Lookin at Food: Fruit Brute

Well since today is Halloween, I thought I would make a little extra bonus blog to talk about a cereal I've wanted to try for a while, as it was discontinued many years ago and only recently got a seasonal re-release, and that cereal is this right here:

This, is a box of Fruit Brute, a part of a line of cereals introduced by General Mills in the 1970s. but in order to explain it fully, we need to start at the beginning.

Once upon a time, that time being the early 1970s, General Mills decided that they wanted to make a new cereal range with marshmallows. This wasn't a new idea as they had already introduced the concept with the introduction of Lucky Charms in 1964, but what made this cereal line different was its theme.

Inspired by the classic Universal movie monsters of the 1930's and 1940's, they gave it a monster theme. The line initially launched on the market in March of 1971 with two cereals, Count Chocula (which was chocolate-flavored) and Franken Berry (which was strawberry-flavored). 

In the commercials, there two monsters to advertise their respective cereals, Count Alfred Chocula (a vampire based on Count Dracula with a voice modeled after Bela Lugosi) and Franken Berry (a version of the Frankenstein monster with a voice modeled after Boris Karloff). The two would engage in comic bickering over which cereal was better, when something or someone else interfered in their verbal sparring and scared them.

The original commercial for the Monster Cereals (1971).

The cereals proved to be a sales success, even some controversy the next year involving Franken Berry including an indigestible pigment that turned some children's feces pink didnt stop them. They continued to add new cereals into the line, with Boo Berry, the first blueberry-flavored cereal, hitting store shelves in December 1973.

In the commercials, along side Count Chocula and Franken Berry, there was the titular Boo Berry (a ghost (whose voice voice was modeled after Peter Lorre), who often became the one who would scare off Count Chocula and Franken Berry.

The first commercial for Boo Berry (1973)

In 1974, a new monster cereal was introduced, which was Fruit Brute. It was frosted fruit flavored and had lime flavored marshmallows. The commercials featured a werewolf mascot, who interestingly enough doesn't have a voice modeled after a classic horror star (They could have gone with a voice modeled after Lon Chaney Jr from the The Wolf Man, but then again in werewolf form, Chaney doesn't speak).

The first commercial for Fruit Brute (1974)

Unlike the rest of the Monster Cereals, Fruit Brute wasnt around for very long, as it was discontinued in 1982.

In 1987, another monster cereal was introduced, called Fruity Yummy Mummy. This cereal was essentially exactly the same as Fruit Brute, only with vanilla flavored marshmallows instead of lime flavored ones.

The commercials featured a cartoon mummy as the mascot who again, doesn't have a voice modeled after a classic horror star (Though again the Universal mummy that's often been imitated, Kharis, doesnt speak either. Although Imhotep, the mummy from Universal's first mummy film The Mummy, does speak).

The first commercial for Fruity Yummy Mummy (1987)

Unfortunately, much like Fruit Brute, Fruity Yummy Mummy wasn't around for very long, in fact it had an even shorter lifespan than Fruit Brute, being discontinued in 1992. Even more unfortunate, The Monster Cereal line itself disappeared in the late 1990s.

Well, sort of, the line did continue to be sold in certain stores for the first nine years of the new millennium, but by the late 90's, The Monster Cereal line had lost its popularity, and stopped being sold year round in most grocery stores nationwide.

however, the line did continue to be sold in certain stores for the first nine years of the new millennium as I said, and in 2010, General Mills made Franken Berry, Boo Berry, and Count Chocula cereals a seasonal cereal to purchase for a few months during the Halloween season in September and October.

The last time Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy were made available, was in 2014, with updated packaging like the other cereals (With the Fruit Brute variant was renamed Frute Brute), as well as in special retro edition boxes of all five cereals with their original packaging art sold exclusively at Target stores.

Until now, In August of this year, Frute Brute had made a return alongside it's Monster Cereal brethren, and of course I became aware of it.

I first saw it alongside the other monster cereals during October break when I went home to work at my local Price Chopper during break and saw it on display in front of the cereal isle. It was eyeing me the whole week i was there as ive already tried the other Monster Cereals before, and both Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy were never around to try as well, so by the end of the work week, I went to the display, bought a box with the money in my wallet, tried it and now i can tell you what I think.

