Tag Archives: cerealously

National Cereal Day News Round-Up

Happy National Cereal Day! Y’know, the day that always sneaks up on me because it falls on such an innocuous date that I end up scrambling to write something for it around 7 at night.

I wish I could celebrate this National Cereal Day with better news, but you’ve probably noticed Cerealously posts have been pretty few and far between lately. The reason why is a little hard to admit, but nevertheless I must be honest: keeping up with this blog just isn’t as fun as it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, I still love cereal, but as with anything you do again and again for a long time, after nearly 8 years of cranking out wordy reviews for every new cereal to hit shelves, it’s gotten a little tiring—and often feels more like an obligation than a relaxing hobby. Not to mention, changes in my personal and professional spheres, as well as new writing and creative projects, have taken up a lot of my free time and energy.

So, sorry to say, but probably don’t expect an uptick in posting frequency any time soon. For Cerealously’s first 7 years or so, I almost never took more than a couple days between posts, so I hope you can understand why I need a little break—until I can confidently say that cereal blogging is fun again, rather than because I feel I have to. I won’t call this a formal hiatus, since I’m sure I’ll pop in with a review or two now and again, but I nevertheless look forward to returning refreshed and hungry when the time is right. My deepest thanks to all of you, long-time readers and newcomers alike. If it weren’t for you all, I would’ve stopped years ago. Be sure to sign up for email updates through the site’s sidebar if you’d like to be immediately notified when I make my grand return.

Rest assured, though: I’ll still be doing The Empty Bowl and posting cereal news etc. on my Twitter. Again, it’s all about time, rather than a lack of subject matter passion, and recording a podcast or shooting off a tweet is way easier than a 700-word blog post.

That said, I’d feel bad leaving you on National Cereal Day with only a sad little “see ya later”—that’d be like getting broken up with on Valentine’s Day. So let’s round up a handful of exciting cereal-aisle developments from the past week or so, shall we? Continue reading

Counting Down the 5 Best Cereals of 2022!

Top 5 Cereals of 2022

Woof, what a year: and that’s saying something, since I’m a cat person.

I’ll be honest, this was the hardest end-of-year best-of list I’ve had to put together since starting this blog in 2015. Sad to say, but 2022 just was not a strong year for new cereals. You know it’s bad when two out of my top 5 released way back in January, and another didn’t even reach mainstream shelves at all.

I’m no economist, gastronomist, nor Nostradamus, so I really can’t make any authoritative statements on what went wrong with ’22’s meagre chews and what that bodes for the future of cereal, but if I could summarize my observations in two words, I’d go with misplaced innovation. I know that sounds heinous considering how big of a proponent I am for doing new things in the cereal aisle, but when those new things consisted mainly of collectible hypebeast box collabs and the kind of temperature thaumaturgy that resulted in the year’s two worst cereals, maybe by “innovation” I mean I just want to see decadent new flavor explorations, rather than flashy cardboard or outright alchemy.

But enough about the bad apples: let’s focus on the good noodles. Continue reading

Cerealously’s Top 5 New Cereal Releases of 2019!

Top 5 New Cereals - 2019

2019: cereal’s sophomore year of college.

I say that because, though the 1.5 century-old stuff made some great friends and memories this year, cereal also pulled some dumb shenanigans—as if it were trying to get hazed into a fraternity of goofy flavoring that it was really never cut out for.

Yes, decades from now, when cereal is telling its grandkids (named canned oatmeal & freeze-dried apocalypse biscuits) about these hectic post-halcyon days, we have to imagine it’ll grimace at the times it wore a meat dress and got sticky for no good reason.

In fact, just looking at the first three reviews I wrote this year pretty much gives you the full breadth of 2019’s cereal unorthodoxy. Pop-Tarts Cereal heralded the return of many other cult favorites. Sour Patch Kids Cereal puckered us up for freak incidents of cereal sensory overload. And Hostess’ inaugural pair of crunchable snack cakes showed us that Post means business.

But did any of those make my year-end cut of the tastiest, most creative and charming products of the past 365 days? Let’s count down like it’s Donkey…uh…Clown? Continue reading

Review: South Korean Oreo O’s RED & Peanut Butter O’s!

South Korean Oreo O's RED Cereal Review Peanut Butter Os Cereal Boxes

What better way to celebrate a special day than with two special cereals?

Or to be more sentimentally apt, what better way to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Cerealously.net than with a new variant of this blogger’s all-time favorite cereal?

Yes, it feels like I’ve preached the virtues of South Korean Oreo O’s so many times in the past four years that it borders on trite fanboyism at this point. But guess what? It’s my party, and I can gush about longitudinal variances in cocoa and marbit potency if I want to.

Especially since this occasion’s significance surpasses any individual’s milky milestone. Despite being voted the best Oreo O’s in their class by D.G. Power & Associates for the past half decade, South Korean Oreo O’s have never gotten a new flavor variant—a tragedy when we see just how lame America’s rebooted OO’s cinematic universe turned out.

Technically, there were Honey O’s bearing the aqueous mascot of Oreo O’s—a crossover we’ll see again later in the this article—but now the Oreo name and implied legacy officially endorse Oreo O’s RED, which is a Chocolate–Strawberry combo far more interesting than Golden or Mega Marbit Stuf’d.

In honor of Cerealously 4th birthday, I will humbly endure the jolly good burden of eating four bowls.

Continue reading

Cerealously’s Top 5 New Cereal Products of 2018

Best Cereal of 2018

Though 2019 has (at least, as of me writing this) yet to liberate me with its arbitrarily assigned opportunity for self-improvement and rebirth, I’m already esophagus-deep in the new year’s first trimester of fresh cereal madness.

