Cereal. It’s what separates us from the animals. But what happens when cereal mascots turn human beings into whimpering puppies and scaredy cats? We here at Bite Daily have compiled a list of the most upsetting cereal mascots of all time. Nine of them, to be exact.
9. Crazy Craving – Honeycomb
Have you ever wanted something so bad that it turned you into an animal? A snarling beast that would lie/cheat/steal/kill/megakill/buttkill to get what they most desired? If not, let Crazy Craving be your gateway drug to that dark part of your id. Sure, it starts off as a yearning for middle-tier cereal bits, but with just the slightest nudge, the Crazy Craving inside of you will be slaughtering war criminals over a bad angel dust transaction. Crazy Craving isn’t a mascot, he’s a cautionary tale.
8. The Quaker – Assorted Quaker Oats Cereals
It’s impossible to eat cereal with the Quaker staring at you. He has the smug smirk of a man with his life sorted out, and an evening of unprotected Quaker sex on the docket. While you’re trying to justify your existence, the Quaker is a pillar of his community. His likeness is kneading dough around the clock, and he’s trying to contain his laughter at your life choices. The Quaker looks into your soul, and all you can do is eat the cereal pieces he’s given you and try not to let his work go soggy.
7. The Trix Rabbit – Trix
“For a long time it gave me nightmares, it shows that the world can sometimes be cruel. I can still hear them taunting him. Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids. Why couldn’t they just give him some cereal?”
-Carlton Banks, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Carlton’s right. Carlton’s often-to-always right. Vaguely related note: There should be a mascot known as the Trix Rabbi.
6. Lucky The Leprechaun – Lucky Charms
Is Lucky hoarding his marshmallow cereal because he’s a dick, or because he was scarred by the potato famine? Either way, he will use magic, trickery and vague Irish stereotype powers to keep you away from something that could easily be purchased at any reputable supermarket. Is Lucky trying to smash the capitalist state, or just mess with kids’ heads? Probably the latter, which is some Arkham Asylum type shit.
5. Tony The Tiger – Frosted Flakes
Tony The Tiger loves vulnerable young athletes. Impressionable youths, lost in this crazy world of trying to win social approval and regional titles, are like cat nip to Tony. Sometimes kids need a helping paw from a tiger in a neckerchief, and that’s where this beloved feline comes in. You can count on Tony to hang out in your junior high locker room and give you advice on how to get that body leaner and meaner. Quietly, but not too quietly, Tony’s on the prowl to live out his failed athletic dreams through the actions of his proteges. Careful Tony, you’re one step away from being Graham James in stripes. And that is not “Grrreat!”
4. Weight Loss Aspirations – Special K
For f***’s sake, Kellogg’s – just put a disapproving glance and a pair of cried-into jeans on the box and call it a day.
3. Crispy Critters & Pals – Crispy Critters
Crispy and his pals operated on a “look over your shoulder” paranoia platform. They seem to crawl up and quietly assert dominance over the kitchen. It isn’t hard to imagine the Crispy Critters gang crawling into your mouth and stealing your teeth as part of an elaborate sacrifice ritual. Would they do that? Indubitably!
2. Crunchosaurus Rex – Cruncheroos
Crunchosaurus Rex is on this list because everyone knows that Crunchosaurus bones were placed on this Earth to test our faith in the one true God. That, or Satan made Crunchosauruses up to try and trick everybody into believing in science.
1. Steve Urkel – Urkel-Os
Steven Q Urkel is in love with Laura Winslow. She’s spurned his many attempts at courting (which included changing his DNA and inventing an immensely popular dance), but Urkel isn’t going to throw in the towel yet. No sir, he’s invented a cereal to get Laura to fall in love with him. This is history’s first instance of someone creating a “wooing cereal”. No one has created a “wooing cereal” before because 1) it’s ineffective, and 2) making a cereal with romantic intentions is something that even stalkers would find “unsettling”.
Other cereals have commercials where the delicious breakfast product is kept out of the hands of undesirables or the unworthy. Trix, Lucky Charms and Sugar Crisp have ads focusing on who is allowed to have the cereal and who is restricted from partaking in this milk-soaked joy. They operate using a weird sort of cereal apartheid. Urkel-Os is different in that it is a designer cereal tailored to meet the needs of one specific Chicago teen.
It’s intensely depressing to think of a man being so desperate for his crush’s embrace that he’d invent a cereal to win her heart. Were there other ideas that Urkel had that were ultimately left on the drawing board? Maybe some sort of “Why won’t you love me” themed waffles? It’s a wild gambit with a high risk/reward quotient. You can’t really come back with a new approach if your cereal plan bursts into flames, can you? After all, if this plan were to fail, you might as well be eating a bowl filled with a lonely man’s broken dreams.
The commercial for Urkel-Os does a poor job of explaining why Steve Urkel would create/mass-produce/advertise a cereal that caters to only one customer. Would Laura be additionally flattered by Urkel’s entrepreneurial flair? Is the marketing campaign an elaborate ruse to trick Laura into thinking there’s nothing weird about eating a cereal made for the sole purpose of courting? Does the cereal still work if it’s mixed with soy milk? There should be a pamphlet answering these questions in every box.
On top of that, the ad fails to address what happens when the non-Laura Winslows of the world (people like you, me and Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Kissinger) eat this cereal. Do they (we?) also fall in love with Steve Urkel and wish to feed him processed cheese slices in his boudoir? There’s nothing written on the box as a legal disclaimer warning you that you may fall in love in Urkel, but that might just be an elaborate ruse to keep Laura from figuring out that she is eating a cereal with romantic intentions. It’s profoundly troubling stuff.
The invention of Urkel-Os was never brought up on Family Matters. The cereal (whose production likely cost Urkel hundreds of thousands of dollars) was likely never eaten by Laura and tossed promptly in the garbage. The big cereal experiment was ultimately a failure. A dream was crushed, a spinoff cereal died and Myra Monkhouse became the ultimate rebound girl. In short, life marched on.
Wait a second, though. If I know my Family Matters chronology, than I also know that Urkel and Laura eventually got married in the final season of the show. Maybe Laura didn’t get around to eating the cereal until she was in college (the FDA is a bit slow when it comes to approving new cereals) and that’s when she was smitten by Urkel. If that’s the case, Urkel-Os isn’t a cereal of profound sadness but instead something else. Urkel-Os may very well be a cereal of joy. A cereal of achieved goals. A cereal that was undeniably creepy, but managed to be a success anyway.