One thing to note is the box itself. Genereal Mills collaborated with artist Brian Donnelly, known professionally as KAWS, to do the boxart. The boxes are modeled after the original boxes, with an illustration of each character and a photo of the cereal in a bowl, all set on a blank white background. As a result the look identical to the originals with the main difference being the characters on the front, as they've been redrawn in KAWS' style with x'ed eyes and some like Franken Berry and Count Chocula having bone-shaped ears.

A comparison of boxes, Left to right: the original 1974-1982 design, the 2013-2014 special edition rerelease, and the 2022 KAWS design

The cereal itself has some differences as well, the original had three wheel shaped cereal pieces coming in two colors colors, a red and a yellow. However with this version, only the red, cherry flavored bits remain, and now are ghost shaped. also the original had just green colored marshmallows whereas the rerelease has multiple colors.

The bowl (or rather lid) I had this morning

So what do I think? Well, I think its pretty good. The thing is, when it comes to fruit flavored cereal, they never quite taste like the fruit they emulate, and Fruit Brute is no exception, but the taste is pleasant enough and does have a little bit of tartness to its very minimal cherry flavor. The marshmallows taste very much like the ones in Lucky Charms, So if your a fan of Lucky Charms than maybe this would be worth a look. 

Overall Fruit Brute is a pretty welcomed limited time cereal to the Halloween season, and it seems that the im not the only one who welcomes it to my pantry, as Fruit Brute does have a small legacy in pop culture as a background Easter Egg in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. In Reservoir Dogs, you can see a box in Mr Oranges apartment, and in Pulp Fiction, there's a box in Lance's room.

Left to Right: Fruit Brute in Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994)

So that concludes my look at Fruit Brute, a cereal that came and went 40 years ago, that was rereleased 31 years later and again 8 years afterward. Now if only they could bring back Fruity Yummy Mummy, then i can say ive tried them all. Have a Happy Halloween and be safe. See you next time!

The Making of 2-XL's Man Vs Machine

Recently in CIS-1090: Problem Solving With Computers, We were assigned to make a quiz show program. For that assignment, I made a quiz program I called 2-XL's Man Vs Machine. Since Professor Beth was so impressed with it and was wondering how did I come up with this and get all the assets I did, I thought I would go over it in more detail. So in this bonus blog entry, I'm going to explain how I came up with the idea, the toy I based it on, how that toy worked, and how I incorporated it into the project.



The Conception        



When the assignment was given out, I did a simple brainstorm of what I could do, and since it was supposed to be a quiz program it reminded me so something that I thought would be perfect to implement as the basis for the program, an old toy from the 1970’s called 2-XL.

The original 2-XL.

It was an educational toy designed to help children learn about various topics and quiz them about it, with the name being a play on "To Excel". My idea was to sort of spoof him and turn him into a game show host, kind of like the old tv show Space Ghost Coast to Coast where the titular 1960s Hanna-Barbera superhero cartoon character was spoofed and turned into a talk show host. Coincidentally there actually was a game show called Pick Your Brain that actually featured the later 1990s version of 2-XL by Tiger Electronics, But that's another story.



The Story Of 2-XL        



2-XL was introduced in September of 1978, as you can see from this page from the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog from that year, we can see it listed for $44.99 with 6 available cartridges. Converting that to the current price with inflation, that's $204.37, quite a hefty price indeed!

2-XL's listing in the 1978 Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog.

The company behind 2-XL was Mego, a New York based toy company that had humble beginnings. They were founded in 1954 by husband and wife D. David and Madeline Abrams, and got their start as an importer of dime store toys. but by the 1970's, they diversified and got into making early action figures based on various celebrities, movies and TV shows. Now these action figures weren't like action figures today, they were 8 inches tall, and were more like dolls, which was exactly how every other action figure of the time was, with Hasbro introducing the idea of action figures as dolls for boys with the GI Joe line in 1964. The most popular range of figures they did was the World's Greatest Super-Heroes range, featuring characters from both DC comics and Marvel Comics.

A Superman figure from Mego's World's Greatest Super-Heroes range (1972-1983)

They also licensed toys from various toy manufacturers outside the US to market and distribute their toys under the Mego brand, such as Micronauts, which was a licensed version of the Microman toyline created by Japanese-based toy company Takara in 1974.

