Tag Archives: 5 rating

Classic Review: Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Cereal

Kellogg's Raisin Bran Cereal Review Box

If keeping up-to-date on new cereals is this website’s main mission, then its side quest is to review every kind of raisin bran available on shelves. To everyone out there who hates raisin bran: I’m sorry, but I have to do this for me. As a self-appointed man of the bran, I want my legacy to be “mild-mannered dude with a bizarre passion for pairing dried, wrinkly fruit with grains and milk.”

That phrase better be in my eulogy, or else I swear I’m haunting all of you.

I’ve made good progress on my raisin bran review journey: from the world’s first raisin to undoubtedly the world’s best (so far), I’ve populated Cerealously with enough synonyms for “juicy raisins” to make a thesaurus go extinct. Of course, there are some notable absences—Raisin Nut Bran’s life-changing nut-covered raisins come to mind—and some that slipped into discontinuation before I could photograph them—rest in lame, flavorless pieces, Total Raisin Bran—but the biggest name missing from my raisin bran library has always been Kellogg’s plain ol’, original Raisin Bran.

I think it’s time we put this case to rest—and put the 98% of my readers who don’t care about raisin bran to sleep. Continue reading

Review: Trader Joe’s Tart Cherry, Chia and Pumpkin Seed Oatmeal

Trader Joe's Cherry, Chia and Pumpkin Seed Oatmeal Cup

Consider the humble cherry.

Long-overshadowed by strawberry, the people’s champion, and grape, its cheaper taste analogue, cherry has been trapped in a breakfast aisle pitfall for decades. Sure, there’s Frute Brute, who’s currently trapped in General Mills’s monster mausoleum  for…well…ever, probably. And there are Cherry Pop-Tarts, who go unnoticed like the rosy-cheeked nerd girl in every teen movie whose sweetness is only revealed to the one boy brave enough to give her a chance (my Pop-Tart metaphors are complex).

But other than those two and a few obscure health cereals, cherry is very rarely seen as breakfast fare. Which is unfair, because any fruit that tops sundaes and acts as the Kool-Aid Man’s lifeblood deserves a spot at my table.

Thankfully, Trader Joe—a longtime liberator of unsung and under-appreciated flavors—is giving cherry a shot in his latest instant oatmeal cup. This is the same Joseph who once one-upped Pop-Tarts by cramming both cherry and pomegranate into a single toaster pastry,  a mad feat I haven’t seen since 1998, when The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, sending him plummeting 16ft through an announcer’s table.

Staying true to his squirrelly status as “the Uncle Joey of grocery stores,” Trader Joe also stuffed chia and pumpkin seeds into this plastic oat cylinder. Let’s celebrate the dawn of spring by watching this one blossom in the microwave. Continue reading

Review: Kellogg’s Limited Edition Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch

Limited Edition Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch Cereal Box

Well, you know what this means, folks. Now that I’ve reviewed Pumpkin Spice Cheerios and Pumpkin Spice Life, once I review this Special K Pumpkin Spice Crunch, I’ll have tried every new pumpkin spice cereal, and 2016’s pumpkin spice season will be over.

Harvesters will cease harvesting. Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte taps will run dry. And maniacally grinning jack-o-lanterns will become mild mannered office workers once more.

Nah, I’m just kidding. We all know there’ll be a million new pumpkin spice breakfast bars, Greek yogurts, and Greek yogurt-filled breakfast bars on shelves before I even click the “Publish” button on this post.

But while we wait for that Nutri-Grain Bar Nutri-nitty-gritty to befall us, let’s fall into a bowl of pumpkin spice Special K instead. Continue reading

Review: Annie’s Organic Berry Bunnies Cereal

Annie's Organic Berry Bunnies Box

“No no, you must have misheard me,” I said to the cashier. “I want to buy Annie’s Berry Bunnies cereal, not Very Moneys cereal. In fact. I don’t think Very Moneys is even grammatically correct.”

And that’s how I ended up making a cashier grimace and walking home with a $5+ box of cereal.

I’ve joked before about how Annie’s three new organic cereals are hare-raisingly expensive, and how in the case of Frosted Oat Flakes, it made me not want to purchase them again. Yet here I am, pouring another bowl of mauve & marmalade colored baby rabbits. If you weren’t impressed enough with those color names, allow me to consult my Behr Paint Color Guide and get even more specific:

“…another bowl of Muscat Grape and Acapulco Sun colored baby rabbits.”

