Evil Klowny Flakes

I give you Sugar Krinkles, bearing the finest cereal package art in the history of the world, a relic of 1950, the vintage year for such work. Be sure to click through onto the whole Vintage Ads post, wherein the epic Mr Man Writing Slash has also embedded a clowns-drinking-whisky ad that will make you scream with terror and delight.

Post's Sugar Krinkles, 1950s

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: clowns • Food • Funny • illustration • not food • Old school • Weird

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

http://doran.pacifist.net/ Doran

Wow. Just wow.
ojisan

MOMMMMYYYY!!
malindrome

Can’t have breakfast, clowns will eat me
http://twitter.com/DreAmeoba Gordon Klock

Truth be told, I like clowns,both scary & benign (this one just looks like he is amped on amphetamines)……
- BarBarSeven
  
  Maybe clowns are only benign once every few weeks when their carny-lifestyle sourced herpes goes into remission, but otherwise they can rot in hell.
sean

Sugar Krinkles (later, Rice Krinkles) were my favorite cereal as a kid- full of sweet, crispy, crunchy, sugary goodness, all covered with a layer of toasty sugar. Some rice was in there, too, I guess.
They had a great mascot after they dumped the clown- So Hi, a little Chinese coolie kid. He wore a bowl of cereal on his head and had big buck teeth. Couldn’t do him today.
I was pleased as punch when I found that certain Wal-Mart stores, catering to lower-class tastes as they do so well, offer Sugar Coated Rice Krispies…just like the old Sugar Krinkles. can’t find them anywhere else! I found them when I was getting my generic heart medicine at one of the stores (they’ll cure me and then kill me at Wal-Mart). BUT not EVERY one carries them! I found them in the rural Wal-Mart, out in farm country…the “upper scale” Wal-Marts don’t seem to have them.
I’m going to have a bowl RIGHT NOW.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  So Hi was the star of one of the segments of the Linus the Lion show. A cartoon show created by Post to shill its cereals.
  
  I remember the show, just barely. So Hi was martial artist of sorts. At least, he could move really quickly.
  
  My mom would never buy sugary cereals, so Post entertained us for free!
pjcamp

Tim Curry sells whiskey flakes?

I’m all confused.
- Andrew Singleton
  
  They All Float down here.
Mike Guerrero

“Beep Beep Richie! ALL the Krinkles float here in milk. When you’re down here with us, you’ll float too!”
Cowicide

Fixed…

http://i.imgur.com/MZLlv.jpg
- Bucket
  
  I had a similar idea…
  http://i.imgur.com/rC0ID.jpg
  - Rich Keller
    
    I had a similar similar idea…
EH

Very Scoopy.
http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

Well you can just rock me to sleep tonight.
Frank Diekman

In Soviet Russia, cereal eats you!
- cdh1971
  
  I was going to comment, but your comment is more than my comment.
heavystarch

Creepy clown is obviously creepy.

But why hasn’t anyone noticed that seriously fucked up pinky finger?
Like who the fuck eats with their pinky so far out there it might snap off?
That pinky looks like it’s trying to break loose and get away from obvious creepo the clown.
- seyo
  
  I was actually about to comment on his fucked up finger. His pinky probably got dislocated from all the Flying Trapeze work he does, which is why he’s apparently so high on endorphins and adrenaline, and deliriously famished.
- Petzl
  
  To add to the commentary on just his hand, I think the big non-makeuped “man hand” (shaded in a way that almost gives the impression hairy knuckles) is disconcerting when placed next to fully made-up clown.
  
  The absence of makeup (or a clown’s glove) on the hand makes it look like the get-up is a disguise and not a true clown. Which just amplifies the creepiness this drawing already radiates.
  - heavystarch
    
    The hand was intentionally left bare so Creepy Gacy Clown could feel his victims once the roofied cereal takes over his victim.
- evilJaze
  
  Frankly, I want to know why an obviously drawn/painted image of a fictional clown would need a drawn/painted skull cap as part of his make-up?
Andrew Singleton

Never browse boingboing in the middle of the night.

OR THE CLOWN WILL EAT YOUR SOUL!
Jake0748

Fucking clowns… how do they work?

I’m glad that I wasn’t afraid of clowns when I was a kid. Saved me a bunch of additional angst. The horror didn’t really dawn on me until I was well into adulthood. Now I find myself fascinated/horrified by the whole clown gestalt.

My mom wouldn’t buy us any SugarClown cereal either.
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

“No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable.” ~Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
blueelm

Anyone seen the commercials? Now I see why my mom was so warped.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDWXGcsMTHw
http://johnstonsigns.blogspot.com/ dejoh

I like the cover copy on the box. Looks like a good old fashon hand lettered font.
Assault_is_eternal

They’ll destroy us all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvWknbuZxn0
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

I like his little hat. Is he a Goth?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqheLN9a6dE
http://instantaneousinstances.com/ Spieguh

Seanbaby at Cracked.com did a write-up about freaky cereal mascots, including Krinkles here.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-8-most-baffling-food-mascots-all-time_p2/
Brett Myers

He looks a lot like Milton Berle.
http://profile.yahoo.com/65CSAR3QATRNKJW4NYNB2BESZE JohnQPublic

there was a point when clowns were universally accepted as genuinely funny. What happened? The tides shifted universally to paint clowns as symbols of creepiness. All that initial goodwill is completely gone from our cultural consciousness. How did this happen? Will we someday look at stand up comics as negatively as we do clowns?
- http://twitter.com/DreAmeoba Gordon Klock
  
  That is a good question.Despite my guilty pleasure indulgences into scary clown stuff;’Killer Klowns from Outer Space’,The Joker(best villain EVER),Kiss-type weird punk bands,etc, something really sad happened somewhere, when I was a kid,we were scared of them only at first,but later they were trusted & loved (they were often traditionally used to distract the audience’s attention away from accidents, & tragedies(now,it seems everybody laps it up, blood & all)Perhaps it was people like John W.Gacy that destroyed that trust,along with the general decomposition of civility,decency,etc.
  It was once considered an honorable artform. :<(
Henry Pootel

Possible original source material for Loosener’s Castor Oil Flakes?

A warm, heaping bowl full of Loosener’s Castor Oil Flakes—with real glycerin vibrafoam! It doesn’t just wash your mouth out—it cleans the whole system, right on down the drain!
- Godfree
  
  It ain’t no use if you ain’t got the boost! The boost you get from Loostner’s! Loooooooooostner’s!
Petzl

@JohnQPublic
Blame Gacy and Stephen King.
mikedt

For some reason this reminds me of Sid Ceasar’s Joker from the old Batman tv show. There’s just something about that smile that looks like him.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  That would be Cesar Romero. Unless you lived in an alternate universe where Imogene Coca was Catwoman.