Tag Archives: cheerios

Review: Cereal Time Cereals – Season 2!

Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca Custom Cereal Boxes

Following the heralding Thanks of this past week, the season of giving can truly commence. I see no better way to start than by giving Gabe Fonseca’s latest generously and genuinely cereal-smithed quartet of Cereal Time breakfast OCs.

If you haven’t already subscribed to Cereal Time on YouTube, I recommend it. Not only is it a great retrospective counterpart to the modern crunchy journalism done here, but Gabe is dedicated enough to the cereal craft to have helped me out innumerable times with cereal knowledge and memorabilia.

And then after that, he has the nerve to still be nice enough to create fully realized cereal properties and send them as gifts! In comparison, I’m the kind of Grinch that would give burnt Grape-Nuts hunks for Christmas. Nor is it the first time: Gabe’s first wave of creations spanned everything from Gracelandic nutter ‘nanners to unfiltered gingerbread ore.

But can Gabe’s second take on bespoke breakfasts live up to his own standards, or will I sophomore slump face-first into my Piña ColadO’s? Allow me to pop, Ziploc and drop the facts on you. Continue reading

News: Cheerios Oat Crunch – Oats ‘N Honey Cereal!

New Oats 'N Honey Cheerios Oat Crunch Cereal Box

Forget Star Wars and assorted superheroes: this is the most-anticipated sequel of 2019.

For many moons now, Cinnamon Cheerios Oat Crunch has been a sleeper hit amongst wizened breakfasters—in fact, it’s tied with Chocolate Peanut Butter for the title of my favorite Cheerio variety currently on shelves. With the kind of crispety crunchiness that could earn a lawsuit from Butterfinger, the Cheerios Oat Crunch lineage was practically begging for a breath of fresh heirs—the flavor potential is pretty much endless.

And now, over a year later, we’re finally getting a new taste. While it may be the most obvious variety the folks behind Honey Nut Cheerios could do, and while it’s pretty oat-vertly redundant in concept, the only thing I can fault Oats ‘N Honey Cheerios Oat Crunch for is its questionable use of a single apostrophized capital N in lieu of just about any other symbolic or textual conjuration of the word “and.”

(I get it, it’s technically grammatically acceptable, but flanking one side and not the other really has me peev’d.)

But hey, I break writing conventions by the bowlful, so I should stay excited for what may be 2019’s brightly honeyed dark horse—which has already been spotted on shelves!

Review: Toasted Coconut Cheerios

New Toasted Coconut Cheerios Review Cereal Box

Listen, I’ve been cereal blogging for four and a half years now. After about two, adjectival creativity gets tough.

I mean, even for a concept as broad as cereal, there aren’t that many words to clearly convey its flavor without getting too hokey—which I still do, to the point of putting the wrong words in and taking the right words out before I shake the sentence all about.

Sweet. Buttery. Toasted. Crunchy. I pray for anyone who’s been diligently reading long enough to count how many times I’ve even stooped to using more idiosyncratic descriptors like “hedonistic,” “sugar soaked,” or “droolbending.”

Actually, wait, I should use that last one more.

Regardless, if cereal adjectives get stale, then specific flavor words are even worse. For example, after reviewing a lengthy patchwork of pumpkin spice products, I feel obligated to pay the hyphen in pumpkin-y overtime. And that’s nothing compared to the fines I owe Merriam Webster for unlicensed neologizing.

But there’s pumpkin spice, and then there’s coconut. At least PS has like five constituent spices I can rely on to split cloven hairs: once I use the phrase coconutty in this review, it’s all over for me…and there you have it. I’m all out of ideas. Well anyway, Toasted Coconut Cheerios are good. See you in the next one! Continue reading

News: Toasted Coconut Cheerios are Coming Soon!

New Toasted Coconut Cheerios Box

Quick: forget everything you know about fall.

That big holiday everyone loves? Oh, you mean Spooksgiving?

Crunchy stuff that falls from trees? Those are bird fossils. Don’t touch.

Don’t even get me started on PSLs. Palm Sauced Luau-fuel is what I call ’em. Yes, as Cheerios has proved, something as summery as Toasted Coconut should still be allowed to be a flavor for colder seasons—for, uh, some reason.

You might think that Toasted Coconut Cheerios are just an early leak for Summer 2020, but these tropical rings have already been spotted in the pre-wintertide wild:

With all kinds of “OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS,” Toasted Coconut Cheerios will soon join a proud lineage of seasonal Cheerios. But whether it successfully staves off fall fatigue—or if it’s a bit more forgettable—remains to be seen, spiced, and sighed through autumn’s crisp, whispering winds.

Err, I mean, “Summer’s 3-Month Yawn.”

Review: Blueberry Cheerios

General Mills New Blueberry Cheerios Review Cereal Box

With Violet Beauregarde, one of the Blue Man Group guys (the quiet, sensitive one), and Paul Giamatti’s character Marty Wolf in the seminal 2002 classic film Big Fat Liar as my witnesses, I will never stop preaching the good word of Kellogg’s Fruity Snacks—specifically the blueberry ones.

