like sweet, powdered glass.
5) Lucky the Leprechaun
One of the last survivors of the politically incorrect mascot days, Lucky the Leprechaun still provides us with a good laugh at the Irish. We're so enamored with the presence of a good ol’ fashioned racial stereotype that we routinely forget that Lucky generally screws everyone out of prizes, opting instead for different colored marshmallows, despite the fact that they all taste the same, o matter what color they are or shape they're in.
4) General Mills Monsters
Who knows more about a good nutritious breakfast than the murderous hoards of the undead? Just try not to notice Count Chocula’s skin peeling as the morning sun hits him or the fact that angry villagers are chasing Frankenberry for tossing your little sister in a well. The monster cereals are a throwback to a time of Monster Mania, when it rained horror hosts and everyone was doing monster mashes. Nowadays if you do a Boris Karloff impersonation, people think you’re doing Frankenberry, which is sad when you think about it.
3) Powdered Toast Man
Okay, so his cereal wasn’t real, but he was voiced by none other than Frank Zappa and Gary Owens, which gives him a weird lineage no other character in history will ever have. Also, at the height of Ren and Stimpy mania, this high flying, fart-powered hero would have the most popular cereal on the shelves if somebody had have woken up and lazily stamped his face on boxes of “Cinnamon Toast Crunch."
2) Tony the Tiger
If a seven-foot-tall tiger shoved a bowl of his wheat in your face and asked you to try it, you’d better believe you’d scarf it down while giving a hearty thumbs up. That’s the magic of Tony the Tiger. There is a wonderful malice underneath that all his boisterous Tiger enthusiasm, since he's a savage beasts with fangs and claws who could tear a small child into...well, Frosted Flakes-sized pieces with a minimum of effort. Sure, his victims look happy but they’re eyes are saying “Please don’t kill me."
1) Sugar Bear
If there were ever a cereal mascot version of the Rat Pack, then Sugar Bear would be Dean Fucking Martin. Cool as ice and confident as all hell, the soft-spoken Sugar Bear is the one mascot all the others want to be. Never one to push, Sugar Bear really doesn’t give a shit if you try his cereal but deep down you know you want it. He was even cool enough to survive the cereal’s renaming to Golden Crisp.
Comments
When I was a kid I used to wish that Sonny and the Trix Rabbit could just change cereals, so Sonny could deal with his addiction and the Rabbit could get all the cereal he wanted from the conveniently enabling kids.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 06:41:39 AMOMG YES TO POWDERED TOAST MAN! (and motherfuckin frank zappa!)
Posted 08/28/2008 at 06:55:27 AMWasn`t Sugar Bears voice suppose to be sounding like Bing Crosby?
Posted 08/28/2008 at 07:07:04 AMDo the "doesnt take like apple" parents for Apple Jacks dont count? I always pictured one holding a group of kids hostage until they could finally explain it to him why they like it.
"We just do" isnt a good enough answer.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 07:28:45 AMThis list has touched me in a way that, if I were ten years younger, I'd have to show them on the doll where this list touched me.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 07:43:13 AMThis list has touched me in a way that, if I were ten years younger, I'd have to show them on the doll where this list touched me.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 07:43:13 AMI'm suprised to not see the Cookie Crook on here.
But, as a child Boo Berry was always my favorite.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 08:56:24 AMI'm suprised to not see the Cookie Crook on here.
But, as a child Boo Berry was always my favorite.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 08:56:26 AMI'm suprised to not see the Cookie Crook on here.
But, as a child Boo Berry was always my favorite.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 08:56:26 AMI've been a slave to the Cap'n for years, introduced it to my daughter even, despite the fact that I and two other people in my family have chipped a tooth on the stuff.
Damn you, Cap'n.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 10:27:22 AMFans of the above may want to check out "Breakfast of the Gods" by Brendan Douglas Jones. You'll never look at Chocula the same way again.
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/poyorick/botg
Posted 08/28/2008 at 10:52:19 AMSugar Beat as #1? Maybe Top 10, but not number 1. Tony should be #1 and Quisp should be in here somewhere, maybe with Fred and Barney.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 11:24:14 AMWhat's all this tooth-chipping on the Captain's sweet swag about? Sure yez weren't chomping on one of the prizes instead? (God, I adored that plastic treasure chest, complete with key, that you could send away for) Sounds to me like some of that thar inter-breeding came up with some delicate constitutions! I never noticed anything but the most pleasing, beetleshell-like crunch when decimating so many a bowl of the Cap'n's treats. Of course, the diabetes that resulted was a setback ...
