From the Cereal Aisle - Fingos

Product: Fingos
Company: General Mills
Years: 1993-1994

I was doing some research on Fingos for this post, when my son walked up and asked "What are Fingos?".
I told him "It was an old cereal that was made so you could eat it with your hand."
His 8 year old mind thought for a second, then he says "All cereals can be eaten by hand if you don't add milk."

And he's right.

Which I guess is why this product flopped. You didn't need to market a cereal that can be eaten by hand since ALL cereals can be eaten by hand.

Fingo's was a strange offering from General Mills. It came in 2 flavors, Honey Oats and Cinnamon, and there was also a variety pack called "Fingos Singles" that had smaller snack packs of each flavor.

But nobody bought it, because they could see through the gimmick.

It also didn't help that "Fing" is the Hungarian word for passing gas, and the word "Fingos" translated to "He Farts a lot" in that language.

Which come to think of it, probably would have actually helped with sales, had they made that public. Well, it would have helped with sales among 6-13 year old boys, anyway.

Also, part of their sales slogan was "Anytime, anywhere", which sort of makes me feel like they are threatening to fight me.

Wanna go, Fingos? Huh? Let's go....you and me.....RIGHT NOW! (wait, what's that smell...)

Anyway, they didn't last, but this strange, flatulant, eager to fight cereal still deserves a spot on our shelves.
It was a swing and a miss for General Mills, but perhaps it was just a little before it's time, as there have been several other snackable cereal offerings similar to this in the recent years.

So do you remember eating these back in the early 90s?

From the Cereal Aisle: Circus Fun

Product: Circus Fun Cereal
Company: General Mills
Years: 1986-?

Coulrophobia
[kool-ruh-foh-bee-uh] 
- noun -

An abnormal fear of clowns.

There have been several cereals over the years who had clowns for mascots. Kaboom...Sugar Krinkles...Sugar Smacks....and each one ended the same way.

MURDER.

OK, I'm making that up. Most just ended up giving people a delicious breakfast.

And I guess Circus Fun did the same.

It hit the shelves in 1986, and like the multitudes of other sugary kid friendly cereals to hit the shelves in the mid 80's, it only lasted a few years before being discontinued.

Circus fun had a lot going on in that box.....several different shapes (Hoops and balls), several different marshmallows (horses, elephants, lions, bears, tigers), and one underlying motive: MURDER. (OK, mostly shapes and marshmallows with very little murder.)
I remember eating this as a kid, and I loved it. It was like Fruit Loops, Kix, Trix and Lucky Charms all got together (Bow-chicka wa-wa...) and this was the offspring it produced. It was very sweet, very delicious, and as long as you didn't have coulrophobia you probably enjoyed it.If you did have coulrophobia, however, the commercials probably freaked you out.

It really was a pretty good cereal, and I am just kidding when it comes to the clowns, and all the MURDER......I think this cereal just fell victim to the over saturation of similar cereals in the 80's, and went away when people started to get a more healthy outlook on breakfast for their kids.Which is a shame.....

































































































































Because they all float in milk down here..........

From the Cereal Aisle: Undercover Bears Oatmeal

Product: Undercover Bears Oatmeal
Company: General Mills
Years: 1990 - ???

I was never a big oatmeal eater growing up, which is probably why I missed this interesting product from the early 90's: Undercover Bears Oatmeal.

General Mills took the wholesome goodness of oatmeal and the teeth sticking stickiness of gummi bears, combined them, came up with a loveable animal character to be the pitchman, put them in stores, failed to connect on a large scale with kids, lowered prices not once, but 3 times, remained unsuccessful, fired the marketing execs that came up with the idea in the first place, then pulled Undercover Bears from the store shelves, and wept.

I never heard of them until someone posted about them over at Cerealbits.com (check out the site for your fill of retro cereal box goodness!). So I did a little digging, and still didn't come up with much. I was hoping to find a scan of the box, but only found commercial stills and pictures from newpaper ads instead.

Basically, they were gummy bears that were coated in some sort of maple/brown sugar coating and hidden in the oatmeal, so when you the hot water, they bears would magically appear in your bowl!
AMAZING!!!!!!*

*actually only amazing to people who are easily amazed, such as kids, and some dumb adults.

These quite possibly were only around for a year, maybe two,  from the little info I could find. So if you remember them, hats off to you my oatmeal loving friends.

Researching these lead me to a lot of gimicky oatmeals from the 80's and 90's I had forgotten about, so I jotted them all down and will be sure to cover more of them here in the future.

Pinky swear.

Back from the Dead for Halloween!!! Monsters!!!! (Well, Monster Cereals, anyway...)

 Sometimes they come back.......the Return of Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy!

