History
Game on: The history of General Mills Cereal and gaming
General Mills celebrates Clash of Clans’ 10th anniversary with a limited-edition release of Barb’s Choco Boom Booms.
Leveling up with Barb's Choco Boom Booms
Cereal and gaming have teamed up again as Clash of Clans takes fans back in time to celebrate its 10-year anniversary with a mouthful of chocolatey nostalgia.
In honor of Clash’s “Clashiversary,” General Mills partnered with the epic strategy game to create Barb’s Choco Boom Booms – a cereal based on the new Clashiversary “Clash Dash” racing game and its nod to the past
“We love being able to bring the fun of a game like Clash of Clans to the cereal aisle, and with the Clash Dash mini-game this was such a great opportunity to organically connect to the player experience,” said Katie Wong, Ideas & Partnerships Lead for General Mills.
The “Clash Dash” game is one of three mini-games accessible with the Clash of Clans app that takes players through what it would have been like if Clash of Clans had launched even earlier, back in the 1980s.
The game is set in the 90s and includes Barb’s Choco Boom Booms, which reflect the retro feel of the decade.
The limited-edition chocolatey-flavored frosted corn puffs cereal launched exclusively on Walmart.com on August 2.
General Mills’ role in gaming
General Mills is no stranger to the video game space, having launched other cereals based on popular franchises like Pac-Man Cereal (1983-1989) and Neopets Islandberry Crunch (2005-2006).
Beyond limited-edition cereals, General Mills has also leveraged video games to surprise and delight fans.
For example, in 1980, the company launched The Great Game Giveaway. Twenty grand prizes of an Atari gaming system, along with five games – including Space Invaders, Combat, and Breakout – and 5,000 secondary prizes of A Merlin Electronic Wizard Game were available with specially marked packages of Trix, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Franken Berry and Boo Berry cereals.
General Mills’ owned video games
But perhaps most interesting was General Mills’ own line of video games for systems like Atari, Intellivision and IBM Personal Computer, under the Parker Brothers brand, which was owned by General Mills until 1985.
The General Mills/Parker Brothers games included favorites like Frogger, Q*Bert and Strawberry Shortcake.
And no history of General Mills and video games is complete without Chex Quest, a huge hit from the 90s that launched as a CD-ROM game in Chex cereal boxes.
Since then, fans have been asking for it to be brought back, which General Mills happily did in 2020 with its Chex Mix brand.
Fully remastered, Chex Quest is available for free on the online gaming platform STEAM, and features several upgrades, including split-screen multiplayer mode, five new playable members and high-definition graphics.
Hungry to learn more? Dig into more history of General Mills’ brands and partnerships here.