Spooned & Spotted: Cap’n Crunch’s Hero Crunch

Cap'n Crunch's Hero Crunch Dollar General Cereal Box

What better way to celebrate the Fourth of July than with the Fourth patriotic Cap’n Crunch box to come out in the past two years?

Personally, I never expected last year’s mythically rumored and inscrutably unavailable Freedom Crunch to spread its wings once more, but now it’s reprinting its same red, white, and blue Crunch Berries like they’re state quarters.

This year, we saw the concept return in a milder, more bottle rocketed form, and just this month, we saw it debut with perhaps its most creative art yet—one that ditches the Cap’n’s stink eye in favor of one that borders on a Crunch-led assault against Independence Day alien invaders.

Finally, we have the above, Dollar General-exclusive Hero Crunch. This is perhaps the most bizarre case of an unnecessary product variant I’ve seen in four score and seven years, between the militant (and likely ineffective) camouflage and the unadorned Cap’n whose arm appears to be reverberating through space and time.

I mean c’mon, couldn’t they have at least given him a ghillie suit?

Our thanks to Gabe Fonseca for the photo. You can find Hero Crunch now at Dollar General—if it doesn’t blend into the shelves.

4 responses »

  1. I know it might seem trivial, but this “Hero Crunch” really bothers me.

    First, assuming this is meant for the Fourth of July, that’s not a military holiday and the militarization of our independence day is a weird and discomfiting trend in recent years.

    Second, I find it odd that companies can’t really use cereal to sell toys and things to kids, but they can sell them on the military.

    Third, the whole concept is just gross. If Quaker wants to honor the military, how about making a donation with each box of cereal sold? Instead of empty pandering with this faux camouflage design and “hero” name, how about doing something that actually helps the “heroes” they’re supposedly honoring?

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