A little different post today to make everyone aware (thought it seems like everyone has known about and been extremely excited for these for a while now) that General Mills has brought back two of it's Gone but not Forgotten Cereals for Halloween, Yummy Mummy and the legendary Frute Brute! I've talked about them before, but a few months ago when I heard they were coming back from the dead, I was genuinely excited, as I'm sure most of you were. Both these cereals have been gone for 20+ years, so it's quite exciting (and an A+++++ for General Mills) to see a company listening to the cries of us thirtysomethingers (that's a word, right?) to bring back the cereals that we miss from our childhood. Simply bringing them back would have been enough for most people, but like me, I remember a lot of people saying "Wouldn't it be cool if they not only brought them back, but brought back the original packaging that we all loved so much?" As it turned out, General Mills was doing their homework, because the next day it was announced that they would be available for a limited time,  IN THEIR ORIGINAL PACKAGING, from Target! Simply amazing. The nerd in me made plans to check Target each and every day until I found these (which sadly I still haven't spotted them in my area), but I did get a surprise prize package in the mail from General Mills (provided through MyBlogSpark) containg 3 of the 5 boxes, Boo Berry, Frute Brute, and Yummy Mummy.

So I did what any 30+ year old would do who is longing for the simpler times that were his youth would do: I woke up with my kids early one Saturday Morning, popped in a DVD which contained a 3 hour block of cartoons with Original Commercials from my youth (1984 to be exact), and cracked open all 3 boxes of cereal, which my kids and I quickly devoured.

Boo Berry and Frute Brute were the first to go, followed up by Yummy Mummy. It was a glorious morning, and my kids and I loved them all. I have to thank General Mills for doing this. I can't help but think that they will have a spike in sales simply from people like myself, as I know some of my internet buddies are buying 2...3....even 4 boxes at a time. Stock up, and display the boxes proudly! (We all know how much the original Fruit Brute boxes go for, so the Retro box will have to do for now!)
I still need to hunt down the Count Chocula and Frankenberry retro boxes to finish my collection, and I will continue to check Target until I find them.

And if having the retro boxes of love wasn't enough, if you purchase 3 retro boxes at Target between now and October 31st you will get a Monster Bash magazine, which contains tips and tricks for making your Halloween the spookiest and creepiest Halloween ever, and its FREE when you purchase 3 boxes in a single shopping trip. So what are you waiting for! Stock up while you can!!! The clock is ticking, and Halloween is almost here!!!

Once again, I want to thank General Mills for making this retro nerd happy this Halloween season (It's a Halloween miracle!) I'd also like to thank MyBlogSpark for sending me the boxes of love!

Get more information from General Mills here! www.grocerysavvy.com

(Disclosure: The information and prize pack have been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark.)

From the Cereal Aisle: Buc Wheats

Product: Buc Wheats Cereal
Company: General Mills
Years: 1971-1983

Picture by Bolio88

I am not generally a fan of flakes when it comes to my breakfast cereals. Honey Toasted, Frosted, Corn, Bran.....flakes of any kind really. Maybe it's the awkwardness of the flake shape, and the sharp roof of the mouth piercing edges that they often produce. Maybe it's the negative connotation that the work "Flake" has:

FLAKE

n. An unreliable person; someone who agrees to do something, but never follows through.

1. John forgot to show up for work again this month. He's such a flake. 

I'm petty sure my parents knew my opposition to flake based cereals growing up, which is why I don't recall a box of Buc Wheats cereal ever entering our house. I'm sure it was delicious...I mean.....look at the nice.......brown box..........with that bowl of brown flakes........and the exciting "Wildlife Print" offer on the back of the box.......who needs fun prizes like baking soda submarines, or Garfield bike reflectors.......I'll be the only kid on my block with a Les Kouba deer print...........exciting. *crickets*

Buc Wheats were pretty popular for a while, mostly because of the Maple glaze that was gently brushed over each flake with butterfly wings (I can't prove that). But then for some reason in the early 80s, they changed the formula. Instead of a maple glaze, they changed to a honey glaze. And I'm sure you can imagine the anarchy that erupted when people realized what General Mills had done. General Mills headquarters was stormed by angry townspeople and burned to the ground. The cereal aisles ran red with the blood of GM executives.
That's what I imagine anyway. Hey, I was like 6 at the time, I can't remember a lot. It's much cooler then imagining people just not buying the cereal anymore...even if that's more or less what happened. 

Image by CheshireCat666

Buc Wheats had a good 10 year run as the "Sticky Wheaties of the 70's", but the change in the sweetener proved to be too much for most people, and poof, it was gone.

Maybe you have fond memories of this cereal. Maybe you wish it would make it's triumphant return to Cereal Aisles across America.......hell, across the globe.

