Franken Berry

Why's his head look like a butt? What's sweet, pink and animated? Or more specifically, reanimated. Around the year 1250, Lord Conrad II of Coldbrewburg built a castle in Germany's Ovenwald mountain range, a landscape of dark forests and narrow valleys. He named his new keep after the local ethnic tribe who controlled the area, the Franks (yes, the same ones who had by this point given the former Roman region of Gaul its modern name), and the fecundity of the berry patches that had previously grown on the hill: Castle Frankenbeere. In 1673, Johann Dippel was born in the castle, and would later practice alchemy and anatomy there. During her 1814 German vacation, Mary EggShelley took a cruise up the Rhine and stopped for a few hours in Grainsheim, a town only about 10 miles from the castle, where she may have heard stories about Dippel and his work. Count Chocula and Franken Berry (the cereals) pre-date Count Chocula and Franken Berry (the characters). That may seem obvious - it's not likely a food company would develop a mascot first and then find a product to apply them to, after all - but General Mills had come up with the idea for chocolate and strawberry flavored cereals, and wanted their ad agency to come up with two related personalities to make them work together. So in some alternate reality, kids may have gotten their morning sugar rush eating "Choc Anthony and Berrypatchra" or something. "Berrycrantz and Cocostern." "Sherchoc Holmes and Dr. Watsonberry." "George Chocington and Aberryham Lincoln." "Tom Strawyer and Chocoberry Finn." Frank's design has changed as much as the Count's has over the years, and just like that figure, this one is based not on the original design, but a later incarnation: while the steam whistle and pressure gauge sticking out of the sides of his head have remained consistent over the years, as have the chains holding up his pants, older designs have his sleeves and pantlegs be too short for him, rather than fully covering his limbs like they do here. Additionally, he wore shoes that left the tops of his feet exposed, like slippers, a feature this sculpt does not share. They did a really detailed job on his strawberry-shaped fingernails, though! The original Franken Berry was never this pink, either. Like, he's always been pink, but this is pink pink! "Run out the magenta cartridge in your printer" pink. It's traditional to give him light skin and darker clothes, but it used to be that the clothes there were the color of the skin here. The silver suspenders don't get any additional coloring, and the only reason they have such good separation from the fully saturated magenta of his shirt is that they're separate pieces permanently slotted into the torso. The figure includes two heads: one with the mouth nearly closed, the other with the mouth - and eyes - wide open. Enjoy the look at his single tooth and big colorful tongue. The heads swap on a balljoint, which reveals the weird construction of the articulation: a hinge inside the neck, and then a second in the post connecting the head to the body. That's an unusual choice! And they're both very stiff, creaking and cracking every time you move them. Worrisome! Because of the shape of his body, he doesn't have a balljointed waist, but because they want you to be able to move his legs to the front, the hips are on a piece that slides down out of the torso, freeing up more clearance for them. This is a very strange complement of joints. Like his frenemy Count Chocula, Franken Berry's only accessory is a box of his own cereal, with a mask of his own face on the back. The graphic designer accidentally cut off part of the box's logo, and the colors are a mess: the magenta is way oversaturated, so he almost looks purple instead of pink. Someone should have noticed this before production. He can't even hold the box very well, because the swivel joints in both his shoulder and elbow are a bit loose, so the weight of the box just makes them instantly droop. Jada Toys made these figures in 2021, in honor of the cereal monsters' 50th anniversary; I don't know where they sat for three years before showing up at Ross Dress For Less stores this past fall for like $11, but if they hadn't, I wouldn't have these figures now. Still wish there were more accessories, and that they were made of plastic that I wasn't afraid was going to snap if the room they're in is the wrong temperature, but hey, those are the growing pains of a company that was trying something new. -- 02/12/25 What would you have named the two cereals? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.