Boo Berry is a member of the line of monster-themed high-sugar breakfast cereals produced by General Mills. It contains blueberry-flavored corn cereal bits and marshmallows. Boo Berry is also the name of the cereal's mascot, a blue ghost with a red bow-tie and a red-striped yellow hat.
In 1971, the first two cereals in the line were introduced, the still-available Count Chocula and Franken Berry. Boo Berry was released two years later, in 1973, and Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy appeared a year after that, in 1974. The latter two are no longer sold in retail stores; Boo Berry appears sporadically, primarily around Halloween.
The character of Boo Berry strikes many as vaguely familiar. The ghost, with his heavy-lidded eyes and quavering Eastern-European accent, is in fact a tribute to Peter Lorre's most famous role as Guillermo Ugarte, the creepy backstabber of the movie Casablanca. Some websites even credit Lorre as being the voice of Boo, despite the fact that he died nine years before the cereal-hawking spirit was invented. Others half-jokingly suggest that Boo Berry is hard to find because "he's too Jewish" for Americans consumers.
Recently, Boo Berry was altered to look less menacing, and has taken on a distinct resemblance to Casper the Friendly Ghost.
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