I bought original Fruitloops once. Just to taste this fandom gag. Man, I thought I can eat anything. But it was so disguting, eating rotten egg woild be much safer. No wonder Danny called his archenemy Fruitloops — nice-looking thing that is trying to kill from inside.
I loved Froot Loops® as a kid! I would probably hate them now. Everything tastes better when you're eight years old, right?
A lot of people think Danny is referencing the popular kids' cereal, but the true definition of "fruit loop" has nothing to do with breakfast.
"Fruit loop" is a slang term for someone who is silly or strange.
• He came across as being a complete fruit loop. • His supporters are thought of as a bunch of fruit loops. [Source]
You might be wondering how this definition came to be. (Or not. You can stop reading here if you like. It won't hurt my feelings.)
In British English a fruit or fruitcake is someone who is crazy, supposedly in use in both the UK and America from around 1910 from the expression 'nutty as a fruitcake' (with 'nuts' also being another word for crazy). [F]ruit loop also derives partly from the word 'loopy' also meaning crazy. [Source]
Nutty as a fruitcake Crazy, idiotic, as in "Mary is nutty as a fruitcake if she thinks she can get away with that." The adjective nutty meaning "insane" was first recorded in 1821; the similarity to fruitcake, which literally contains nuts as well as fruit, was first recorded in 1935. [Source]
"Fruit loop" is kind of an antiquated term, more likely to be heard in cartoons from the 40s and 50s. Why they used it in a modern show like Danny Phantom is anyone's guess, but maybe they had a limited range of insults to choose from, being that it's a kid's show and all.
I can't neglect to mention that "fruit" and "fruity" have historically been used to refer to gay men, which adds a whole new layer of subtext to the term.
