Spooky Season may well be drawing to a close as I type this but I’ve got an eleventh hour entry that will help us stick the landing for Figure Friday and our contributions to BBP!’s 31 Days of Horror.
We’re also at the tail end of what I refer to as my cereal season. From late August until the end of October I treat myself to the three (or more!) Monster Cereals that General Mills has on offer for the Halloween season. Objectively, Count Chocula is the best since it’s nigh-impossible to mess up chocolate flavored cereal, but my personal favourite is Boo Berry.
As fate would have it, the Boo Berry action figures I preordered back in July for myself and Figure Friday collaborator Josh Wallen arrived just in time for me to write about it in this week’s installment.
Bur first, some backstory.
Well over a year ago I was gifted the Jada Toys Franken Berry and Count Chocula figures for my collection, both of which had been released to mark the 50th anniversary of the General Mills mascots. I was incensed that they did my boy Boo dirty by not including him in that initial offering, but I quickly calmed down when I realized that the character didn’t debut until 1973. I would wait patiently and bide my time.
And wait I did!
Some pictures of Boo Berry had surfaced earlier this year and I grew increasingly more annoyed at the lack of information surrounding the figures relate date. Then, earlier this summer, it was revealed that the figure was to be an SDCC exclusive. BUT it would be available through an online retailer!
Josh and I made a handshake agreement that I would order the figures in July, which had an expected shipping date of August. That was perfect, I’d have them in-hand before we went to Power Con!
But then the ETA got pushed to September…and then pushed again to October. It was at that point that my online toy retailer of choice posted they too were going to be stocking Boo Berry. I try not go get upset over most things, but I sure as shit allow myself to get annoyed. What was the point of having the figure be an exclusive if I could order it some place else before my figure had even shipped?
I combed the internet trying to find out what made the figure “exclusive” to this retailer. Was it a numbered edition? Extra accessories? Perhaps a sticker that read “exclusive”? None of these things seemed to be the case, we had fallen prey to a “timed” exclusive which is when a retailer gets a head start on selling merchandise before it gets a wide release.
The next unpleasant surprise came on the day the figures were delivered. I had returned home to find the shipping box on my porch and it appeared as if the mail carrier had executed a perfect elbow drop on the package. I could see inside the box to the packing material within. Cutting away what little packing tape remained I found the two figures were in perfect shape.
Just much, much smaller than I expected.
The box for Boo Berry is a pitch perfect replica of the original cereal box as was the case with the preceding figures…but it’s about half the size. Here’s where things get weird(er than a grown-ass person writing at length about ad mascots). The side of the boxes list the contents in the same way packaged foods list nutrition facts. The thing that caught my attention is that all the boxes list the figures as “1:12 Scale Action Figure” which is to say that the General Mills Cereal Monsters all are in scale with each other and that they have canonical heights.
Twelve of these things stacked atop one another will equal one Boo Berry, Franken Berry, or Count Chocula. Someone (or ones), somewhere sat down and decided the height of these characters and Jada Toys made sure to obey the letter of the law when they put these into production. When did this happen? Is there a 50 year-old character sheet somewhere that lists the size of each monster in relation to the average person? I did not expect to have my mind so thoroughly blown writing a seasonal action figure column.
Boo Berry is perfect and there’s really not much more I can say about the figure. Josh astutely pointed out that the figure cannot hold the miniature cereal box it’s packaged with and suggested they should have employed the clever use of magnets as a workaround to this issue. I can only assume this drops his rating to 9.5 out of 10. Josh was also kind enough to take all the photos included in this article!
The box and figure glow like a son of a bitch which is amazing. The only way to improve upon perfection would of course be to make it glow in the dark.
As of this writing there’s no word on if or when Fruit/Frute Brute, Yummy Mummy, or Carmela Creeper will be getting the action figure treatment. I can only say for certain that I will buy them all if they do.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