Mego's Micronauts catalog (1977)

(Fun Fact: The MicroMen line eventually had a spin off toyline called MicroChange, which eventually became one of the toylines used to create Hasbro's Transformers toyline).

There was also a short lived line of LCD games called Time Out, which were officially licensed versions of Nintendo's Game and Watch handhelds that were sold for distribution in the US before Nintendo of America was established.

Mego's Time Out Toss-Up, The Mego version of the Nintendo Game and Watch game Ball (1980)

Mego continued to produce toys and action figures until 1982, when, due to financial difficulties, they filled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; and shut down in 1983.

But back to 2-XL, It was certainly was one of their more unique toys that they sold. It was the first "smart-toy" in that it exhibited rudimentary artificial intelligence, memory, gameplay, and responsiveness. The idea was that 2-XL was infused with a "personality" so to speak, which would keep kids focused and challenged as they interacted with 2-XL, by telling jokes and funny sayings as verbal performance reinforcements both when telling you when you answer a question right or wrong, and in between questions. It worked by loading in an 8-track tapes on them contained the audio for each question, answer, and remark made by 2-XL.

One of the cartridges sold for 2-XL.

But in order to understand how 2-XL works, we need to take a look at the format it uses, The 8-Track.



The 8-Track Cartridge Format        



The 8-Track Cartridge Format was an audio cassette format that was used for music. Although it was originally introduced in 1964, its hay day was the 70s, specifically from 1970 til 1978. By the end of the 70's, its market was replaced by Compact Cassette. However, the format did survive into the 80s with various albums on 8-track being available to purchase via mail order distributors such as Columbia House. 

The 8-Track was invented by Richard Kraus while working under Bill Lear of Lear Jet. 

Bill P. Lear.

While that may sound a bit odd as far as going from jet airplanes to audio formats, Lear had a background as a self taught radio engineer. In fact, he and his friend Elmer Wavering worked with Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, which would eventually become Motorola, to invent the first car radio in 1930.

The Motorola 5T71 car radio (1930)

The format itself was actually an evolution of other tape cartridges that go all the way back to the early 1950's, starting with Bernard Cousino's Audio Vendor cartridge in 1952. which was improved upon by George Eash in the form of the Fidelipac/NAB Cartridge in 1959, and Earl "Madman" Muntz's 4-Track Cartridge in 1962, The latter of which is what the the 8-Track was based on.

Left to right: The Audio Vendor cartridge (1952), The Fidelipac (1959), and the 4-Track Cartridge (1962).  

While 8-Track had various players that were available as HiFi decks and portables, the most common place to have an 8-Track player was in a vehicle. That's because although the format was created by and sold by Lear Jet, it was a also in a consortium led by Bill Lear, along with Ampex, Motorola, RCA Victor Records, General Motors, and Ford Motor Company, the latter two companies were the main reason why 8-Track was generally a format that was seen in vehicles. So chances are, if you were around in the 1970's, its more than likely that a car would have a player for one of these inside.

An 8-Track player from an Oldsmobile 98 (1970)

But that's enough of a history lesson, let's get on to how an 8-Track works, It works very differently than the more familiar Compact cassette, as its an endless loop cartridge. To explain how that works, lets take a look at a typical 8-Track album, I'll use an album from the same time period as an example, in this case, Boston's Don't Look Back.

Now look closely at the bottom with the track listings, notice how they're listed 1-4.

That's because, the tape inside of an 8-track is 1/4 of an inch and it's split into 4 channels containing the 4 listed tracks. The reason why it's called the 8-track is because each of the 4 tracks are split in 2 for left and right stereo on each channel.

Inside of the cartridge is a reel that contains the tape itself, a typical album is about 11 and a half minutes. So the reel just keeps pulling the tape continuously forever, starting from the middle, going around the left, and going back outside the reel again. It also can only move in one direction, so you can't rewind it, although you can fast forward it if your player has a fast forward button on it.

Now looking at a typical 8-Track player from the time period, it would look like this:

This is a Realistic TR-882, which was sold by Radio Shack, as Realistic was Radio Shack's in-house brand for audio equipment. Notice on the bottom of the machine there's a button labeled "Program":

This is what you use to select the tracks on the tape, By hitting the button it will jump to the next channel. Inside an 8-Track player reveals another difference compared to the Compact cassette, the head doesn't just stay in the same place, it moves depending whenever you hit the button to jump to the next channel.

