Disney Food for Families columnist Erin Foster has a fun project for anyone who’s ever loved rice krispie treats and vinylmation!

Second only to my family’s love of Disney food is our love of Disney Vinylmation. These collectible figurines all start with the same Mickey-shaped base, but are designed by artists to resemble other characters, park elements, cultural touchstones, or random cool designs. My daughters and I have spent many a happy hour in the parks hunting for and trading Vinylmations. Some of our favorite finds have been food-themed Vinyls.

We’ve been impressed with the execution of classic Disney-food items in Vinyl: the Mickey bar, the turkey leg, the box of popcorn. One day while speculating about which delicious icon might be Vinylized next, my daughter Josie came up with the idea that Disney should make a Rice Krispie treat themed Vinylmation — a plastic depiction of the ubiquitous bakery-case treat.

We discussed the idea for quite a while but eventually forgot about it until we saw the uber-cool Vinylmation ice cube trays released.

Yes, other people thought the ice cube trays would make great chocolate molds (and they would), but we were convinced that they would be awesome Krispie molds. Unfortunately, we were wrong. Our attempt to use the ice cube trays as Krispie molds was a marshmallow mess.

As it turns out, the individual compartments are substantially smaller than the standard 3-inch Vinylmations. This is good for ice, but suboptimal for something with a rough texture. Not to be dissuaded, we decided to create our own life-sized mold using Sculpey-brand modeling clay. We created two clay rectangles and pushed Mickey’s front into one slab and Mickey’s back into the other. We baked the clay as directed to harden it.

Once the mold was cool, we coated it with a little standard cooking oil spray, plopped in a blob of fresh, hot Krispie mash (made according to the recipe on the box), and then pressed the halves of the mold together. Reeeeeeeally hard.

Drum roll please …..

Once we had a bit of success under our belts, we decide to take the project a step further by customizing a vinyl Vinylmation with a Krispie coating. For those of you new to the Vinylmation phenomenon, customizing the figures is a sizable subculture of the cult. Disney makes several colors of plain Vinylmations that are specifically intended for customization. There are websites such as vinylnation.net that showcase these one-of-a-kind creations. Our strategy was basically to decoupage Rice Krispies onto the Vinyl base using Mod Podge glue.

We first removed Mickey’s arms and set them aside. We then used a small paintbrush to cover one side of Mickey with a thin layer of glue. Then, using the gluey brush, we stuck individual Krispies to the base. We then painted over the now stuck-on Krispies with more glue. This gave the entire thing a protective, plasticized coating.

We learned after the first application of Krispies that, much like cereal in milk, cereal in glue tends to collapse and shrink a bit. So, as the glue dried, we had to go over each side of Mickey with several layers of Krispies, filling in gaps where necessary. We left Mickey out on a work table and the girls took turns adding cereal when they saw spaces open up.

A total of about an hour of work, spread out over several days of cycling through Krispie application and drying, yielded a completely Krispie-covered Vinylmation. We then added Krispies to the arms and reattached them. Once complete, we sprayed the entire thing with several coats of spray acrylic sealer as a preservative. We ended up with a real-life tasty treat and a permanent facsimile of a Disney food favorite.

When we completed the project, I asked Josie if this was what she had in mind when she brainstormed the Krispie Vinylmation idea. She was largely satisfied, especially after I let her eat all the Krispie treat scraps; but then she got this brain-working-overtime look on her face and said, “Now we need to make a Dole Whip Vinylmation Mickey.” Um, I think I’m going to leave that one up to the good folks at the parks to figure out.