Lost Monster Cereals #16
Dread Velvet: Red velvet flavored cereal with cream cheese flavored marshmallows. Introduced 1996, discontinued 1996. Reintroduced 2010, limited run.
The highly controversial Dread Velvet caused a stir when it was first introduced and again when it was declared the winner of the 2009 Re-Animate a Monster Cereal campaign. To this day most hardcore Monster Mouths get worked up at the mere mention of the cereal’s name.
Looking to try out new flavor profiles, General Mills experimented with testing out cereals in regional markets based off of regional favorites. Dread Velvet was tested in the Deep South where red velvet baked goods were popular. This was well before red velvet became a craze in the next decade.
Almost immediately local church and religious groups were up in arms over the cereal, claiming that a decomposing zombie was no role model for children and would encourage people into Satanism. Yet no fuss was ever made about the dozens of monster mascots that came before. This led to speculation that this “boycott” was actually orchestrated by Post in an act of corporate sabotage who were rumored to be working on a red velvet cereal of their own. While no definitive proof was ever found, and Post never actually got their red velvet cereal to market, this was at the height of the Great Cereal Wars of the mid-90s where actions like this were quite common.
Not wanting to get caught in another patch of bad press, General Mills had no choice but to pull the cereal. Dread Velvet had not even been on the market for a month, so it quickly faded into obscurity.
Dread Velvet did make a comeback however, winning the 2009 Re-Animate a Monster Cereal campaign and was reintroduced to the cereal aisle the following year.
Monster Mouths cried foul however. They just couldn’t believe that a cereal that was so obscure (only sold in the south, only on shelves for a month, no one had any nostalgia for) could win. They accused a group of zombie fan message boards of running a campaign to stuff the ballot. They felt that they were voting for the mascot and not the cereal itself, which Monster Mouths thought went against the spirit of the campaign. This caused a huge online flame war with General Mills stuck in the middle.
General Mills was planning to make the Re-Animate contest a yearly thing, hoping to give a new generation of cereal fans a taste of the past, but after the blowback they received on this they killed the idea. Instead they released a very limited batch of Dread Velvet in 2010 with very little fanfare and washed their hands of the whole thing.
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