Jul 27, 2026 · 50 min · 10 segments
This is the one hundred and thirty-second episode of The Empty Bowl, in which Count Chocula soft-launches his return, Magic Spoon parasitizes Pop-Tarts, and we (extra) boldly go where no Empty Bowl…
Justin McElroyHost
love the, I don't like eating monster cereals, but boy, do I love the look of this year's crop.
Yeah, as is tradition for sort of mid to late summer news of what's new with the monster cereals is coming out.
And it seems like this year is going to be largely a retread of last year's theme, which doesn't happen super often.
But it seems that, you know, they probably paid a good amount of money last year to get the Jim Henson collab with the actual, like, Muppet felted, like, Count Chocula Frankenberry and Boo Berry designs.
The difference this year is that, like last year, they released a special felted Frankenberry box that was actually textured.
And this time around, Count Chocula and Boo Berry, well, at least Count Chocula is getting the sort of soft patterned box treatment on Walmart.com starting October 1st exclusively.
I don't know if a soft cereal box really appeals to me anyway, but I'm sure this means a lot to some people who like to pet their cereal boxes
My cereal boxes are exposed to too much particulate, I think, that to be a particularly appetizing to a fuzzy box.
Yeah, they're putting the monsters really big and bold and front and center on these boxes from what I'm seeing.
And on the back, you can sort of cut out the box to make your own sort of monster cereal puppet, which I do like a lot because we're in this era where nine times out of 10, when I look at the back of a cereal box, it's just got a big picture of the cereal.
And I don't know how good of an idea it is to let me compare the product photography to the real product before me, but that's beside the point.
love the, I don't like eating monster cereals, but boy, do I love the look of this year's crop.
Yeah, as is tradition for sort of mid to late summer news of what's new with the monster cereals is coming out.
And it seems like this year is going to be largely a retread of last year's theme, which doesn't happen super often.
But it seems that, you know, they probably paid a good amount of money last year to get the Jim Henson collab with the actual, like, Muppet felted, like, Count Chocula Frankenberry and Boo Berry designs.
The difference this year is that, like last year, they released a special felted Frankenberry box that was actually textured.
And this time around, Count Chocula and Boo Berry, well, at least Count Chocula is getting the sort of soft patterned box treatment on Walmart.com starting October 1st exclusively.
I don't know if a soft cereal box really appeals to me anyway, but I'm sure this means a lot to some people who like to pet their cereal boxes
My cereal boxes are exposed to too much particulate, I think, that to be a particularly appetizing to a fuzzy box.
Yeah, they're putting the monsters really big and bold and front and center on these boxes from what I'm seeing.
And on the back, you can sort of cut out the box to make your own sort of monster cereal puppet, which I do like a lot because we're in this era where nine times out of 10, when I look at the back of a cereal box, it's just got a big picture of the cereal.
And I don't know how good of an idea it is to let me compare the product photography to the real product before me, but that's beside the point.
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