So I was simply shopping at the grocery store one day, grabbing some cereal. As I was scanning for which one to buy, one of the boxes resembled a Marillion CD cover (I actually can’t remember which cereal or which cover at this point). The idea immediately came to me to come up with ‘fake’ Marillion cereals. It seemed like a very silly, but fun idea that I thought would give people a laugh.
As I drove home from the store, cereal box ideas were flowing very quickly through my head. Upon arrival at home I mentioned the idea to my wife Shirley and she immediately thought of Marjo as being able to pull something like that off. I immediately agreed and sent the message below off to Marjo a short time later.
Here’s the very first message I sent her on March 16, a few hours after I came up with the idea.
Hi Marjorie,
Hope you and your family are well. I’ve got a really great (but a bit strange) idea (I hope you agree) and being that you are incredible at photoshopping things, Shirley thought that maybe you’d like to help. Here’s my idea.
A whole line of fake Marillion cereals!
- Marillion’s Marbles cereal - a picture of me on the box, holding a spoon, pretending to eat a bowl of marbles cereal in milk. I’d use real marbles, but of course not eat them. Shirley would take the picture, we’d send it to you for you to photoshop the cereal box together.
- Marillion’s Lavender cereal - a picture of Shirley on the box, holding a spoon pretending to eat a bowl of lavender cereal in milk. We’d get some fake lavender in a bowl of real milk. The box could state “comes with a free temporary lavender tattoo”and I could take a picture of Shirley pointing at her (real) lavender tattoo on the back of her neck.
- Marillion’s White Russian Cereal - Someone (You?) from one of the Marillion group pages maybe eating a bowl of White Russian cereal, which consists of just the White Russian drink - no cereal at all.
- Marillion’s Bitter Suite (sweet) cereal - Someone from one of the Marillion group pages eating a bowl of something bitter and/or sweet (maybe cranberries or similar). (maybe this one needs work).
- Marillion’s Sugar Mice cereal - Same as above, someone eating a bowl of Sugar mice in milk. Sugar mice aren’t sold in the US, so this would have to be someone from the UK.
- Marillion’s Brave cereal - featuring a bowl full of cereal looking like the Brave album cover image (obviously that would have to be photoshopped in).
- Gazpacho cereal - picture of someone eating a bowl of Gazpacho soup.
- King cereal - picture of someone eating a bowl full of crowns.
- Quartz cereal - picture of someone eating a bowl of quartz rocks in cereal, probably needed to be photoshopped unless we have someone on one of the group sites whose a rock collector.
- Holidays in Eden cereal - fake bowl full of the animals on the cover.
- FEAR - Maybe someone eating a bowl full of Brexit stuff (newspaper headlines, empty promises??).
Do you like any of these - or do you think it’s all a stupid idea? I was thinking we get someone different from the Marillion FB groups on every cover. Maybe someone who comments on the initial few. Etc.. what do you think?
Joe Savoie
Marjo responded almost immediately that she Loved the idea and wanted to do it. Within a few hours she had already done a bunch of internet searches on vintage cereal boxes and adverts, sending Shirley and I a few. She took the idea and really made it shine, creating boxes at a pretty quick pace. She’d create them, send to me for comments/opinions/ideas and it just blew up from there. It was a tremendous amount of work for her but she seemed to really enjoy it. She is really responsible for the whole thing (minus the general idea from me of course) and deserves all the credit for making it happen. If she didn’t Love the idea and agree, it probably would’ve died because I don’t have/wouldn’t have put in the time to learn how to create all of those 'Marillion Cereals'.
Here are those Marillion breakfast cereals in all their glory...
We assume any resemblance to persons living or fictional is totally on purpose! 😉
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