Ever since Scooby-Doo fruit snacks, another object of my analogical fixation, changed their packaging and recipe for the worse, Kellogg’s Fruity Snacks are undoubtedly the best bite-sized bits of gelatin you can find in the Snacks, Etc. aisle. In fact, I’d say they’re third in my personal gummy candy fandom, surpassed only by blue sharks (essentially blueberry Fruity Snacks that’ve evolved predatory instinct) and Venus de Milo herself.

Yes, the potently juicy flavor of each Kellogg’s Fruity Snack, be it straw-, rasp-, or blueberry, is both refined and instantly recognizable. But it’s that last cerulean snack—which I also love for looking like a video game mana potion—that I’ve most wanted to see translated into a cereal again. Too often in mixed berry cereals, the flavor scientists paint the whole flavortown red, giving little leeway for the subtlety of blueberry to shine through. Yet every time there’s been an exception, the result is wonderful—even if it inevitably results in discontinuation, too. Whether they’re Tiny Toasts (turned Toast Crunches) or Muffin Tops that inspire sponsored meals, blueberry cereal is a refreshing, yet underrated experience—much like the first swing set underdog during a brisk late-fall recess.

The moment I heard about Blueberry Cheerios, I hoped this was my chance to taste blueberry gummy jam spread across toasted grain once more. So no pressure, General Mills: but if you get this one wrong, you’ll have to sculpt me a gummy Dionysus as penance.

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News: Blueberry Cheerios are Officially Coming Soon!

New Blueberry Cheerios Cereal 2019

If you read my earlier post—which I’ve now updated—on Toy Story 4 Cereal and were rendered sleepless with anticipation for the visual discovery of the mentioned Blueberry Cheerios, you can quite literally rest assured: thanks to a recent business press release from General Mills, we now have our first whole-grainy look at the latest performance patch to America’s favorite cereal rings.

These indigo oats are the latest in a storied run of blueberry General Mills cereals, whose likes include Blueberry Chex and the late Blueberry Toast Crunch (née Tiny Toast). While I wholly trust GM to continue their successful blue streak—a trail of glory that apparently left Boo Berry behind in the corny dust decades ago—I’m most excited to see how Blueberry Cheerios evolve Very Berry Cheerios. I know that cereal has its fans, but I personally thought blueberry’s talent was squandered behind strawberry and raspberry, whose shouting match of tastes left both them and me appropriately red in the face.

But I’ll quite brambling on about berry cereals and let you get back to feasting your eyes on the render above. It’s a beautiful box that, in addition to mimicking Blueberry Toast Crunch’s cardboard hues identically, also suggests that any bowl of Blueberry Cheerios will develop a massive, shadowy blueberry familiar capable of dragging your enemies into a nebulous cerulean void.

After all, revenge is a dish best served with cold milk.

Review: Maple Cheerios Cereal (2018 American Edition!)

General Mills American Maple Cheerios Cereal Review 2018 Box

Some flavors just stick.

S’Mores, brownie batter, caramel: all slightly unconventional flavors that, despite not being a honey nut, chocolate, or strawberry, always seem to find their way back into the breakfast aisle—and some how under our nails, in our hair, and even binding together electronics as a haphazard tape replacement.

What, you didn’t know toasted marshmallow was a great conductor?

In all seriousness, this class of adhesive alumni are led by their viscous valedictorian: maple syrup. A popular arboreal elixir in Vermont and Vancouver alike, maple is such a sticky flavor that Maple Cheerios, released last year as an allegedly Canada-exclusive cereal to celebrate the country’s 150th birthday (that’s a lot of pancake candles), has arrived in the U.S.

Must’ve stuck to the bottom of a border-crossing General Mills truck, hence the spilled-syrup maple leaf—I can only assume this is a government-issued Canadian seal of approval, like how America’s exported cereals must get ranch & mayonnaise stars & stripes. Continue reading

Review: Cheerios Cinnamon Oat Crunch Cereal

General Mills Cheerios Cinnamon Oat Crunch Cereal Review Box

Which cereals go to the gym?

It’s becoming easier to tell. Previously, it was clear that the burly likes of Raisin Bran and Grape Nuts totally work out—and that Wheat on the bench press? Totally Shredded—while Tony the Tiger’s protein-deprived Frosted Flakes definitely skip leg day.

But other classic cereals? Unclear. But with the release of Cheerios’ new Cinnamon Oat Crunch cereal, we know original Cheerios must be wimpy as a honey-soaked pool noodle, because these oat-specked rings are true cereal alpha grains.

Evoking the appearance of both Cheerios Protein and Honey (née Graham) Oh’s, Cinnamon Oat Crunch Cheerios trade muscly protein for stomach-rumbling fiber, with some remaining from the scaly layer of oat shard coating each like wholesome armor.

I’ve heard good things leading up to this review, so I’m ready to go toe-to-toe in the ring (my bowl) with this no pain, no grain gym rat.

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