Halloween, 2004:
Well, another X-E Halloween Countdown comes to an end. Hope everyone enjoyed the 400,000 articles on candy, toys, decorations and other assorted spooky crap. Funny how the holiday seemed over and done with more than a week ago, what with every store trashing their Draculas in favor of Santa Claus statues already. It's pretty depressing. You're driving to the store for Halloween candy, passing all of the houses with almost completely deflated giant Halloween balloons on the lawns, and when you get there, it's all about red and green wrapped Hershey's Kisses. Kinda makes you feel like a sucker for getting so into a holiday prematurely exposed as nothing more than a cash cow, but on the other hand, it's the only time of year when three hundred cable stations simultaneously broadcast movies featuring someone getting their head ripped off. Many take, but some do give.
I've been a lot busier these days than any other time since X-E began, but despite how much of a bitch it was to keep marching forward with the stupid Countdown, I can't help being a little sad to see it go. That might have something to do with all the stuff I bought and didn't get the chance to cover, ranging from an electronic spider that spits silly string webs to a big bag of eyeball gum. Guess I'll save 'em for next year. I've labored over which item to present as the proper sendoff for the 2004 Halloween season, and since most of the cool stuff left requires batteries I forgot to pick up, let's go with an old favorite. Actually, three of 'em. In one box!
It's the Monster Triple Pack from General Mills, containing all three Monster Cereals in one big, beautiful box! Count Chocula, Franken Berry and the curious Boo Berry returned to supermarkets this season in single box affairs (complete with promotional green marshmallows, yes), but only at the big discount wholesale warehouses were you prone to find the Triple Back. Truly the ultimate Halloween breakfast-in-a-box, fans of the early morning spooks will never again have to stand in a grocery store aisle trying to remember which dumb Monster Cereal they liked best as a kid.
You'll have a hard time bringing yourself to open a box this huge and slick, favoring it more as a year-round centerpiece meant to break ice and draw compliments. Soooo pretty. The logo is enhanced by the patented foil touch, making the whole deal seem like it should've cost somewhere in the high hundreds for you to take home. Incredibly, it retails for less than ten bucks. It's a bargain wrapped in water chestnuts and bacon; it's rumaki on steroids. The star characters, shown in a rare moment of team-uppage, smile brighter than they ever have before, for once confirming that they have but one tooth to share between all three of them. It's two pounds of spooky stomach aches for one price, and the different varieties are separated by bag...
Three beautiful bags. Though the Monster Cereals generally look alike aside from their color, you'd be surprised at just how different the flavors are. It's not just vague chocolate versus vague strawberry -- it's personifying chocolate versus personifying strawberry, and your tongue will be accepting and rejecting flavor sensations so fast, you'll look like you're trying to clean soup cracker residue off your teeth. It's what it's all about. For those by whom Father Time has not been kind, here's a cereal-by-cereal breakdown to jog and kick the crap out of your memory:
Count Chocula: The accepted leader of the Monster Cereal Trio, Count Chocula is also the only one blessed by being sold all year. Franken Berry comes and goes, while Boo Berry only turns up for four hours on October 12th before vanishing again and swearing on Ma Boo's grave that he never came to begin with. Chocolate to the core with marshmallows three shades lighter than the kibble, Count Chocula has always been my personal favorite and provides pretty much the only way that I'll drink milk of any kind. When milk hits the Count, it is no longer milk.
Franken Berry: I'm not a fan of strawberry cereal by any means, but always swallow Franken Berry with glee sheerly for the merits of it being Franken Berry. One of the few surviving all-strawberry kid cereals on the market, the pink beast graciously accepts that his role has been diminished, showing no signs of ill-will towards the Count for having to sit in a dark cave from November through September. A bit cautious and wimpy in the old commercials, Franken Berry nonetheless charmed children everywhere with his head-clock accessory and unending supply of marshmallows.
Boo Berry: The mysterious and misunderstood Boo Berry has long been the rogue of the trio, outlasting Frute Brute and Fruity Mummy, but unable to capture worldwide affections on levels necessary to stay available all year. Strictly sold during the Halloween season nowadays, Boo Berry has evolved from a crude, bored blue ghoul with a strong white outline to a happy, hip Casper ripoff with a nominal white outline. The cereal has a much stronger flavor that you might imagine; it's probably the most mouth-explosive of the trio, and is often celebrated among underground fetishist circles for adding a neon green tint to one's feces. Yeah Boo, you rock the party.
But now, Uatu says "what if?" Indeed, what if? What if you didn't want to choose? What if you used your Monster Triple Pack to do the one thing you never quite got around to crossing off your third-grade "do before die" list? What if, say, you combined all three cereals to create the ULTIMATE Halloween breakfast bowl? Can it be done?
It can, and the results are nothing short of life-threateningly exciting. I can't believe I've lived on this planet for two and a half decades and never once thought to merge all three Monster Cereals into one happy bowl of Halloween doom. General Mills should sooo follow suit and market the stuff as Monster Party Cereal. It could start a whole new breakfast revolution, giving off the kind of morning meal shockwaves that haven't been felt since the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee persuaded Scrooge to stop being an asshole. Of course, I expect 10% of gross profits for conceiving this idea which I'm sure not a single person ever has ever had before. Don't lie.
Each spoonful is a new surprise, and as much as I'd like that to be the last line of the 2004 Halloween Countdown, let me also add this: thanks for reading, thanks for supporting, and thanks for liking Dracula shit as much as I do. We now return to our regularly scheduled junk, but the horror will strike again in about eleven months. Happy Halloween, you sick people.
Count Chocula: The accepted leader of the Monster Cereal Trio, Count Chocula is also the only one blessed by being sold all year. Franken Berry comes and goes, while Boo Berry only turns up for four hours on October 12th before vanishing again and swearing on Ma Boo's grave that he never came to begin with. Chocolate to the core with marshmallows three shades lighter than the kibble, Count Chocula has always been my personal favorite and provides pretty much the only way that I'll drink milk of any kind. When milk hits the Count, it is no longer milk.
Franken Berry: I'm not a fan of strawberry cereal by any means, but always swallow Franken Berry with glee sheerly for the merits of it being Franken Berry. One of the few surviving all-strawberry kid cereals on the market, the pink beast graciously accepts that his role has been diminished, showing no signs of ill-will towards the Count for having to sit in a dark cave from November through September. A bit cautious and wimpy in the old commercials, Franken Berry nonetheless charmed children everywhere with his head-clock accessory and unending supply of marshmallows.
Boo Berry: The mysterious and misunderstood Boo Berry has long been the rogue of the trio, outlasting Frute Brute and Fruity Mummy, but unable to capture worldwide affections on levels necessary to stay available all year. Strictly sold during the Halloween season nowadays, Boo Berry has evolved from a crude, bored blue ghoul with a strong white outline to a happy, hip Casper ripoff with a nominal white outline. The cereal has a much stronger flavor that you might imagine; it's probably the most mouth-explosive of the trio, and is often celebrated among underground fetishist circles for adding a neon green tint to one's feces. Yeah Boo, you rock the party.