Thats the basic overview on how an 8-Track works, So how does 2-XL use the 8-Track and how different is it to a standard 8-Track player? Well that leads us into the next section discussing how 2-XL itself works.



How 2-XL Works        



So thats the inside of a normal 8-Track player Now lets take a look take a look at 2-XL and see how its different. 

The front of 2-XL

Notice on the front, there are four buttons labeled Question, A yes true, B more info, and C no false.

This is what you use to answer each question, and these actually correspond to the four individual channels on an 8-Track tape. So what happens is when 2-XL asks you a question he'll ask you to select from the four buttons to answer the question or to move to the next question. This is also different to a normal 8-Track player because unlike a standard 8-Track player where you would jump through each program one at a time, with 2-XL you can instantly jump from track to track by hitting the button.

It looks, sounds and works a little bit like a mechanical phone exchange. Speaking of phones, Michael J. Freeman, the inventor and voice of 2-XL, went on to design the first branching phone menu system in the 1980s, and its very possible that he based the idea of a menu with branching paths of phone audio that could be selected with the push of a button on the concept that he came up with when designing 2-XL.

Michael J. Freeman

So thats how 2-XL works, but how did I get a hold of the audio? Well, as you can imagine I don't have an original 2-XL with me but what I do have is access to an online emulator that has all of the original tapes that went along with it. So what I did was just play audio files from the tapes from beginning to end by using a Chrome screen capture app, converted them to WAV fiels, and then imported them into Audacity, where I could scan through the tapes selecting the questions, the answers, and the button pushing sound effect. 

The 2-XL emulator (link: https://www.2xlbot.com/)

Originally I wanted to have 5 different categories of questions, but due to time i only picked 3 questions from 2 cartridges;  TV and Movie Challenges, and Science Fiction. 

Now im sure your probably wondering, Why did i use the 1970s version of 2-XL for the questions when theres also the 1990s version that had more "current" (and by current I mean not as old) that people could probably get more the questions right? Well, the answer is simple, I just wanted to see if anyone could guess the answers correctly, Since these questions go way back to the 1970s and often reference things that were popular at the time.

and a majority of the audio came from these tapes the only exceptions being the narration at the beginning the music, (which technically is from the TV and Movie Challenges tape but it was a pre recorded clip of it from a 2-XL fansite) and the applause was just simply a stock sound effect that i got from a YouTube video.

The narration was generated with a Texas Instruments Speech Synthesizer module, which was an addon for the TI 99/4 computer, a home computer introduced by TI in 1979. 

The Texas Instruments Speech Synthesizer module and the TI 99/4

Although the Speech Synthesizer module was released in 1980, its speech synthesis chip was the TMS5200 (Also known as the TMC0285), which was essentially a later version of the TMS5100 (Also known as the TMC0280) which was used in the Speak and Spell which was also released in 1978, so it fitted with the time period of tech when 2-XL was released. 

Left to right: the TTMS5200, the TMS5100, and the Speak and Spell

The only problem was that, much like the Speak and Spell, it can only say a predetermined vocabulary, At least originally it did. There were options to allow it to use allophones to generate more words either by using the Terminal II cartridge, or by using commands in Extended BASIC. But since I still wanted it to sound like the Speak and Spell, what I did was I looked through the original TI BASIC manual for the available words, wrote a BASIC program to say the words, recorded them, and used Audacity to splice it together to make it sound seamless. 

The vocabulary of the TI 99/4 speech synth

Heres a demo on how the TI Speech Synthesizer was programed. 

The backgrounds and sprites are also something that went through some changes over the project. Originally I wanted the background to actually look like a game show from the late 70s, but by the end I chose chose a default stage background that was already in Scratch.

Another change was how 2-XL moved, as he was supposed to come out from a corner, then come forward, but again i just simplified it to one frame.

Finally i made the logo by grabbing the 2-XL logo from the manual, cleaning it up, colorized it to mach the original box, and added the "man vs machine" bit at the bottom with a font that would match the aesthetics.

So there you are, a behind the scenes look at 2-XL's Man Vs Machine. Thanks for reading, See you next time!

Link to the project:

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/741672998