Tag Archives: cinnamon

News: 3 New Special K Flavors, Coming this January

Special K Chocolate Almond

Wow, three whole Special K flavors? Hitting stores this January? What a tr—hey, you: wake up! I get it, new Special K news doesn’t exactly wow me, either, but that’s not excuse to fall asleep in the back of class. This will be on the test, you know.

And hey, new Special K cereals aren’t always (entirely) boring. I mean, c’mon, there was that okay chocolate-dipped one last year, the genuinely tasty blueberry lemon yogurt one five years ago, and the cinnamon apple one from…aw, geez. Seven years ago? Fine, I agree: three above average new cereals over the entire tenure of this blog isn’t exactly a storied legacy, but at least the first of this incoming Special K trifecta looks promising. High Protein Chocolate Almond sounds decadent, and since “high protein” usually correlates to “high calorie” in the breakfast aisle, we can at least trust this one to be sweet and filling enough to be worth the effort it takes to chew its densely grained nuttiness. Continue reading

News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Stuffed Puffs Marshmallows

New Cinnamon Toast Crunch Stuffed Puffs Marshmallows

S’more…s’more never changes…

Well, that is, until now. Stuffed Puffs is a small company looking to shake up the way you snack, toast, and play Chubby Bunny with marshmallows, via their signature process of cramming stuff into the center of the squishy little niblets.

And now via a coveted collab with General Mills, these indie darling ‘mallows are taking mainstream munching by storm. Coming exclusively to Walmart (no word when yet, besides the ambiguous soon), Cinnamon Toast Crunch “Big Bites” stuffed marshmallows are filled with CTC-flavored creme and then further flavor-blasted with Cinnadust.

How do you feel about this upcoming crispy, chewy, creamy confection? Would they be perfect for a Nutella graham s’more, or are they perhaps a bit too niche to get enough use?

Bite-Sized Reviews: DC’s Strong Berry Cereal, Cinnamon Toast Crunch Rolls, and Bath & Body Works Rainbow Cereal Soap

*Jean-Ralphio voice*

I’m the woooorst!

Folks, I’ll admit: between my day job, other writing projects, and the *gestures vaguely at everything*, I still haven’t really been feeling the long-form blogging bug for the past couple months. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been slouching on new cereal news and taste tests. On both The Empty Bowl and my Twitter, I still regularly share my thoughts on everything new and crunchy (and in this case, soapy) at the breakfast table.

Here are a few of my recent itty-bitty breakdowns. Stay tuned for more (and hopefully lengthier) content soon!

 

Review: Strawberry Milkshake Frosted Flakes & Cinnamon French Toast Frosted Flakes

New Frosted Flakes Cereal Boxes

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

Review: General Mills Filled Bites (Prototypes?)

New General Mills Filled Bites Cereal Review – Boxes

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

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Creamy Cinnamon Spread

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Creamy Cinnamon Spread Review Jar

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

News: Snickerdoodle Pop-Tarts

New Snickerdoodle Pop-Tarts

Huh. Okay!

Sorry for lacking excitement on this one, but Snickerdoodle Pop-Tarts, debuting this May, just seem…redundant? I mean, what will they be able to do that P-T’s deuteragonist Brown Sugar Cinnamon hasn’t been doing so iconically for decades? And why do the sprinkles look like petri dish cultures? And why does the snickerdoodle cookie on the packaging simultaneously look like a cookie and, from a warped perspective, a loaf of bread?

Lots of quibbles and questions here, and my complaints are surely arbitrary, but in a world where we’ve still never seen like, a Honey Pop-Tart, it is a little disappointing to see Kellogg’s re-tread old sweet-breaded territory. Oh well! We all know I’ll still be cramming my Tart-hole like a sentient VCR come May.

News: General Mills Filled Bites Cereals

General Mills Filled Bites Cereals

General Mills has a commitment problem.

It seems whenever the cereal behemoth finally gets around to releasing a totally new cereal IP, they end up backtracking and lumping it in with an existing, already well-known cereal family. The highest profile case of this occurred with Tiny Toast, which, at the time, got a lot of publicity for being GM’s first truly new cereal brand in over a decade. However, a year later, Tiny Toast was, well, toast—and its two flavors became Strawberry and Blueberry Toast Crunch, both of which were discontinued not long after.

And now, this seems to be happening again, at least in some sense. Remember Fillows? The extremely dense and decadent filled pillow duo from 2019 which also got axed before releasing new flavors? Well, it appears they may be back, albeit with much more prominent cross-branding with existing General Mills properties.

The above photo of two Crispy & Creamy Filled Bites cereals comes courtesy of Michael B., from a Hy-Vee in Minneapolis that is apparently a test store for General Mills—which makes sense, given that’s where the corporation is headquartered. As a test item, it’s therefore unclear when these Filled Bites might hit stores nationwide, nor is it guaranteed that they’ll even get a conventional release at all.

Either way, I sure hope they do. I thought Fillows were criminally underrated as an uber-indulgent dessert cereal, and any cereal that gives Golden Grahams the spinoff respect it deserves is a must-try in my book. What do you think? Which would you try first?