Cereal Collective 4 (Great Animation Edition!) & Nice Noodles

Movies, TV Shows, and generally media.. They like marketing and why not? Simply placing the face of a beloved animated character can increase the value of a product by several fold, it's true and it's a simple truth that doesn't make much sense.

Why are we so much more inclined to purchase something because it has the face of a beloved cartoon character or media icon on it or is associated? Why did something like Popeye's Spinach sell better than a normal generic Spinach? The association seems strong, uncommonly so and seems to propel these products to higher places and specifically higher sales percentages.

Still who cares? Who can deny the whimsy and joy that seeing these icons on our favourite products brings us? And in the end it's not ideal that we've got to shell out big bucks for big name items but it's at least partially worth it.. I mean some products that have been marketed under the reign of a media icon or cartoon character have been incredibly good and quite successful so it's not a completely negative thing..

One such product that has always had tie-ins from cartoons, movies, anime, and media in general has been cereal.. Some cereals have been great, some have been shite, and some made me genuinely question if they didn't just shovel dog-food into a box and said 'this is now cereal', who knows.. I'm sure I've eaten my fair share of weirdness in the name of some superficial cartoon association.. Today we're going to go over cereals I remember from the past though, cereals that were great and need to be brought back; Cereal Collective - GREAT ANIMATION EDITION GOOOOO!

Kellogg's Mud & Bugs Cereal:

Hakuna Matata, eh? It means no worries which is surprisingly Australian in spite of their evident location in Africa as they're a Merecat, a Warthog, and a Lion cub. In the time that Timon and Pumbaa were introduced in 1994 and the years they enjoyed a surprising popularity a great many products were marketed with their joyful visages.

Fruit snacks, candy, and general junk-food was marketed with the pair on it, they were highly popular characters from the movie and I frankly don't blame anyone for liking them; hell in 1995 they got their own cartoon which I admit to watching and think that quite honestly for a simple cartoon which is all it professed to be, it was pretty damn good.

Timon and Pumbaa featured primarily in their merchandising a great number of bug-themed products, bug-themed because well.. That's what Timon and Pumbaa ate, they ate bugs.. The disturbing thing? I wonder if I'm the only person to think this at times but surprisingly through the series and movie I was never grossed out by their consumption of bugs but rather.. I found that I was finding the bugs shown and eaten looking strangely and disturbingly appetizing. I think it has something to do with their plumpness and vibrancy colour-wise.. I dunno.. Anyone else out there suffer the same?

At any rate in their usual thematic product marketing strategies Disney and Kellogg's teamed up to release the official Timon and Pumbaa Cereal; Chocolate Mud & Bugs, 'Naturally Sweetened Cereal with Bug Shaped Marshmallows' - Translation: SUGAR FUCKED CEREAL WITH SUGAR FUCKED CHUNKS OF SUGARY SUGAR.

....Maybe it was a little more well defined taste-wise than simply being 'sugar fucked', but there's no denying that this had a lot of sugar in it..

Chocolate cereal which resembled Cocoa Puffs contributed to the actual cereal while well.. The rest of the cereal consisted of bug-shaped marshmallows.. The description was actually fairly on-target as I suppose they tend to be when described by the damn company that makes them.. Durh..

Anyway, the cereal itself definitely wasn't bad and I love the fact that they chose to make it mud and bugs, that's just fucking gross and cool although still strangely appetizing in a way I'm quickly becoming convinced is either Disney subliminal or some strange Freudian mind-thing. And hell yeah, you know that being named 'mud' that the cereal itself turned your milk a nice muddy brown with chocolaty goodness; fucking love that. One of the few cereal types I love to eat with milk are chocolate cereals because they turn the milk chocolate or in this case as reiteration; mud. Mud for your disgusting plump little delicious buggies to swim in awaiting their ultimate fate!

This cereal was really good, one of the great examples of cartoon marketing just working and let's face it; it's fun.

PSL 


Pokemon Cereal:

Let's face it, you loved Pokemon, I loved Pokemon, damn near everyone loved Pokemon. It was good in that sort of... What the fucking shit am I watching sort of way.. It was good in a way that it was so incredibly bad that it transcended the boundaries of 'bad' and simply became inherently awesome.