Yes, to the bittersweet disdain of resolution-makers everywhere, the cereal industry always chooses to debut the bulk of its innovative ideas right around January. This means while others are hitting the gym, I’m working up a knuckle sweat trying to cover everything. So please bear with me if it takes a little while for me to review every Sourly Patched Kid and Honeyed Bun—the light at the end of the carpal tunnel is still but a sugary twinkle.

Though of course, that doesn’t mean I can’t make time for a Cerealously tradition: ranking my favorite releases of the previous year, to try and make some quasi-academic at best conclusion about who ‘won’ the last 365-day cereal war. 2018 was a year of much shade-slinging and cereal creativity. In fact, since there were so many good peripheral breakfast products this year, I’m opening up the rankings beyond just plain, milk-able cereals.

This is a rule I’ve already historically stretched, so I’m sure no one will mind if I turn this cereal blog into a brief breakfast bonanza. For richer or pourer, let’s do it!

Continue reading

Introducing The Empty Bowl Podcast!

Is separating your Reese’s Puffs into a two-toned sepia yin yang not bringing you peace?

Do you find Raisin Bran Crunch ASMR compilations more terrifying than tranquil?

And have therapists dismissed your destructive desire to go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?

If so, there’s a solution for you! I’m proud to help debut The Empty Bowl podcast. Hosted by me and advice-guru turned cereal-yogi Justin McElroy (of My Brother, My Brother & Me fame), this is a meditative podcast about cereal, designed to help you focus on the sense of slowed-down zen that comes with a well-proportioned bowl of morning cereal.

From the first clink of cereal in the bowl to the last slurp of endmilk, eating cereal is a calming ritual, and The Empty Bowl’s news recaps, mini reviews, and exciting variety segments aim to fill it with a calming white noise (the dairy kind, of course).

In our maiden cereal voyage, Justin and I discuss Monster Cereals, Malt-O-Meal & Cold Stone Creamery’s recent Our Strawberry Blonde, and the curious case of Cherry Vanilla Cheerios—here’s the YouTube video from that segment, just to make sure you see it in your nightmares later:

The show is available on a multitude of platforms you can discover from our hub on Anchor—I look forward to sharing more episodes soon!

I’d love to hear your feedback on the show so far, and if you have segment recommendations, feel free to send them our way in the comments or on Twitter.

And thank you all for supporting this blog for so long that I’m able to do this—at this rate we’ll have Cerealously’s Cutthroat Pantry on the Food Network by 2020, and Cerealously 4D: The Interactive VR Digestive Journey at Epcot by 2022.

But until then, feel free to ditch the essential Cap’n Crunch oils and lend us your ears!

Cerealously Turns 3!

Baby Cerealously is 3 Months Old

I’m getting old.

3. That’s like, 29 in blog years. I’m not ready to be outgrowing trendy latte bars!

But I realize the hypothetical age of this blog is entropically ambiguous, as I equally praise both the sugary innocence of Lucky Charms and the hearty sensibility of Raisin Bran, so let’s just agree that 3 is probably too old to be making extensive fanfare. That’s why I won’t be doing a quantitative analysis of score distribution this year—in blog years, that was decades ago! Numbers are a young man’s game!

But I will still say thank you to everyone who continues to read this site, and greetings to those who recently stumbled upon it and decided to stick around. I hope you like Simpsons references and six-adjective sentences. I mean it when I say your support inspires me to keep writing/crunching/munching/spooning.

In celebration I made this tiny cereal treat. It’s made from Kellogg’s recently released Birthday Cake Rice Krispies (read the review and see my other birthday cake product reviews here), and it sure isn’t Gordon Ramsay, but it’s better than a Gordon Food Service dumpster.

Here’s the recipe for all you Pinteresters out there.

1) Fashion one (1) Kellogg’s Birthday Cake Rice Krispies Treat into a roughly sprinkled pizza slice using a pizza cutter, knife, or spool of hot wire.

2) Feed the trimmin’s to your nearest Furby (or humans if you’re desperate).

3) Microwave a bundle (approximately two bunches of white chocolate chips (the chipperer the better: this is a birthday party!) for 64 seconds (give or take 32 seconds. you know how chocolate chips are).

4) Using a spool of hot wire (if you haven’t completed your hot wire certification, use a knife instead), spread the gooey white chocolate bog across the Rice Krispizza in a dolloped, classically Little Caesarian pattern.

5) Repeat Step 1, being sure to keep the A/C on (bogs bubble when warmed!).

6) Plant brick #2 on top brick #1.

7) Attempt and fail to PhotoShop out all the sticky bits.

Serve on marble and have a happy C3realously Day!

Review: Cereal Time Cereals, by Gabe Fonseca!

Cereal Time Cereals from Gabe Fonseca

If there’s one tangible distinction separating the rank of Cereal Knight from Cereal Master, it’s hand craftsmanship of one’s own cereal.

And while I once (keyword: once) tried baking my own “Golden Dan Grahams,” that particular odyssey ended with a smoking oven full of half-cooked honey cardboard crisps. So even though I may be on the Cereal Council, I’m okay with not being granted the rank of Master.

Because after receiving a surprise shipment of homemade cereals from Cereal Time historian Gabe Fonseca, I feel like a corn-puffed Padawan.

As an awe-inspiring holiday gift to a select crew of cereal lovers like me, Gabe made four cereals, complete with custom box art and prizes & trading cards inside. So as but a tiny, Chuck E. Cheese token-sized token of my gratitude—and in accordance with my responsibility as reviewer of all cool cereals—I’m gonna taste test them all. Because after taking just one look at his cosmonautical Neil deGrasse Tyson and Hunka Hunka Burning Monkey, I’m convinced these mascots could fit in on shelves next to the Trix Rabbit and Tony the Tiger.

Silly Neil: theoretical astrophysics is for kids! Continue reading