Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Booberry cereals will have two old friends re-joining them on store shelves this Halloween. I’m delighted to say I got be a part of it.
Frute Brute was a werewolf cereal character for a few years in the 1970’s-80’s, and Yummy Mummy also had a run from the late 80’s to early 90’s. For the first time ever, all five flavors will now be on store shelves at the same time. That’s big news for monster cereal fans. (Just do a google search for “monster cereals” and you’ll find they have quite a following.) The news even warranted a story in the Wall Street Journal!
Ultra Creative in Minneapolis was tasked with helping bring Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy into the 2010’s, and they selected me to do the final packaging illustrations. This was a huge honor! It was also a bit of a challenge because we had to try to match the style of the existing monsters which were created a few years ago by another illustrator (I have no idea who):
Art director Todd Demulling worked up some rough character designs and then gave me the ball to run with. He was very helpful as we worked back-and-forth. I created the detailed artwork and then Ultra Creative made a few final tweaks in-house.
I was also asked to do some artwork for the back of all five of the monster cereal boxes, working with art director Terry Schnipkoweit based on his rough color sketches and layout.
Here’s some hi-res images of the final packaging art. (Click to enlarge):
Target stores are also selling exclusive “retro” packaging for the monster cereals this year. I didn’t do any work on those, unless they are also using my artwork in the back panel. I haven’t had a chance yet to stop in to Target and look.
This is a very high-profile project and I’m deeply grateful that the very talented team at Ultra Creative felt they could trust me with it. The cereals are not available year-round. They are only in stores around Halloween so get them while you can!