Pokemon Cereal was introduced in the late 1990s with the theatrical release of Pokemon: The First Movie and unfortunately this is one example of those tie-ins that was simply putting the faces of your favourite characters on a box, tweaking the product a little, and assuming the masses were dumb enough to consume it.. We were of course.. Oh, yes.. We were..

Pokemon Cereal was more or less Lucky Charms although the cereal bits were more like Frosted Cheerio's than the cereal bits from Lucky Charms, considerably more sweet than the cereal in Lucky Charms, I expect that at least a few kids sitting in front of their televisions and munching this suddenly went into a diabetic/epileptic seizure and started spouting 'PIKAPIKAPIKAAAA' as they watched Pokemon.. Possibly even their red-cheek electric glans activated, jacking their minds and neural systems up worse than they already were... Maybe not, though...

This is one of those cereals that was released, tweaked again slightly, and then re-released as the Pokemon 2000 movie featured slight changes to the cereal in the vague shape of the marshmallows. Amazing how they resemble.. Uh.. Fucking amorphous blobs.. Wait, it's Ditto; right!?

Whatever.. Wasn't a bad cereal but then again it's kind of hard to fuck up Lucky Charms or just a generic marshmallow cereal, isn't it? It's not exactly fucking rocket science after all.. No, no, no.. Rocket science would be much better if it involved copiously sweetened cereal and marshmallows, wouldn't it?

...Get our scientists on that immediately! This could be our new fuel-source to replace harmful emissions; heavily fortified sugar and marshmallow! FUCK YES!


Kellogg's Power Puff Girls Cereal:

Okay.. Stating right now, saved the BEST for last. Hands down the fucking best. The year 2000s Cartoon Network backed Power Puff Girls Cereal!

Let me start by saying I adored the Power Puff Girls. This was like one of my favourite cartoons and I praised the ground that it existed upon, this cartoon in my opinion was fucking flawless and full of amazing epicness and marketing did not skimp on this show - There were Power Puff toys, dolls, plushies, snacks, candies, and of course cereal - I never had any of the toys sadly, ghetto-fied and poor as I've been most of my life I've often been deprived of the things others had; that's just how it is.. I did want some of the toys though, I wanted them very badly. Specifically I wanted a set of the plushie dolls.

Sad fact is I never got those dolls but I did have the cereal, that's one thing I wouldn't do without even if it cost me dearly. This cereal? This cereal POPPED IN YOUR FUCKING MOUTH - It consisted basically of heavily sweetened Rice Krispies with little Fruity Pebble bits inside that were actually kind of like Pop-Rocks candy. Oh. My. God.

This was just a novel and amazing fucking idea because it's fun, it's powerful, and it's fucking interactive cereal! Also I swear to all that is good just off a whim when I got my first box I snorted some of the cereal, curious as to how it would react to my nasal passages for some reason.. Or I might have just been smelling it and gotten too close.. You think you've sneezed? You ain't never sneezed 'till an orchestra of Pop-Rocks goes off in your nose. Also, fuck your brain. I'm pretty sure I'm still suffering Pop-Rock related brain damage.

You better bet too that this cereal was so ridonkculously sweet that your teeth would rocket out of your head with Power Puff energy streaks and the rest of you might just explode on spot in a mess of Chemical X and Chemical SUGARBOMB MOTHERFUCKAAA!

On a different note, my favourite episode of Power Puff girls is the episode where it's revealed Mojo Jojo is the accidental creator of the Power Puffs instead of The Professor. Funny shit.

Also, I never knew about this.. WHAT THE HELL!? This is SO COOL!

 

Also of recent years, The Power Puff girls have enjoyed popularity the world over - Specifically in Japan with Power Puff Girls Z;

Dinner:

This dish tonight is Umi no niwatori to nudoru (Sea Chicken Noodles) and is one I personally loved the outcome of but it was claimed to me that the colour of the dish was 'off' - I don' think it's off, I think it works really well.. But that's me.. I guess I'm what really matters in opinion since I'm presenting it and then letting the blogisphere decide for themselves what they themselves think of it, huh?

Tuna, spinach, mushrooms, sweet peas, and noodles make up the body of this dish while it's topped with a nice home-made honey mustard dressing - I really like the colours, I really do. I think the dark green and the bright vibrant yellow really work nicely together and blend between all the other colours but again that's me.

In spite of not thinking it was much appearance wise James did admit it tasted better than he thought it looked - The sides were a Peanut Butter Chocolate Anpan (Sweet Roll) and a baked potato.