Spider-Cereal: A Retrospective

Many superheroes have made appearances in the breakfast cereal genre but none have made their presence known during the most important meal of the day like our own friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. And today we take a moment to appreciate his early morning accomplishments...

Its hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the only way to get your Spider-Man fix was through animated means. And what goes better with cartoons than cereal?

While the Fox Kids Spider-Man cartoon from the 1990s was somewhat flawed it was often engaging, so much so that it was captured in marshmallow form for all posterity.

Various spider themed marshmallow shapes shared the bowl with Chex which I would imagine symbolize spider webs. The marshmallow shapes range from interesting (the Kingpin) to slightly less thrilling (Peter Parker's camera).

This was all fine and good and in the midst of the Clone Saga we were happy to have some classic Spider-Man as a part of our balanced breakfast but things were bound to change. We didn' know what we were missing because several years later...along came Tobey...

The first Spider-Man movie brought another cereal into our lives. This time it was a Kellogg's production that included a custom web shaped Spider-Berry flavor. I don't know what Spider-Berries taste like but judging from appearances I would imagine that they are similar to Crunch Berries.

The mystery behind the Spider-Berries can be investigated via this behind the scenes footage provided by Kellogg's:

Hopefully that peek behind the curtain will provide enough momentum to sail past the underwhelming Spider-Man 2 cereal.

It's not that there's anything wrong with Spider-Man 2 cereal, its just that it's the same cereal in a new box. I like to think they just decided not to fix something that wasn't broke. At least they made a bit of an effort by adding various puzzles to the back of the box.

Its a practice that General Mills kept when they got their shot at Spider-Man 3 Cereal.

They did away with any pretense of relevant spider shapes and went with the full on Spider-Berry/Crunch Berry motif.  I was perfectly happy with this turn of events but the powers that be want what they want...and that means reboot!

Yes, a new Spider-Man necessitates a new cereal.  And this one wasn't kidding around as evidenced by the return of marshmallows!  It took almost 20 years to bring back marshmallows to a Spider-Man cereal but there they are staring back at you from your bowl. 

So far these are the only Spider-Man cereals to exist and yet I know it won't be long until we welcome ol' web head back to breakfast once again.  Until then, I still hold my candlelight vigil in my breakfast nook every morning waiting for my Iron Man Crunch.