The 10 Greatest Breakfast Cereal Shills
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.