There, that one would make even a Home Depot employee proud.

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Review: Kellogg’s Krave S’Mores

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So this is what Smorz died for?

Of course, Smorz was resurrected this January through some happy cereal voodoo, but times were darker before then. When Kellogg’s announced in 2013 that Smorz was being replaced by Krave S’Mores after 10 years as a fan favorite, tempers were more fiery than a misplaced campfire marshmallow. Smorz fans everywhere treated Krave S’Mores like the brother-murdering, ugly Uncle Claudius of the cereal aisle.

Krave in general has a dedicated camp who vocally dislike it, but as an equally vocal defender of the Krave brand, I felt the need to stand up for Krave S’Mores. When kids complained to their mothers in the cereal aisle, I flipped over shopping carts to send a message. When people spoke ill of Krave S’Mores petitions online, I “Rickrolled” every single one of them.

Okay, neither of these are true. But I did Rickroll myself once. Somehow.

But do Krave S’Mores deserve my “Pedro’s cousins from Napoleon Dynamite” levels of protection? Let’s risk it for the chocolatey marshmallow-filled biscuit and find out.

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Review: Kellogg’s Batman vs. Superman Rice Krispies Treats

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Superman stands confidently, his hands on his hips and his feet floating some six inches off the ground. “I’m the Son of Krypton, the Man of Steel! I’m impervious to bullets and faster than a speeding one. You’re only a man. How can you ever hope to stop me?”

Batman’s eyes glow as he pulls a glimmering, foil-wrapped rectangle from his utility belt. “With Rice Krispies Treats.”

Superman scorches the Krispies into dust with a blink of his heat vision.

Batman looks defeated. “Damn, I packed that for my snack! You better not melt my Capri-Sun and Ziploc baggie of Oreos, too.”

It should come as a surprise to no one that instead of going out to watch the new Batman vs. Superman movie, I’m indoors writing terrible fan fiction about this box of BvS branded Rice Krispies Treats. Each treat comes adorably wrapped and ready for parents to pack for school lunches (uh, sorry about that one, Bruce Wayne). The Treats are adorned with rainbow “candy coated chocolate pieces,” but for Batman’s sake, we’d better hope the green pieces are made of Kryptonite.

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Review: Kashi GoLean Peanut Hemp Crunch Plant-Powered Bar

IMG_4446Imagine this “Choose Your Own Adventure:”

Your eyes jolt open. You feel more rested than usual, and as you look at the clock and experience a mild heart attack, you realize why—you slept through your alarm!

After dancing your way through a frantic shower (no one’ll notice the shampoo still dripping from your ears, right?) and flailing into dress clothes, you’re about ready to leave before you conclude that if you don’t grab some breakfast, your growling stomach might roar you off the side of the road.

Bursting into your pantry, you have three choices:

A) A bowl of Raisin Bran with milk (eaten with one hand on the steering wheel)

B) A slab of bacon (cooked on a portable skillet plugged into your cigarette lighter)

C) A Kashi GoLean Peanut Hemp Crunch Plant-Powered Bar

If you chose A or B, prepare for a tragic “THE END” to your milk-soaked adventure. But if you chose C like me, turn to the next page and we’ll see if our breakfast choice was any more satisfying than a roadside bacon grease third degree burn. Continue reading

Review: Kellogg’s Blueberry with Vanilla Drizzle Mini-Wheats Harvest Delights

IMG_4262Last episode on: “Cerealously’s Milk-Soaked Adventures in Breakfast World”

Dan was not thrilled with Mini-Wheats Cranberry Harvest Delights. When the Mini-Wheats attacked, Dan attempted to coax some sense of goodness out of the cough syrupy cranberry purée buried deep into each  tumbleweed of a biscuit. But their mere kiss of yogurt flavor was not enough.

As a result, Dan was ready to kiss the Harvest Delights brand goodbye, until an impartial jury of Internet commenters convinced him to give the Blueberry Vanilla variety a try. Apprehensive, hungry, and—for some reason—a little sweaty, Dan conceded.

We now join our cereal hero (we only call him a hero because he likes hero sandwiches), already locked into a stare down with a box of Mini-Wheats Blueberry Vanilla Harvest Delights.

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