Ever wonder what a plain ol’ butter & jelly sandwich might taste like? What about simply sour chicken, an unadorned upside-down cake, or a pizza topped only with…pepper?
Yeah, me either. But that’s the Honey Vanilla Cheerios experience: like eating something extremely familiar, but without one of the signature, accenting somethings that define the dish. Granted, I’m exaggerating, and Honey Vanilla Cheerios don’t taste as bad as fouled fowl, but it’s palpably missing something.
There are a couple of good (read: mostly lazy) reasons why I don’t review oatmeal on this blog too often.
1. It’s always so hot that I have trouble photographing it without steaming up my camera lens.
2. Oatmeal is such an ugly foodstuff that I have trouble photographing it without emphasizing just how ugly this grain slop really is.
3. I, uh, don’t own a microwave, so I’m forced to just pour hot milk (don’t even suggest water, you puritans) on it and hope for the best, which, in the case of instant oatmeals like Cookie Crisp Oatmeal, which straight up do not recommend my method, ends up invariably leaving me with a bowl of runny (and thus even uglier) mush.
But nevertheless, I endured these struggles for Chip the Wolf’s sake. And thus, here are my thoughts on Cookie Crisp Oatmeal: the good, the bad, and the inevitably ugly. Continue reading →
Name: 10/10, would attempt to utter ten times tongue-twistingly fast in a public space, resulting in prompt institutionalization.
Box design: 10/10, love to imagine a world where a cartoon rabbit and a photorealistic Tyrannosaurus get into all kinds of Road Runner-y hijinks—and where said cereal-swiping Rabbit, with his forward-facing eyes, is no longer the alpha predator.
But the taste of Trix Trax? Well, let’s talk, squawk, and lumbering walk about it. Continue reading →
Note: though Chocolate is included in this lineup of new boxes, I won’t be reviewing it here, since it’s unchanged. You can find my original review here.
Tony, my man. Can I call you Tony Baloney?
No?
How about Riga-Tony? Tonyboy? Tony Island Mile-High Chili Dogs?
Alright, fine, let’s just get down to business…Anthony. Fact of the matter is, I’m impressed. You’re really embracing your right brain lately. I know it can be tempting to trust your business sense and realize that you could probably finance the entire Frosted Flakes brand interminably just by cheaply chucking in new marbits and mixing together existing cereals. But as much of a smart tiger as you are, I can tell you’re truly an artist at heart. And an athlete, too—geez, no wonder the Twitter furries thirsted you off the platform: you’ve got it all!
You’re so creatively inclined that you decided to bless us with not one, but two twinkling new cereal flavors—and neither have chintzy, redundant marshmallows! Sure, my bar for being impressed by new cereals has limboed lower and lower over the past purgatorial half year of lazy cereal-smithing, but hey, I’m going to stay positive and tackle the Strawberry Milkshaked and Cinnamon French Toasted fruits of your labor with gusto. Continue reading →
Allow me to preface this review with the disclaimer that I honestly have no idea if these Filled Bites will ever hit mainstream shelves. I first heard about these two cereals via the insider tip of a Hy-Vee worker at a Minneapolis location often used as a General Mills new product test store. Then I got these two boxes (with different artwork) from reader Ryan (thank you kindly!), but they also seem like samples. The artwork feels more finalized, but it’s just art on both sides, plus the box is a thinner cardboard than regular cereal boxes.
Plus plus, there’s a landing page out there for a possible Cinnamon Toast Crunch Filled Bites—which, while still apparently in its prototype stage would likely replace Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll here—as CTC no doubt has bigger brand clout with the kids today than portly/chortly ol’ Poppin’ Fresh. That guy lost the youth the minute the similarly glossy Hamburger Helper rhymed him outta relevancy.
Which is all to say that, ultimate widespread legitimacy of these Filled Bites aside, I feel a need to review them, if only to uphold the ephemeral legacy of Fillows—a decidedly dank and decadently dense cereal line that deserved way better. Continue reading →
There are some things it feels like you just can’t do on supermarket shelves, even if there’s no explicit rule against it.
You can’t put a cute mascot shaped like a carton of milk on a box of bleach. Or at least I imagine you probably can’t.
You can’t say your plastic bottle is made from “100% Ocean-Bound Plastic” because that’s worded so confusingly and sounds like it’s made 100% from plastic that’s bound for the ocean, rather than just adding a word and saying “100% Previously Ocean-Bound Plastic.” But Windex does this anyway.
And you can’t market cinnamon bun pancake batter as a versatile creamy spread. It just feels criminal! Continue reading →
Just what went wrong with the Blue Blur’s big-box breakfast debut? Well, it starts with the cereal’s poorly promoted existence. When I first got a PR email about this cereal, it was worded very informally. This is exactly all I was told:
“Available nationwide starting in March, Sonic the Hedgehog cereal is honey flavored with sonic marshmallows. The cereal pieces are gold and ring shaped, representing the gold rings from the video game/movie. The blue marshmallows represent sonic swirling around. The green emeralds represent green emeralds from the sonic games.”
Lack of capital letters aside, the problem is that the release date was set for March, before Sonic 2 released in theaters, but it’s only finally been spotted in stores as of yesterday. This all makes me wonder if the cereal was delayed and subsequently(/fittingly) rushed—the box itself reflects this, with the “enlarged to show detail” text appearing very poorly printed and scarcely legible. Continue reading →
