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What if Magic cards were cereal, asks December’s MTG Secret Lair

The Just Add Milk MTG Secret Lair recasts three classic Magic: The Gathering monsters as children's breakfast cereal mascots - and there's puppets!

MTG Secret Lair commercial, featuring an Ulamog puppet.

A new MTG Secret Lair superdrop for December brings – like the first fluttering of snowflakes – a fresh flurry of Magic: The Gathering cards, featuring snazzy art, sold for a premium price and for a limited period. The highlight of the bunch has got to be the Just Add Milk Secret Lair, which reimagines three classic creatures as cereal box mascots.

Wizards has gone all out on its advertising budget for this one, creating a full mock commercial, complete with child actors, voice acting, and puppets, yes puppets, of the three cards in this MTG Secret Lair. That’s Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger; Ghalta, Primal Hunger; and Etali, Primal Storm. Two hungry critters, and one… storming one? Check out the advert below – you won’t be sorry you did.

The cards from the Just Add Milk Secret Lair were each illustrated by artist Mike Burns, whose prior work includes numerous cards in unsets such as MTG Unfinity. Here, he’s done sterling work retheming different elements of a Magic card as components of a cereal box: the mana costs are styled as nutritional information, while cereal shapes form the statlines. The tagline for Ulamog’s “devoid of flavour” cereal does not excite the taste buds though – we’re pretty glad these breakfast foods are fictional!

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Though none of these cards are typically double-sided, the Secret Lair versions have art on both sides, with puzzles – a sudoku, wordsearch, and matching game – alongside the full card text on their back faces. You’ll have to sleeve ‘em up to play.

This breakfast ad spoof is perhaps the least cringy advert of this kind Magic: The Gathering has put out in ages (remember that Warhammer 40k one?) The small print does warn us though that “cereal is not real”, which leaves us with uncomfortable questions about what we ate for breakfast this morning…

MTG Secret Lair cards as cereal boxes

The Just Add Milk Secret Lair will be available to purchase, along with the rest of the December drop, from December 5 until January 6, and the set of three cards will cost $29.99, or $39.99 if you want them in foil. It’s just one of a number of Secret Lairs available this month – In particular you might want to check out the new Transformer Secret Lair cards rolling out shortly.