Hot Thing Summer never ends: Fantastic Four cereals

You might be asking yourself, "Jeff, it's been months since you've posted anything. Are you okay?"

I'm fine, thanks.

You might also be asking, "Can you really call this post 'Hot Thing SUMMER' in December?"

Yes, I can. Hot Thing Summer is here. It is eternal. Let's look at the media/merchandizing blitz that surrounded Fantastic Four: First Steps. This one's about the General Mills cereal tie-ins. There's a lot of 'em.

Going into spring and summer of 2025, I knew that Disney and Marvel were going to market hard for the FF movie. Maybe it was to make up for the years that they pretended the characters didn't exist, or maybe it was because Disney was hoping that the Fantastic Four could bring Marvel's movies back to Avengers-level heights. Either way, the sheer amount of items with the FF brand that showed up this year, especially leading up to the movie, was pretty staggering. A lot of it was fun, and I tried to keep up with it all, as much as I could. The General Mills cereals were maybe the first of the deluge that was to come, and MAN, was I excited to see it.

This led to me taking pictures of cereal boxes at different grocery stores, and lining my cart with these things. Some people gave me strange looks. They didn't get it.

The first box to show up in my area was Cheerios with the Human Torch on the front. These appeared more than a week before any others, leading me to think that the other three would be difficult to find. What I think actually happened was that stores got all of them at the same time, but because Cheerios is a popular cereal, they probably moved through their stock a little more quickly, so Johnny Storm made his debut while the others were still sitting in stockrooms. Still, it was a harrowing few days of searching different stores for the right box of Reese's Puffs.

General Mills released the four main characters on four different boxes: the Torch on Cheerios, the Thing on Reese's Puffs, Mr. Fantastic on Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and the Invisible Woman on Lucky Charms. But there were a few others out there, limited to different stores.

First, Galactus got his own retro-style box of Cocoa Puffs, exclusive to Walmart stores. Since Walmart has stores all over the country, this wasn't too hard to find.

Trix, with H.E.R.B.I.E. on the box, was a different story, and I found some more out of luck than anything else. This box was exclusive to Kroger-brand stores, and there are currently zero of those near me. But I took a trip to the Pittsburgh area at the beginning of July, and I made the very irresponsible decision to drive from there to Morgantown, West Virginia to search the Kroger stores that surround the WVU campus. On my second stop, I found Trix in Giant Size (an absolutely enormous box), and let me tell you, I felt pretty good about myself.

Now, Kroger is not a regional store, but they don't have locations all around the country. I later learned that the same company that owns Kroger also owns Ralph's, which is a grocery store I visit in San Diego to get cheese (presumably other things) after a long day at Comic-Con. Did Ralph's also get H.E.R.B.I.E. boxes? Who can say? They didn't have any when I visited during the convention.

I learned from this experience that cereal boxes come in a lot of different sizes. I knew all about regular and family size, but many shops also stock giant size as well as mega size, which I guess you get if you have to feed an entire summer camp. Mega size should not exist. It is an abomination.

Anyway, I started seeing the Fantastic Four on different sized boxes, and I very reasonably thought, "I'll just get one of each, like, regular size box and that'll be that." This was a good thought. The fronts all looked the same, no matter the size.

And then I found a giant Reese's Puffs with the Thing on the front, and I knew it was all over. This was the Giant-Size Fantastic Four. I grabbed it.

It had been decades since I had tried Reese's Puffs, and now I was buying every box I could find. Whatever you paid for the license, General Mills, it was worth it.

I ate some. It was as I remembered, which is to say, there's no way it's good for you. But it was Thing Cereal, so I ate it, just as Ben Grimm would have wanted.

The backs of the boxes were all pretty much the same, though they each had a different phrase to decode.

A few days before Comic-Con, Walmart released yet another version, this one a retro, online-only Lucky Charms with a Human Torch toy inside. This one was product placement directly from the movie; Johnny eats some on screen and shows off the toy. His version had a line of dialogue, but in our universe, it's simply a tiny plastic standee (the base is on the other side of the card):

These boxes cost around $25, as I guess Walmart tried to recoup some of their advertising money, but the art on the back of the box might have been worth it:

Again, this was screen specific, but regardless, the designer did a really nice job with the art and overall feel. That's a Silver Age Human Torch if I've ever seen one.

