Over the years, I’ve collected many, many boxes of vintage cereal. Full, sealed boxes, I mean. This isn’t something I tend to bring up upon first meeting someone, but I prefer to think that everyone’s weird behind closed doors.

My collection is fairly enormous, and I recently noticed that some of the brands have a distinctly macabre theme. With department store Halloween stock running thin and my mind losing its battle to resist Christmas anticipation, now seemed like a good time to give these spooky cereals their heydays. Here’s the first of ‘em…

This is weird. Kinda cathartic. I’ve had a “Ghostbusters Cereal” review on deck since 2002, and if you don’t believe me, here’s the unbuilt article. Not sure why I never got around to writing it, but even after a six year gestation, I’m as enthusiastic over the concept as ever. A combination of increased health consciousness and revised child-targeted advertising laws has sucked most of the charm from the cereal aisle, and though cartoon and movie-themed brands continue to exist, I don’t think they’d make for the same kind of life-altering event that this one did.

Arriving as a result of The Real Ghostbusters’ success, “Ghostbusters Cereal” debuted in 1986 and actually managed to last for several years, being constantly tweaked to reflect the changing tones (and titles) of its corresponding cartoon show. Later editions included radioactive green Slimer marshmallows among other wacky shit, but this box is one of the originals.

Doesn’t even look much like a cereal box, right? Between the dark palette and the giant hologram (if you can’t tell, the Ghostbusters are pictured within it), this was a strange package to find stocked next to the banal facades of Frosted Flakes and Corn Pops. It felt like something you’d find in a toy store, so it’s easy to understand why few kids could resist its graces when tagging along with Ma at the supermarket.

Despite being older than some of you reading this, the cereal has held up pretty well. The ghost-shaped marshmallows look like they’ve shrunken a bit, but this is to be expected. In human years, the marshmallows would be well into their nineties. Old people shrink.

Aside from the marshmallows, there’s an assortment of fruity “No Ghost” symbols, erected in corn flour. I’ve long loathed cereals that mix marshmallows with a “fruit medley” flavor, but kids don’t go for stuff like this because of the taste. There could’ve been veal-wrapped pyrite in there, and we still would’ve forced ourselves to name it one of our favorite brands. After all, “Ghostbusters Cereal” depicted Slimer eating a portion of the nutritional label on the box’s side panel. You can’t disrespect that.

The cartoon’s popularity was so enormous that Ralston didn’t bother to play it safe by calling this a “limited edition” cereal. No, they went right for the jugular and positioned the stuff as a rookie top brand.

The commercials were unforgettable, featuring an animated happy ghost lunging from the “No Ghost” logo to make breakfast for a couple of little kids who may as well have been us. If the opening credits of the animated series taught me anything, it’s that the quickest avenue to Babylon is the sight of that sad ghost from the show’s logo getting to wander freely with a big smile on his face. It’s a phenomena I cannot explain, but that’s a common trait in supernatural dealings.

It’s hard to take a new cereal seriously when its parent company forgoes the traditional big budget thirty-second spot, and much of the success of “Ghostbusters Cereal” can be attributed to the many Saturday mornings we spent soaking up its TV ads in-between chunks of Smurf-related programming.

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!