It was an honest mistake, but it’s still pretty jarring to see a picture of Dracula wearing a Star of David – the symbol of Judaism – medallion necklace on a box of children’s cereal.

It might sound unbelievable, but it really happened in 1987, as General Mills put Bela Lugosi’s famous vampire visage on the box of Count Chocula cereal for the Halloween season. Four million boxes hit supermarket shelves in early October of that year and were quickly met with protests from consumers and Jewish newspapers.

How Did the Dracula Count Chocula Box Go So Wrong?

Since we’re talking about the 1980s here, it’s worth mentioning the crazy new concept they were working with in order to design the cereal box:

General Mills officials said they had been excited about the design because it involved a new technique in which a computer lifted and enhanced the likeness of Lugosi from the 1931 film “House of Dracula.”

The Los Angeles Times

The problem arose when the design team took a three-dimensional picture – where the medallion looked like a large stone set in a six-pointed star – and made it two-dimensional, which gave it the look of the Star of David.

What Happened to the Controversial Count Chocula Boxes?

The company started getting calls about the boxes and immediately altered the box design to remove the medallion from any future releases, along with editing a television commercial that featured the medallion (the commercial hadn’t aired yet, so General Mills lucked out there).

Despite the mistake, General Mills didn’t opt to recall the existing boxes featuring the medallion, as a recall is only issued when the product itself poses a health hazard. There’s a good chance too that General Mills figured a full recall would have brought even more attention to the matter.

This all just goes to show that you can never have too many rounds of edits on something like this.

Despite the mistake, the rest of the Dracula/Count Chocula design does look extremely cool. As an avid monster cereal fanatic each October, this box – sans the unfortunate medallion – would be a great display piece for Halloween (it’s also a much cooler design than what we’re getting these days, as evidenced above).

I want those monster disguise stickers and the monstrous glow-in-the-dark T-shirt they’re offering too!

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