So that's seven different boxes, most of which came in different sizes. If you made it about two paragraphs into this post, you know that I'm obviously a collector, but it would be pretty impractical to keep maybe two dozen unopened cereal boxes, so I swallowed hard and flattened them all to store them (I kept an unopened Reese's Puffs for display; I have some standards). Then I was faced with the question of, "what do I do with all of these bags of cereal?" So for a few weeks, I gave a lot of people unboxed bags of cereal and had to repeat the same story each time I did. But it was worth it.

These were fun to chase down, and they took up a lot of space in my head (and in the guest bedroom) for a big portion of the spring. I still have another bag of Thing Cereal to eat before it goes stale. Of all the tie-in food products, these might have been the best, but they certainly weren't the only ones. I'll show off more of 'em later.

It's been a Hot Thing Summer

One day, I expect to wake up to the (earth-shattering) news that Google has discontinued its support for Blogger, and that my years and years of comic book-adjacent posts will disappear into the ether, and I'll then I'll be able to start off conversations with the phrase, "back when I had a blog..." and just trail off into silence. For now, thought, I guess I'll be content to post really important news that bots are probably scraping for content, such as this:

I have seen the Fantastic Four movie, and it is good.

2025 has been maybe the biggest year ever for the FF and its branding. I certainly struggled to keep up with all of the marketing for the new film, with new comics and an absolute ton of products surrounding Fantastic Four: First Steps. Fantastic Four milk is now a thing! What a world we live in. I'd like to, in the weeks and months to come, post about all of the new Fantastic Four items this year has brought (and, of course, the Comic-Con experience!). But for now, let's talk a little bit about the movie.

The movie opened up on July 25th, which happened to coincide with Comic-Con in San Diego. I was hoping that there would be a screening in Hall H like last year's Deadpool/Wolverine movie, but despite the Fantastic Four being Marvel's main focus at the show, it didn't happen. I ended up going to a Regal Cinemas north of San Diego for their "Fantastic Four Fan Event", which is a phrase that meant "Jeff, spend your money here." There weren't any specially themed things happening outside of the movie, which was somewhat disappointing, but I did walk out with a set of FF enamel pins that were specific to the 7pm showing.

Walking into the show, I was certain that I was going to like it. The previews and the general vibe surrounding the production all worked for (and on) me. Walking out, I felt like the Fantastic Four finally had put its best foot forward to the world at large, at least in movie form. The characters felt like they knew (and liked) each other. The changes made in the adaptation all made sense. The scene on Galactus's ship was top-notch science fiction and the practical effects worked really well. The Silver Surfer was eerie, cold and wonderful. The Thing said "it's clobberin' time!" H.E.R.B.I.E. was cute. The Jack Kirby tribute was long overdue.

I was hoping (and I'm sure Marvel and Disney were, too) that this movie would be a billion-dollar blockbuster. It's a little silly of me to hope that a giant corporation like Disney would get even more obscenely rich, but I guess if it had, it would have felt a little vindicating after the FF's previous cinematic missteps and because of my love for the characters. In the end, it looks like First Steps will fall into the category of "good, but not great" from a box office standpoint, as it just passed $500 million worldwide after about a month in theaters. It's worth noting, though, that it's Marvel's highest-grossing movie of '25, both in the US and worldwide, and that it did well even as it went up against a much more recognizable superhero in Superman (which was another movie I really liked).

One thing this higher profile brought with it was an absolute ridiculous amount of merchandise, and I did my level best to grab what I could when it was out. Did I mention the milk? Outrageous.

Walking out of the theater, I saw both the Galactus and Fantasticar popcorn receptacles. I did not purchase either of these monstrosities, a thought that still tugs at the edges of my brain at night, but I think I made the right call.

Okay. Maybe I'll get the Fantasticar on the secondary market one day.

I barely made it back to the car before I opened up the exclusive pins. I like 'em.

It looks like the Fantastic Four will be a lynchpin in this next iteration of Marvel movies, and I'll be there for it. Now let's see the First Steps director's cut with John Malkovich's Red Ghost.

Fantastic Four original art - FF #7 inks from John Lucas!

Just a few months ago, I purchased a page of original Aaron Kuder art from Fantastic Four #5, the wedding issue for the Thing and Alicia. Since I had just picked that up, I wasn't really in the market for another page of FF art from the same run, but then a few popped up for a really good price, and what can I say? It was a great deal and I went for it.

The following pages are from Fantastic Four #7 and are not actually by Kuder - John Lucas helped out with some inks in this issue, and these are his inks over the Kuder's blue lines. That is to say, Kuder's penciled pages are still out there. This actually made it more attractive for me, as I had just bought some of Kuder's work, so now I have something a little different.

