Movie Tie-In Cereals Are Getting Weird (Again)

Back in the '80s and '90s, grocery store shelves were positively infested with pop-culture-themed breakfast cereals. It seemed as though almost every box in the cereal aisle was branded with a familiar movie or TV character, be it Batman, or the Ninja Turtles, or, oddly, Mr. T …

Sadly, no solid gold chains were included as prizes. 

There was even a Gremlins-shaped cereal that would presumably spawn and murder you at the first drop of milk.

ow that trend seems to be coming back in a big way; there's a new Ghostbusters cereal, a recent Elf cereal, and of course a Baby Yoda cereal that we're guessing tastes like unfertilized amphibian eggs. However, unlike the '80s, a lot of these cereals seem to be specifically targeted, not at sugar-crazed kids, but at adult collectors willing to pay through the nose just for the faintest whiff of childhood nostalgia. Take the new Masters of the Universe cereal, a box of which costs 20 actual adult dollars:

Or the Loki tie-in cereal "Loki Charms" which was limited to only 3500 boxes, and now they sell for as much as $75 on eBay -- which is a lot of money to spend on a food you can get for free simply by chasing down and attacking a Leprechaun or cartoon rabbit. 

And since it's all obviously for adults anyway, now we're apparently getting horror movie-branded cereals, paving the way for Candyman to one day team up with the Honey Nut Cheerios bee. To coincide with the release of the fifth Scream movie, we're getting an officially licensed Scream cereal dubbed "Strawberries and Scream."

This, too, seems to be aimed at the collector's market and is apparently the "first-ever talking cereal box" thanks to new technology that we really wish they could've cracked back in the Mr. T cereal days.

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Top Image: Warner Bros./Paramount Pictures