YMMV / Monster Cereals

• Audience-Alienating Era: The 90s and 2000s gave the characters new designs. These designs were much softer and happier than the classic designs. This, combined with multiple promotions in the cereal, along with primarily focusing on only Count Chocula, led to various complaints from the fans. 2006 saw the shift to a new art style, which was received much better, breaking the series out of this slump.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy have seen a high share of fans, despite their cereals not being on the market anymore. The two of them have been used in non-cereal advertisement for the company, and Fruit Brute himself has some popularity thanks to a box of the cereal showing up in Quentin Tarantino films.
• Heartwarming Moments: Despite their cereals being off the market, it's obvious that General Mills still cares for Fruity Yummy Mummy and Fruit Brute as characters. They get references on the boxes and continue to get non-food related merchandise throughout the years. This culminated in 2013, with them temporarily bringing back Yummy Mummy and Frute Brute for the season, albeit with different recipes. They also got featured in a board game.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The "yummy mummy" part of Fruity Yummy Mummy's name has taken on a much more mature and provocative term in modern times.
  • All of the jokes based on Boo Berry looking stoned in his character art are made funnier by the fact that there's a hybrid marijuana strain named "Boo Berry".
• Never Live It Down: Nearly every article about Frankenberry cereal is guaranteed to bring up how a change in the original recipe that only lasted a year in 1972, thanks to the dye used, turned poop a bright pink color, the epidemic being dubbed "Frankenberry Stool". It probably doesn't hurt that the incident inspired a plot point in the novel Cujo (written by the King of Horror himself, Stephen King) involving a fictional cereal that dyes children's digestive tracts red, leading panicked parents to believe that they're bleeding internally.
• Popular with Furries: Fruit Brute, being a werewolf that looks more like a traditional anthro wolf over a more traditional wolfman or regular-looking wolf, has gained a small fandom in the furry community.
• Unexpected Character: In the collage of General Mills mascots dressing as the Monsters for Halloween, the Pillsbury Doughboy (dressed as Frankenberry) stood out as the only one without a long-running cereal. However, he does shill other breakfast foods, such as Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls and Toaster Strudels.
• Unfortunate Character Design:
  • Boo Berry has been hit with this twice. His original design gave him chains that appeared to be attached where his nipples should be on his body. Later designs of him removed the chains, but gave him a look that looks like he's permanently blazed.
  • Multiple fans have commented how the dents in Frankenberry's head makes it look like a rear end.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: A 1991 commercial of Count Chocula featured a live-action actor portraying the Count...with some frankly disturbing prosthetic makeup to have him look like a cartoon character.

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