I got a total of four pages, each in various stages of development. Let's take a look!

This is the only fully inked page in the lot. You can see Lucas's signature at the bottom of the page.

This one has a great shot of the Human Torch going nova in front of Galactus. I finally have some Galactus art! Thank goodness.

And here's how the page was printed in the comic.

The next page, and the subsequent ones, too, were all partially inked. I don't know if Kuder inked the other parts on his own, or if Lucas did the whole page in different stages, but what's not inked is printed blue line. Here we have the middle three panels of the page, where Reed tries to fool Galactus into thinking that he has the Ultimate Nullifier once again.

And here's the page in its completed form!

The next page has inks on the top two panels, with some really nice shots of Reed and Galactus, with Sue and Ben at the bottom.

Here's the page as it was printed.

Lastly, here's a page that has an un-inked Galactus crashing into some Latverian mountains.

This page also has the best shots of the Thing, and we also see Johnny, Sue and Dr. Doom, too. So this page has the full team and Doom! That's great!

Here's what the final page looked like in the comic.

This is actually not the first artwork from John Lucas that I've got in the collection. A full fifteen years ago (!) I got a sketch of Ben Grimm in my much-ballyhooed Thing sketchbook. The above image is from Wizard World Philadelphia way back in 2004. Nice to see John still at it!

Pictures from the 2018 Comic-Con International, part 3 (Thursday, 7/19)

Okay, it's time to look at some of the many, many pictures I took at Comic-Con on Thursday of the show. There are so many that I'll split this up into two posts. That's just the way it has to be, folks.

Early in the morning, we have see Iron Spiders on their way to the exhibit hall.

The first thing I did on Thursday was head over to the Disenchantment booth and display. Later in the day, I saw that the line stretched all the way around the booth and to the wall, so I'm glad that I, uh, cheated a bit and got in early.

I'm kind of surprised that Netflix, which doesn't advertise its shows very often, had a booth for this new cartoon in the first place. But what better place to have one than at Comic-Con?

I've watched most of season one at this point, and I have to say that I'm really enjoying this show. And I managed to get some free temporary tattoos and a shirt at the booth!

Alas, poor Robin.

Naturally, there were a lot of Rick and Morty costumes on display at the show, but this was one of the better ones.

I spent some time signing comics (and stuff) at the New England Comics booth, which is always a treat. Here I am with artist Ian Nichols, who drew the new issue. Great.

This is a really nice Adam Warlock costume!

This woman does not seem nearly frightened enough of the world-devourer.

Classic.

I really do like the current Captain Marvel costume.

There's always a strong Disney contingent of costumers. But I'd never seen this before.

Who would have thought that the Mantis would be a popular enough character to inspire great costumes like this? Madness.

I appreciate the classic Loki helmet here.

Here's me with someone cosplaying as Leonard Maltin. Wait, that's actually Leonard Maltin. I seem to see him every year.

The first panel I went to this year was the Bongo Comics panel, where I was greeted by this group of Marges.

You have to get one of these pictures every year. Glad to get it out of the way.

I guess Disney owns both of these characters now.

...Disney owns these characters now, too, don't they?

I find this costume to be...acceptable.

A few booths away from mine in the small press section gathered a medium-sized crowd on Thursday, so I decided to check out what the noise was about. It turns out that someone brought a copy of Action Comics #1 from 1938 to display.

The cynic in me finds it a bit of a stretch to think that this is a genuine copy of Action Comics #1. This is mostly because there are only an estimated 100 copies of this book in existence, but beyond this, the copy was only in a regular bag and board as opposed to, say, bulletproof glass, and the copy looked to be in pretty decent shape. That would mean that someone would purposely bring a book probably worth around two million dollars to set out on a table.

But the fan in me really hopes that this is a legitimate first printing, because WOW! I almost asked to smell it.

These fine gentlemen stopped by the small press booth as I was eating lunch. Both of them work on the cartoon Bob's Burgers. We had a nice chat and then they left - but on Friday, one of them returned with a lot of cool Bob's Burgers promotional items, like buttons and stickers. It was great to meet them!

Yes, I see you, Mikey.

Very nice Wonder Woman costume!

If you have a twin, this is the PERFECT costume set to wear! I really enjoyed seeing this Peter Parker/Ben Rielly pair. Excellent job.

Okay, I've got a lot more pictures from Thursday, but this seems to be a good place to take a break. I'll post the others soon!