Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Toonfomercial: Spooks for breakfast? (1973)

General Mills' Monster line of cereals expanded by 1 in 1973 with the addition of Boo Berry, which is a play on, of course, blueberry. They simply substituted blueberry flavoring for strawberry (Franken Berry) or chocolate (Count Chocula), as if the kiddo's wouldn't know the difference.

Today, the Monster cereals are kept in limited release, available only during October, instead of being year-round as they were originally. Considering that some stores charge as much as $5 a box these days, maybe it'll help the parents' wallets.

Anyway, here's the debut of Boo Berry, who floats in as Choc & Frank (both voiced by Bob McFadden) are doing what they do best---argue. Boo's voice is done by---who else?----Paul Frees, doing a Peter Lorre mimic.

4 comments:

SaturdayMorningFan said...

I loved Count Chocula as a kid (the cereal, not necessarily the mascot). I still buy it around Hallowe'en on those years that Target offers the retro boxes. I stock up and they last well over a year without going stale. Makes me shudder to think of the amount of preservatives they must have in them. I still have about 10 boxes from last year's haul. They don't taste quite the same as they used to because they use corn syrup now instead of sugar, but it's still a nostalgia rush when I eat them. I wish they'd go back to sugar though, I'd gladly pay more for it.

hobbyfan said...

10 boxes at, what? $4 a box w/o coupons? Maybe you could store them someplace safe, unless you're eating them year-round, the way they were meant to be.

SaturdayMorningFan said...

I think they were about $2.00 a box when I bought them, but I could be wrong. I try to hit it just right so I get the clearance price, but it's risky. One year I waited too long and wound up with none. And yes, I eat them all year round. I try to restrict consumption to Saturday mornings when I watch 1970's era Saturday morning TV shows with my daughter (she likes Count Chocula too, but not Frankenberry). Occasionally I eat them as a kind of dessert, figuring a bowl of Count Chocula is probably healthier than the cake or cookies I would otherwise eat, what with the artificially enhanced vitamin content of the cereal. I could be wrong though.

hobbyfan said...

To each their own, but while I've seen people have cereal for lunch and/or dinner, the marketing suits prefer to hype orange juice as "not just for breakfast anymore". Go figure.