I don't. But then again, I'm pretty much a flake.

From the Cereal Aisle: S'mores Crunch

S'mores Crunch Cereal
Company: General Mills
Years: 1982-1988

Photo by Greg Koenig

Of all the cereals from my childhood, S'mores Crunch has to be in my top 5 cereals I'd bring back if I ever ran for President of the United States and won. Which in this day and age, with all the money floating around the elections, is pretty tough to do. I mean, sure, maybe if some of you chipped in and started a Super PAC for me and were able to donate a few million dollars each, then maybe. But as it sits right now, it's a long shot at best, so you can probably just count on S'mores Crunch remaining discontinued, and that's a damn shame. Because it was delicious.

Launched in 1982, S'mores Crunch was, to put it simply, Golden Grahams with marshmallows.
But when you cut down to the core of what made it great, it was more then that......it was truly special. It was grahams. It was chocolate. It was marshmallow. It was rainbows. It was unicorns. It was love.

It was all those things in a bowl (but mostly just the first 3).

You might remember the commercials for S'mores, which not unlike every kids cereal commercial made from the dawn of man, involved some kids trying to get some cereal. Then they run into a problem (someone steals their cereal / someone traps them in a cage and keeps them from getting their cereal / they get hit by a bus). Luckily, they have some help getting them to their beloved cereal. In this case, they are helped by The S'morecerer. He takes them out of the horrible situation they are in (trapped in a room with a Nickleback album playing over and over and over again) and drops them right smack dab in front of a big bowl of S'mores, and after finishing their cereal, one of the kids cleverly says "Can I have S'more?"
HAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaaaaaa...........you stupid kid, no you can't have any more, it's been discontinued.

In the late 80's Smores Crunch tried to rebrand itself as S'mores Grahams, and it lasted a few more years into the early 90's, but it was finally discontinued for good after the great marshmallow famine of 1992. Or it just wasn't selling as well as it had been. It was one of those two things I think.

Photo by Jason Liebig

In 2003, Kelloggs ripped off the idea and came out with a cereal called Smorz which was a @%*#*!$ travesty to all things holy. It wasn't the same at all. It was a cheap knockoff of a cheap knockoff of a once great cereal. So I just pretend it never happened. Kind of like The Hangover 2.

Finally, an observation: Is anyone else kind of creeped out by the cartoon marshmallow on the box? I mean, on the S'mores Crunch box, it looks like him, Chocolate and Graham Cracker are all buds, just hanging out, smiling......waiting for you to take them home and love them. But then, on the S'mores Grahams box, Marshmallow has decided to eat his friends, like some sort of Marshzombie.
Just an observation I had. Probably means nothing.

Or does it? (note to self - load guns for impending zombie marshmallow apocalypse.)

From the Cereal Aisle: Body Buddies

Product: Body Buddies Cereal
Company: General Mills
Years: 1983-?

I realize that in the Cereal business, it's hard to come up with an original concept. It's all been done before a zillion times, and with every truly new cereal that hits the market, there will be people saying it's just like Cereal X, Y or Z.
Enter "Body Buddies".

It's just Kix, right? I mean, look at it........Exact same f'ing cereal. Come on, General Mills. Lets see a little effort once in a while.

Body Buddies was promoted as a "healthy" cereal for kids, packed with 16 vitamins and minerals that your kids will surely love, if they in fact tried this cereal, which they won't, because it's just Kix, which they already hate.

The kids/mascots on the boxes were known as the Body Buddies or some shit. They did fun, healthy activities, like kicking a soccer ball, wearing a cowboy hat, or riding in a poorly constructed soapbox car with pink wheels that just screamed "Look at me, I'm Fabulous!"

Body Buddies came in 2 flavors, Fruit Flavor and a Honey Flavor (Kix? Seriously...). They weren't around for very long, which was good for kids, because they could once again concentrate all their hate back onto the Kix their parents kept buying. Would it hurt you to get a box of Count Chocula every once in a while, mom? Jeesh.

But the thing I hate most about Body Buddies cereal is that every time I say or hear the name "Body Buddies" I picture the opening to the also short lived but hit TV show "Bosom Buddies" staring Tom Hanks and that other guy. And then the theme song gets stuck in my head.

Do we miss Body Buddies Cereal? Not nearly as much as we miss the tv show Bosom Buddies. And nowhere near as much as we hate Kix.

OK, as much as I hate Kix.

From the Cereal Aisle: Crazy Cow

Product: Crazy Cow cereal
Company: General Mills
Years: 1977-?

If you ever see a Crazy Cow, turn the other way, and run. You don't want to mess with them. Hundreds of people are severely injured or killed every year by Crazy Cows. I have no facts to back that up, so don't ask for them. But my mom says I'm a pretty trustworthy person, so it's cool.