Posted 08/28/2008 at 11:45:40 AMSigh... so envious. The craziest cereal we were allowed growing up was Kix.
Until that one fateful day when while staying at her house, my aunt introduced me to the naughty deliciousness of Froot Loops.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 12:17:23 PMWhy does everyone keep saying Cap'n Crunch cuts the roof of their mouth? Are Americans soft on the inside now, or is the roof of my mouth as dead as my soul? Maybe I don't chew with it...
Damn, I want some Boo Berry now, though.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 12:45:35 PMI'm pretty sure that Tony the Tiger would be seriously pissed if he knew he was shilling Wheat instead of "Flakes of Corn"....
Posted 08/28/2008 at 01:25:39 PMSugar also had super-human (or rather, super-bear) strength:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lP3MOfuA8o
20 minutes spent on YouTube saw SB destroy every obstacle he encountered with minimal effort. He even punches a whale in the face.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 02:39:57 PMI,m surprised no one has Mentioned Freakies. That cereal ruled. It had a whole slew of mascots, all with different pesonalities. It always had phenomenal toys inside too.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 03:08:46 PMWhat about Fred and Barney from "Fruity Pebbles"? To me it always seemed like they desperately wanted to be a breakfast cereal gimmick, but they just weren't any damn good at it.
Incidentally, I think that Cthulu should have been the spokesman for Lucky Charms. Those things tasted like pure evil.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 03:16:21 PMLaughed like crazy at the raid markings from WoW on the Lucky Charms box!
What about those freaky-ass Honeycomb monsters that spawn when an unsuspecting kid munches some 'combs? Those things are wrong...
Posted 08/28/2008 at 04:35:40 PMLMAO at the raid warnings from WoW on the Lucky Charms box!
Also, what about those freaky hairballs from the Honeycombs commercials? Those things are seven different kinds of wrong...
Posted 08/28/2008 at 04:43:43 PMHow could you mention the General Mills Monsters without mentioning Fruit Brute? Am I the only person who remembers Fruit Brute? Did I spend my childhood in an alternate universe?
On a different note, did you know that the original voice of Cap'n Crunch was none other than Bill Scott of Bullwinkle fame? And that the first few commercials were directed by Jay Ward? Man commercials were cool back then.
And it's funny that you should compare Sugar Bear to Dean Martin. I'm not challenging the comparison, but his voice was originally intended as an impersonation of another crooner, Bing Crosby.
Posted 08/28/2008 at 07:57:12 PMI always thought that BooBerry was actually Casper all grown up & on drugs.... I wonder if the Enquirer would buy the story...?
Posted 08/29/2008 at 09:45:29 AMSorry for the double-post, the computers at work suck...
Posted 08/29/2008 at 04:48:13 PMAll this article does is remind me of how much I miss Oreo-Os...
...as a matter of fact, Fat Albert should have been their spokesman. We already have a Hanna-Barbara themed cereal, (pebbles), so why keep the black man down? There are NO black food mascots except Aunt Jemimah, but she's just plain offensive. (click on my name if you need proof.)
Anyway, Fat Albert and Oreos are destined to be together in one form or another.
Posted 08/29/2008 at 09:20:05 PMMy vote was for Cap'n Crunch. When I read the article, HE was the first one who popped in my head. I dont even know who the #1&3 are.....
Posted 08/31/2008 at 11:04:50 AM"There are NO black food mascots except Aunt Jemimah"
Not true. There's also Uncle Ben and Famous Amos. And I think Mrs. Butterworth is black. She certainly has the right complexion.
Posted 09/01/2008 at 05:07:37 PM@The Shadow
Uncle Ben: True, but the term "Uncle" in this context is also offensive to many black people.
Famous Amos: Hasn't been a mascot for many years, though he was black.
Mrs. Butterworth: Never officially portrayed as black, this is simply the color of the syrup inside her.
Posted 09/05/2008 at 02:20:45 PMi'm sugar bear and i do give a care whowever try's to stop me.
Posted 09/15/2008 at 02:26:19 PMI always liked Coookiie Crisp!! the caveman. I loved how he said that line.
Anyone realize that Sugar Bear is actually a mascot name for the Central Arkansas U women's basketball team.
Posted 12/03/2008 at 03:22:11 PM