Frute Brute

Frute Brute wants to meet up with other monsters and have a "howling" good time!

The following is a transcript of the very first
Fruit Brute television commercial from 1974:

[ Franken Berry and Count Chocula are slumbering peacefully. A noise wakes them up. They begin to accuse each other of making the noise when a werewolf appears at their window. The werewolf howls. Franken Berry and the Count jump in fear to a hanging chandelier. The werewolf enters their bedroom. ]

Count Chocula (angry): Who are you?!

Fruit Brute: I'm me... Fruit Brute with my fruit flavored cereal, Fruit Brute... part of your nutritious breakfast.

Fruit Brute: Delicious Fruit Brute has fruit flavored marshmallows for the howling good taste of fruit.

Count Chocula: Count Chocula's got chocolate marshmallows!

Franken Berry: Franken Berry's got strawberry flavored marshmallows.

[ The werewolf howls. The chandelier falls trapping Franken Berry and Count Chocula inside of it. Frightened, the two monsters run through the wall and out of their home with the chandelier still around their waists. ]

Fruit Brute: Fruit Brute... with the howling good taste of fruit.

END OF COMMERCIAL

History of Fruit Brute

This cereal was introduced to join Count Chocula, Boo Berry, and Franken Berry in 1974. It was then  discontinued in 1982 and was replaced by Fruity Yummy Mummy. 

Fruit Brute was a frosted and fruit-flavored version of the original Monster Cereals and the mascot was a werewolf. There were lime-flavored marshmallows in the cereal and when it was relaunched it included cherry-flavored cereal with marshmallows. When the cereal was discontinued in 2014, it had barely made an impression over the years, possibly because werewolves were not as culturally popular as Dracula and some of the other mascots had been.

The tagline for the cereal was “The Howling Good Taste of Fruit” and the original mascot was cartoony just like the other mascots had always been. The flavor profile might have been part of the trouble with the original cereal since the other cereals promised you chocolate milk or strawberry milk when you were done eating your cereal. Lime-flavored milk is a harder concept to sell and it appears that the mascot just didn’t really connect in the same way that the others did, even after relaunching.

In 2013, when the cereals were all given a facelift by General Mills with the help of DC comics, Fruit Brute reappeared, but this time as Frute Brute. All of the boxes got a new cartoon look that was modern and aligned more with the current animation styles that consumers expect. Frute Brute will likely be included in the coming 2021 release of a cereal that combines all of the flavors and characters which will be called Monster Mash.

Fruit Brute in Popular Culture

While not necessarily a well-known cereal among cereal lovers, this cereal has made a few film appearances that were memorable. One of these appearances was in the 1992 Quentin Tarantino film, Reservoir Dogs where it showed up in Tim Roth’s apartment. It was used again by Tarantino in the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. This might have been the first that some people even knew about this unique part of the monster cereal lineup.

Fruit Brute Campaigns

When Fruit Brute was first introduced to the cereal lineup, Franken Berry and Count Chocula had been verbally sparring for years in commercials where they argued about who was scarier and then got scared by children in return. When Fruit Brute joined them, the commercials were changed to offer up commercials that showed Count Chocula angrily asking who the interloper was.

Fruit Brute would say he was part of the lineup of cereals that made for a nutritious breakfast. Fruit Brute would then howl and a chandelier would fall on the two more familiar mascots. When they ran off the screen in a fluster, Fruit Brute would say his tag line, “with the howling good taste of fruit” and the commercial would end.