Lost & Found: This Clown Will Ruin Breakfast for You Forever

Don't let the painted-on smile fool you. The clown in the above commercial is out to steal your soul. Or at least ruin breakfast for you for the rest of your life.

Selling a long-gone cereal called Sugar Rick Krinkles (which was originally called just Rice Krinkles and later renamed Frosted Rice Krinkles before Post pulled the plug), Krinkles the Clown stepped in as the product's mascot after its first one, So-Hi, was deemed a bit racially insensitive.

And yes, the tiny Asian who originally sold the cereal (named because he was only "so high") was pretty inoffensive as far as these things go -- it was the early '60s, after all. But Krinkles was wrong in so many other, so many different ways.

For one thing, he's scary as hell. Yeah, we know it's a cliche to fear clowns just based on them being, you know, clowns. But Krinkles, especially in this vintage commercial from the '60s, is downright terrifying -- from his intro in this minute-long clip (in which he struggles to push his head through a small doorway in an even smaller house) to the way he pronounces the product he's selling ("Ka-rinkles").

And don't even get us started on that weird-ass walk over to the breakfast table or those facial expressions, which probably would have given every single kid in America back in the day nightmares if they weren't just waking up.

Check out that maniacal grin that greeted Sugar Krinkles fans every single morning:

Thankfully, Ka-rinkles was retired when his cereal was discontinued. We're guessing he took up some new career, like serial child-killing or something, after his years in the spotlight. And do we even want to know what he means when he says, "I Krinkle every time I eat it"? No, we don't.