However, if you ever see a box of Crazy Cow cereal on the shelves, it means that General Mills is bringing back their hit cereal from the late 70's, and you should purchase that box right away. Take it home, pour yourself a bowl, and laugh with delight as your milk turns chocolatey brown (or pink for you Strawberry fans.) Then, enjoy.

Crazy Cow hit the shelves in late 1976/early 1977 and took the cereal aisle by storm. The gimmick? General Mills took your basic Kix and covered them in a powder (Chocolate or Strawberry) that dissolved in milk and left you with a sweet flavored bowl of deliciousness. And who cares if there was no real chocolate or Strawberries in them (as the box proclaimed "artificially flavored".)

Another cool thing about Crazy cow was the box, as they perfectly captured the dangers of a Crazy Cow in their Cartoon rendering: Wears a hat? Crazy. Stands on it's hind legs? Crazy. Has teeth that could gnaw off your face? Creepy.
And Crazy.

Sadly, the cereal was just a short lived fad and didn't last in stores, but the memories still remain in our hearts. We miss you, Crazy Cow.

From the Snack Aisle: Peanut Butter Boppers

Product: Peanut Butter Boppers
Company: General Mills/Nature Valley
Years: Mid-Late 80's

Yep, two Peanut Butter related posts in a row. Oh, yes I did. I guess for me, Peanut butter is the ultimate snack ingredient - goes with so many different things, salty or sweet. It's the alpha ingredient. Maybe that's why so many beloved snacks of today and days gone buy contained the wonderful gooeyness of Peanut Butter. Today, I want to highlight one of them. Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you Peanut Butter Boppers.


Box image by daniel85r on Flickr

Nature Valley (General Mills is their parent company) came up with the idea to take Peanut Butter logs (from Peanut Butter trees in the Peanut Butter Forest, I'm assuming..................) and roll it up in other delicious things, like oats, rice crispies, chocolate chips, and whathaveyou.
They even had Peanut Butter rolled up and covered with chopped peanuts.
Holy crap. They may as well have included an EpiPen in the box, because if you had even the slightest hint of a peanut allergy, Peanut Butter logs rolled in peanuts would have been like putting a shotgun in your mouth. A delicious Peanuty shotgun. But I digress....

But there were more varieties then just "Death by Peanuts" - there was also Fudge Chip, Honey Crisp, Cookie Crunch and Fudge Graham, so you had plenty to choose from.

And who could forget about the cool 50's looking graphics that dressed up the box? It certainly stood out on the shelves, that's for sure. Unfortunately, it didn't stand out well enough, as their popularity left just as quickly as it came.

I'm not sure if these will ever return, but there are petitions online (like with so many childhood favorites) to get Nature Valley to go back into the Peanut Butter forest and start chopping some more Peanut Butter logs. Because we're hungry. Hungry for a snack that's 0% nutritious, but 100% delicious. Bring Back Boppers.


flickr image by Jason Liebig

From the Cereal Aisle: Powdered Donutz Cereal

Powdered Donutz
Company: General Mills
Years: 1980-83/84


Powdered Donutz Cereal (using the Z instead of the S before it was cool to do that) was basically a fat powdered Cheerio. They didn't think that was a very good slogan, so they went with their second choice, "A Crispy, Sweetened 3 Grain Cereal".
Doesn't quite catch the eye like "Just A Fat Powdered Cheerios", does it?
I don't honestly remember this cereal either, but what was with all the Donut Cereals in the 80's/90's? Powdered Donutz, Dinky Donuts, Dunkin Donuts Cereal.....
Anyway, much like Urkel-Os, General Mills tried to dress up Cheerios and give it a new name, but to no avail. It was around to see the early 80's and then it was gone.

What did you think of Powdered Donutz Cereal?

From the Cereal Aisle: Yummy Mummy

Yummy Mummy Cereal
Company: General Mills
Years: 1988-1992

photo from bolio88

The 4th Monster Cereal of to be released (though some don't consider it part of the monster cereals) was Yummy Mummy (later, "Fruity" was added to it to make it Fruity Yummy Mummy. Maybe people were saying "but rotting corpses really aren't all that yummy", to which someone replied "but what if it was a corpse that's bursting with fruity flavors?")

Yummy Mummy was a fruit flavored frosted cereal with vanilla marshmallows. The cereal pieces, as well as the marshmallows, were shaped sort of like heads, though the orange and red cereal pieces looked more like outlets or pig noses then heads.
Sadly, Yummy Mummy was the shortest lived of the Monster cereals, only lasting 4 years. I don't know if I ever had Yummy Mummy Cereal, as it was here and gone in a flash. If you remember it, share your stories and let me know what you thought of it.