Somewhere between seasons 2 & 3 of The Smurfs, Post Cereals, then a unit of General Foods, landed a licensing deal to create a cereal based on the series.
Smurf Berry Crunch was one of what seemingly was a number of licensed properties used for cereal by Post and rivals Kellogg's & General Mills back in the day. All this did was add to the workload at Hanna-Barbera, which produced the commercials. Four years later, a 2nd Smurf cereal was added, but it didn't last as long, and the Smurf cereals were off the shelves after the series ended.
Here, Handy explains to first Smurfette (Lucille Bliss), then Papa Smurf (Don Messick), that he's increased production of the cereal. Chaos follows, of course.
General Foods wasn't the only one to cash in on the Smurfs. Chef Boy-ar-Dee, now part of ConAgra, produced a line of Smurfs pasta products around the same time, and, yup, H-B did the commercials for that, too.
2 comments:
Fun Trivia Fact: Handy Smurf was voiced by Michael Bell, who previously voiced Zan of the Wonder Twins and would go on to voice Quackerjack on Darkwing Duck.
I remember Smurf Berry Crunch cereal. I saw the product in stores, but I never purchased it myself. Based on what I've seen, it was just red and blue Crunch Berries repackaged with Papa Smurf's picture on the box.
Bell did a few other "Smurfs" voices, too. He also was Johan and at least 1-2 more Smurfs. The late June Foray was Jokey, BTW. Like you, I've seen the product in stores. To me, it was a Cap'n Crunch rip-off (Quaker had put out a Crunch Berry version around that time). BTW, Bell was still doing Zan at the time of the ad, and would continue to do so any time the character was needed, as late as 2001.
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