The 8 Most Baffling Food Mascots of All-Time

In 1960, Sugar Coated Rice Krinkles introduced its new culturally sensitive mascot: a Chinese boy named So-Hi. He got his name because he was only "so high," and his original Chinaman name probably just sounded like a bunch of doorbells going off. Eight years later, Post marketers came up with something less offensive:

Krinkles the Clown.

With Krinkles the Clown as the mascot, every serving of Sugar Krinkles now had the vitamins and minerals of one handful of flesh and the fear you need to get you going in the morning. The prize inside every box was whispers. Whenever you lost a kitchen knife in 1969, you would somehow always find it inside Post's Sugar Krinkles. The side of the box had photos of missing children, but each of them was labeled "Ingredients."

Sugar Krinkles was eventually pulled from the shelf, but Krinkles the Clown continued to find work. He now appears in mirrors every time you look away from them.

When Snap!, Crackle! and Pop! first appeared in 1933, they were extremely old elves with white hair and gaping, toothless smiles. It looked like their names might have come from the sounds their joints made when they got near cold milk. In 1949, they were suddenly replaced by younger elves. The originals were never heard from again, nor were the three unlucky children who found miniature skeletons in their cereal.

The three younger elves were like a manifestation of all the nation's fears at the time. They teamed up to finish their sentences like they either shared some kind of communist hivemind or were involved in a long term same-sex marriage.

Rice Krispies ads were all the same -- the elves stalked children silently. As soon as the children became sleepy, Snap!, Crackle! and Pop! leaped out, speaking as one, and poured them a bowl of cereal. This gave the children the sudden burst of adrenaline they needed to chase down a horse or win some kind of canoeing contest. The elves credited their success to the deliciousness of Rice Krispies, but it almost certainly had more to do with the mind-fucking nature of their appearance.

I get a little fagged out myself when I'm canoeing with the fellas, but I think it's a hurtful choice of words when you're surrounded by tiny homosexual men.

Fast food burgers are mostly made out of victims of chemical toilet falls, so they rely heavily on advertising to draw customers in. Burger King never quite got the hang of this. Their first attempt at a Burger King character in the '60s looked like it was drawn by someone whose hands had already been ground into chicken tenders.

In the '70s, he became more of an actual king. There was even a Burger King Kingdom featuring such classic characters as a robot french fry wizard and a knight in drink cup armor. It was such a bad replica of McDonaldLand that returning Vietnam veterans thought they were VC traps.

Burger King Kingdoms started disappearing as the '80s arrived and the restaurant went back to making joyless hamburgers using the selling point of: "We heat food with real fire!" This went on for 20 years until The King came back. Now he's 7-feet-tall and wearing a ceaselessly staring plastic face. His costume is how a serial killer would transport a gagged prostitute on the subway. In all seriousness, the mask had to be painstakingly soundproofed so the other actors in the commercials couldn't hear the maggots squirming inside it. The King is what Satan's girlfriend dresses as to spice up their love life.