Coinciding with McDonald’s Pokémon promotion, General Mills also featured products with a pack of Pokémon TCG cards inside. Nifty keen! But unlike the McDonald’s promo, this set of cards only had a few cards unique to them, and actually included a few reprints of cards from ACTUAL sets. If you want to know the facts of what you’re getting into, keep on reading!

 

General Facts

In specifically labeled boxes of various General Mills’ cereals, such as Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a limited time “Pokémon”-branded cereal, you can find a pack of Pokémon TCG cards. Here are some quick facts about it all:

  • The packs are available in these cereals: Large Size Family Size
    Cinnamon Toast Crunch 16.8 oz (476 g) 19.3 oz (547 g)
    Lucky Charms 14.9 oz (422 g) 19.3 oz (547 g)
    Cocoa Puffs 15.2 oz (430 g) 19.3 oz (547 g)
    Trix 13.9 oz (394 g) 17.0 oz (481 g)
    Golden Grahams (Yep! This is part of the promotion) 16.7 oz (473 g) 19.6 oz (555 g)
    • They are NOT included in the Pokémon-brand Cereal… at least I haven’t seen any evidence of it! (See below)
  • The packs have three cards in them, pulled from a list of at least 13 different cards.
    • One of the three cards will ALWAYS be a special Holo Pikachu promo (#SWSH039, pictured right)
      • This Pikachu card is the only card in the General Mills promotion to have the special “Pokémon 25” stamp.
      • SCAM WATCH! If someone says they have a “rare holographic Pokémon 25 Pikachu”, first off NONE of the Pikachu cards released for “Pokémon 25” are rare. But if they are being somewhat truthful, they might be referencing the McDonald’s Pikachu card, which had a 1-in-25 chance of getting in a McDonald’s pack. The General Mill’s Pikachu card, on the other hand, has a 1-in-1 chance of getting, so it’s not THAT rare.
    • The other two cards could be any of the 12 other cards in the card list below
      • There is a claim that one of those other two cards is ALWAYS one of the other holos, but that is not true; it’s possible to get the Holo Pikachu and two nonholo cards.
    • All “Family Size” cereals, however, contain a chance to get a special 14th card, “Galarian Ponyta”. Or to put it another way, Galarian Ponyta is only available in packs found in Family Size cereals. Smaller sized boxes of cereals won’t contain it.
      • Galarian Ponyta will therefore appear as one of the other two cards in the pack.
  • ALL of the cards released in this promotion have been reprinted in some form or another. However, the holofoil style is exclusive to this promotion.
    • For players this means that they don’t need to worry about trying to get any exclusive cards, as all of the cards can be found elsehwere.
    • Collectors, on the other hand, need to know that the General Mills’ holofoil style can only be found on these holo cards. This will certainly affect their value on the secondary market. Like, don’t make the same mistake I did where I thought a $2 Galarian Ponyta on eBay was a surprise deal, only to later realize it was a Galarian Ponyta from another release.
    • However, both players and collectors need to know that the holo cards are reprints of special promo cards original found in special blister packs, while the nonholos care are simply common reprints from various Sword/Shield sets. This means the nonholo cards are effectively worthless as they have nothing special about them (no changes in design, no extra stamps or symbols… nothing; at least the McDonald’s reprints gave them a new set symbol!).
  • The promotion started in mid-February 2021 and will continue while supplies last.
    • The Pokémon Cereal, however, won’t be released until February 27th, 2021.

 

Pictures

Below are pictures from what cereal I could get, organized between both sizes and cereal types. Specifically, all the Large Size cereals, as well as the information on their backs, will be in one column, while the Family Size boxes and THEIR backs, are placed in another column. The images of the packs, however, remain the same regardless.

Large Size Family Size
Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Lucky Charms
Cocoa Puffs
Trix
Golden Grahams
Backs

…

As you can see, the Family Size boxes has the special exclusive Galarian Ponyta which the Large Size boxes don’t.

Regardless of what box of cereal you get, you’ll get a pack of cards looking like this. Strangely enough, there is no clue that these packs are of the “Exclusive Galarian Ponyta” sort or not; in both the Large and Family Size boxes, the packs look exactly the same.

 

 

Pokémon Cereal

Around the same time as this promotion, General Mills also released a box of “Pokémon”-brand cereal. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to be part of the “Pokémon 25” promotion one bit… nothing on the box indicates any relation to the promotion, and it doesn’t include a pack of cards. Now I’m not saying that there isn’t a box of Pokémon Cereal SOMEWHERE out there with a pack of cards seen in the other General Mills cereals… it’s just I haven’t seen it.

Anyways, by the looks of it, there are three different types of boxes overall, one based on the three starter types: Fire, Grass and Water. You can see what those boxes look like below:

 

 

Card List

Finally, just so you know what you’re getting, here is the card list, based on the list of cards found on the backs of every box of cereal. The green ★ represent holo cards, while the orange entry represents a card which can only be found in packs inside Family Size boxes of cereals:

HOLO TYPE NAME № ORIGINAL RELEASE / NOTES
★ ZL Pikachu SWSH039 Originally appeared in Darkness Ablaze Blister Single Pack. Unique to this promotion, all packs contain one Pikachu card, which is also stamped with the “Pokémon 25” logo.
★ ZP Galarian Ponyta SWSH013 Originally appeared in Sword & Shield Blister Three-Pack. Appears only in specially marked boxes of Family Size cereals; otherwise not included in Large Size boxes of cereal
★ ZP Hatenna SWSH040 Originally appeared in Darkness Ablaze Blister Single Pack.
★ ZC Wooloo SWSH011 Originally appeared in Sword & Shield Blister Single Pack.
★ ZL Morpeko SWSH012 Originally appeared in Sword & Shield Blister Three-Pack.
★ ZG Gossifleur SWSH010 Originally appeared in Sword & Shield Blister Single Pack.
ZW Snom 063/202 ⚫ Sword & Shield set version
ZL Yamper 073/202 ⚫ Sword & Shield set version
ZP Sinistea 089/202 ⚫ Sword & Shield set version
ZD Galarian Zigzagoon 117/202 ⚫ Sword & Shield set version
ZM Galarian Meowth 127/202 ⚫ Sword & Shield set version
ZM Cufant 136/202 ⚫ Sword & Shield set version
ZP Dreepy 089/192 ⚫ Rebel Clash set version
ZF Galarian Farfetch’d 094/192 ⚫ Rebel Clash set version

…

It might be worth buying a few boxes of cereal just so you can get your hands on a few exclusive versions of existing promos… but it doesn’t seem worth going hog wild and buying fifty boxes of cereal or anything… you’re gonna be left with a TON of useless commons which don’t even have any special promo stamps or other extra bits.

 

 

That’s about it! Not much to cover with this promotion, only because it’s not as big nor popular as the McDonald’s one… but then again, that hasn’t stopped people from doing crap like this:

Aw nuts, looks like the original tweet has disappeared. Well, I came prepared: here was the video, in glorious “I backtraced the original person who posted the video and found that their version is still up”-O-VISION:

@harryama297

People stealing Pokémon cards from cereal boxes. Can’t make this shit up. #pokemon #DoTheScottsSlide #ItWasntMe #pokemoncards #FYP

♬ original sound – harryama279