Fruit Brute and the Common Good

My dad worked for General Mills for 40 years, selling the famous Big G, Betty Crocker, and Gold Medal brands. Because of his job, I grew up surrounded by cases of cereal and cake, and all the promotional ephemera that went along with it. I must've had a hundred different things adorned with the Wheaties logo. But one of the more curious premiums from my childhood was the series of glow-in-the-dark Fruit Brute lightswitch stickers, circa mid-1970s. (The stickers covered the entire surface of the lightswitch panel, but had a slot in the middle that was to be punched out, so the switch could stick through.)

Fruit Brute was the most recent addition to the product line of "Monster Cereals," which also included Franken Berry, Count Chocula and, later, Boo Berry. (Franken Berry, if I recall correctly, was a clone of an earlier Big G flop called Baron Von Redberry.) After decades of developing classic cereal brands like Wheaties and Cheerios, Big G during the 1970s showed signs that it was running out of good ideas for new cereals. When Fruit Brute came along, I remember my dad saying, "This is really getting embarrassing." He winced at the prospect of having to pitch Fruit Brute to the corporate heads at Kroger, his biggest account. But I was just a kid who thought all the monster cereals were pretty cool. Many years later, while strolling through San Francisco's Castro district, I noticed that some of the shops were selling various curios with Fruit Brute's image on them. Yes, the hairy monster in the multi-colored jumpsuit was a big retro hit in the gay community -- and suddenly it dawned on me why my old-fashioned dad had issues with Mr. Brute!

But this monster was ahead of his time in more ways than one. You see, he was also an energy conservationist. Born during the post-OPEC energy crisis, Fruit Brute, through his lightswitch stickers, taught kids that "it's right to conserve on lights," and other friendly reminders that encouraged us to save energy. With one of the stickers, however, he showed a more militant side, throwing a hissy fit and admonishing us that "It burns me up when you waste energy!"

Our energy consciousness has come a long way in the 30-odd years since Fruit Brute glowed his Common Good message in childhood bedrooms across the land, but his one militant sticker reminds us that there's still plenty to get mad about. For example, just when the gas-guzzling, ozone-depleting Hummer automobile appeared to be on the verge of extinction, the US government, through its subsidiary General Motors, announced plans to sell the obscene vehicle to China—one of the most polluted, energy-wasting countries in the world. Fruit Brute would not be happy.