It’s pretty grim. I mean, “things” are. Or they look that way. Things seem pretty grim. Somewhat. Depends on where you look, I guess, and other variables. For me, it’s worse when my eyes are open, so while that’s happening, I point them in friendly directions in attempts to “de-grim” the experience, somewhat.

I find grocery shopping soothing. Plenty to look at that’s pleasant to see. Vegetables are soothing (frozen vegetables a bit less so). The part of the store where they have all the bottled water…very soothing: so many variations of tall green glass bottles and skinny clear plastic ones. Yep. And the cereal aisle… big boxes with happy colors and friendly characters. Nothing grim there. Nothing at all grim about being a healthy part of a balanced breakfast.

But here we are, Spookytime™, when all about is “Boo!” and shadows haunt and lurk and everything is supposed to be somehow scarier, except that a very high bar has been set in that area recently, so the traditional spooky efforts seem kind of… quaint.

And in my experience, nothing defines that specific gap between truly scary and kind of quaint more dynamically than the General Mills Monster Cereals.

Dracula, Frankenstein (’s monster) and his bride, The Werewolf, The Mummy, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Creature of the Black Lagoon, The Phantom of The Opera. It’s likely that those names evoked images from the classic series of monster films produced by Universal Studios in the 1930’s: black and white “fish out of water” tales (save the Creature, who was in) where society either invades the monster’s quiet home or frowns on their habits of dining on townsfolk. Dark, quiet nights, where clouds of fog obscure feeble gas streetlights suddenly become torch-lit mob scenes filled with angry villagers brandishing pitchforks and other farm implements. Scary.

I grew up with these movies, and these characters, and understood that, in real life, Transylvanian and Egyptian royalty rarely met, and neither hung about with unlucky Welsh shopkeepers, even on full moons. But Hollywood seemed to assume that these monsters knew one another, as they showed up in “monster rally” films – stalking Abbott and Costello, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin… and they had a band as well called the “Groovie Ghoulies” that I absolutely adored (that one was a cartoon). The monsters’ association as friends (or at least acquaintances) became part of their general lore.

Which is what the General Mills company leaned into in 1971 when introducing their three new cereals: Franken Berry, Boo Berry, and Count Chocula. I don’t want to waste your time or insult your keen skills of deduction, but the “pre-sweetened” flavors were strawberry, blueberry, and chocolate. They had a bit of a rocky start, as the early formula for Franken Berry “included an indigestible pigment” that, well, remained bright pink enough to… panic parents. Besides that bit of shock, the cereals represented a new version of these classic characters that lived in the daylight, right on the kitchen table. Quaint.

In sixth grade I got to try Boo Berry at someone’s house. My mother wouldn’t buy any of the “monster cereals”. I thought it was because she judged nutritional value by the color-of-the-food’s proximity to anything in nature, but later on, Fruity Pebbles proved inexplicably acceptable.

And I don’t think they do this anymore, but a breakfast cereal box used to be more than just a product container - each one represented an engineering challenge of increasing difficulty.

Level One: a game printed on the back of the box that I could play (using pennies as the tokens).

Challenge - eat the entire box of cereal and then (carefully) cut the game from the box. Oh, and find someone to play with (only child).

Level Two - same as Level One, except that a paper six-sided die pattern (a little box) was also printed on the back.

Challenge - (carefully) cut out the little box pattern, fold the low level pressboard together enough to define but not collapse each side, glue tabs A into slots B, wait for it to dry, then find someone to play with, etc.

This never worked because the weight of the glue created a paper version of “loaded dice” that would roll the same number over and over.

Level Three - a plastic toy (in what was later discovered to be the exact shape of the human throat) was placed in the ACTUAL BAG OF CEREAL at the bottom.

Challenge - I could NOT pour out the cereal and put it back in the box, and as the inner bag holding the cereal was glued to the bottom of the outer box, it couldn’t be pulled up separately and flipped over (we tried that). Nor could the box be turned upside down, as the only closing mechanism on the box was on the TOP. FIENDISH. DIABOLICAL.

They stopped doing this due to choking hazards and began to place the toys in individual plastic bags inside the box but NOT inside the inner bag, which could be lifted, prize obtained. JUSTICE.

Which brings us to:

Level Four - The Flexi-disc - a PLAYABLE PHONOGRAPH RECORD is PRINTED ON THE BACK OF A CEREAL BOX. Holy crap. I remember staring at it like a safecracker, studying the box stability to determine how I could -

Challenge - (carefully) cut around the record’s circumference and gently lift it from the box, without nicking the inner liner.

Total fail on the Bobby Sherman single, but the excitement of The Jackson Five became a family project. It was Mom who discovered that the manufacturers had actually PUT A DOT OF GLUE right where the middle of the record met the inner liner, making clean retrieval impossible. DIRTY POOL.

Anyway, I like cereal boxes.

So that’s me, a grown man, staring at a wall of cereal, pretending I’m going to buy more than these organic gluten-free fruit loop substitutes. I don’t even shop at a store where they sell fun novelty food anymore, but they are such a core part of my culture that even these all-natural brands hold a bit of comfort. And that’s all I need right now, little tiny bits of comfort to get me from one crazy scenario to the next - strength to face the grim, and bear it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lowerblackpain.substack.com