As the “days until Halloween” counter drips lower than fake blood from a vampire Basset Hound’s mouth, I think I still have enough spice in my own blood to crank out one more pumpkin cereal review. Besides my annual Monster Cereal analyses, I usually don’t like to re-review the same product multiple years in a row. But like parents whose troubled child keeps getting sent to the principal’s office for doodling giant kaiju lobsters instead of focusing*, we need to talk about Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s.
*I decline to comment on whether this comes from my own personal experience with crustacean artistry.
See, I reviewed Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s last year and quite liked them—I gave them a 7/10 for their authentic pumpkin flavor and brown sugar finish. But as I dug into my box this year, prepared for another raucous round of good ol’ fashioned barnyard vegetable fun, I was left with the pained frown of a toddler being forced to eat his own barnyard vegetables.
I don’t know if Trader Joe’s actually changed their Pumpkin O’s recipe or if my taste buds have just undergone a Wolfman-esque transformation in the past year, but I’ve got Bill Murray on speed dial anyway, because there’s definitely something strange in this cereal neighborhood.
These beige O’s have an uncomfortably hollow and sharp crunch that bristles my taste buds like a firm handshake with a prickly pumpkin stem. This popping crispiness devolves into an even weirder gumminess as I chew on.
I blame this masticatory madness on Pumpkin O’s composition. See, there are 4 main base ingredients that are used for cereal—wheat, corn, oats, and rice—and Trader Joe’s decided to pick arguably the least flavorful of the bunch to form his Pumpkin O’s: brown rice. Sure, Pumpkin O’s contain oats, too, but brown rice takes center stage in these center-less rings. Brown rice definitely bring an earthy starch flavor, but it also brings voluminous craters of airy “bleh.”
To better see what I mean, observe this cross-sectional comparison between a Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O and a Cheerio. While the latter is fluffy and densely packed, my beefier orange circle has enough honeycombed, tongue-lacerating layers to make even a Crunchberry feel shocked and appalled. Not to mention that, like those trendy aerated chocolates, I feel like I’m paying more to eat less.
The flavor is also an odd beast. Last year I compared it to a cinnamon and brown sugar-encrusted squash, and while that assessment holds up, I find myself tasting more sinisterly sugared vegetable vibes in 2016. As I chewed on and the shiny syrup glaze kicked in, my crackling rice Pumpkin O’s began to taste like an overripe sweet potato stuffed with unflavored Pop Rocks.
But it’s not all bad. Milk helps things. The nearly cloying cane sugar syrup coating is distilled into a creamy, autumnal milk cocktail—imagine some fanciful hipster “all natural” Pumpkin Spice Latte. Meanwhile, the rough, dry, and cinnamon-spiced O’s have their aggressive textures tamed by milk’s cool temper. Despite this, I couldn’t get over the porous crunch. I know there are other cereals out there with skeleton marshmallows, but this one felt most like eating a bowl of bones.
Maybe I’m wrong about all of this and either A) I got a bad box of Pumpkin O’s, or B) my taste buds are just having a bad hair day, so to speak. There are certain groups of people Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s will still appeal to:
- Those desiring a hyper-realistic canned pumpkin or harvest vegetable taste in their breakfast.
- Actual farmers who have had trouble dicing their gourds into bite sized ovals. and
- All those aunts who love to bring sugar-free pumpkin desserts to Thanksgiving dinner and claim they taste “just as good as the real thing.”
The rest of us pumpkin spice addicts are better off saying “Boo!” from the sidelines as we massage our aching palates and self-medicate with Pumpkin Spice Cheerios underneath the cozy linen of our sheet ghost costumes.
The Bowl: Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s Cereal
The Breakdown: Either they’ve changed or I’ve changed, but Pumpkin O’s now seem too light, too rough, and too ripe to be anything more than Halloween trail mix (which is 95% candy corn any way) supplements.
The Bottom Line: 4 Dan Aykroyd restraining orders out of 10
(Quick Nutrition Facts: 110 calories, 1 gram of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein per 1 cup serving)
I just had a bowl (almost) of these, and because I hate to waste food or contribute to same (I’m sure the local TJ’s where we got it will probably just chuck the rest of the box I bring in; food safety rules), I’m looking for recipes I can use these in. Basically, bleagh. I’ve been a devoted Joe’s O’s (basically, Cheerios without the brand name) fan for years, and yeah, I noticed the different hollowness, but worse: you can’t leave them sitting in the milk for any length of time (unlike O’s) without them puffing up and getting massively soggy; you can’t drink the milk afterwards, due to the slimy sugar; I didn’t notice the pumpkin flavor or even the spices, because it was Way. Too. Sweet. Bleagh. 😛
If someone out there does have a recipe using these things in anything other than a bowl of milk (bleagh!), please let me know. 😉
I wasn’t impressed with this cereal either too hard was expecting more of the multi grain pumpkin cheerios It reminds me of a mildly flavored captain crunch. Was disappointed
UGH hated these!!! I was so hoping to like them. It reminded me of frosted cheerios and I did not even taste the pumpkin in them. Too sugary, no richness, and texture was like cheap cardboard. So sad. i wanted these to be good.
I’m pretty sure they changed – I noticed the exact same thing and I’m sad.
Phew: it’s good to hear I’m not the only one, even though it’s sad to hear that Pumpkin O’s have universally changed.
I like the flavor of these, finding it to be more pumpkin than pumpkin spice. The texture is rough for sure. I feel the same about Sprinkle Donut Crunch, where air bubbles make up most of the volume, and they cut the hell out of your mouth because they’re so hard.
I recommend eating these dry, as a snack, rather than with milk.