Bela Lugosi vs Count Chocula

Title: Special Edition Count Chocula Box
Date: 1987?
Category: Cereal Box
Current Status: Sucking

What the hell?!?!? Bauhaus was wrong... Bela Lugosi lives and he's terrorizing cartoon cereal mascots.

I have some vague memory of the General mills Monster cereals doing this Universal Monster tie-in... Frankenberry was visited by Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's Monster as well. At any rate, back in the days when I could somehow manage to eat bowls of these types of cereals without my teeth hurting from all the sugar, I used to dig Chocula (and sometimes Frankenberry... occasionally Yummy Mummy... but fuck Booberry... that was nasty).
I assume I thought the box was pretty cool, since I cut the front off and saved it, although I'm not sure for what purpose I did so. There are no obvious push pin or staple holes indicating that it was part of my awesome bedroom wall decorations, so presumably, this just went intro one of my infamous "save" boxes... boxes that served only to hold treasured crap like this and stored in the attic.

I like this picture though. It's kinda funny. I mean, seriously Count Chocula, what are you afraid of? I'm fairly certain that neither Bela Lugosi nor the real Dracula (or any vampire) would actually attempt to suck whatever bizarre sugary ooze no doubt fills your freakish body. For that matter, Lugosi's image seems to have a bit of Alfred E. Neuman in it. He looks less mysterious and scary and more amused at the goofy brown guy running away.

Interestingly, there are two versions of this cereal box, one of which caused controversy. Apparently the original version had Bela wearing some pointy star that some thought was a Star of David (although others claimed it was ACTUALLY the Maltese Cross from the Order of the Thelemic Knights or the Order of Saint John) and people complained. So they basically airbrushed the star out for later production runs. Of course, now the Star box is collectible, sometimes going for a few hundred bucks. (More about this story here)