Tag Archives: cocoa puffs

Review: General Mills Loaded Cereals (Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, Cocoa Puffs)

General Mills New Loaded Cereals Review Boxes

Oh, filled cereals—is there any cereal subgenre with a legacy as troubled as yours?

Perhaps it all started with 1993’s Hidden Treasures, a high-concept cereal that paired hollow cereal pieces with a trio of fruit-filled ones for breakfasters to serendipitously spoon. Heck, there was even a codex for determining which pieces held which fruit: “Pieces with a seam very close to the edge had a grape filling, off-center seams had orange, and directly center seams had cherry.”

And while Hidden Treasures is remembered incredibly fondly by today’s nostalgic noshers, it only lasted on shelves for two years, either due to poor sales or the high cost of producing a breakfast cereal elaborate enough to require a field guide.

Thus began the curse of the filled cereal: if you’re a crisped biscuit with a lil somethin’ in the center, you were destined for either discontinuation (like Pop-Tarts Cereal) or divisiveness (like Krave, which, despite being a cereal aisle mainstay and one of my personal favorites, seems to be deeply hated by about 50% of those who try it).

That leads us to today: these three Loaded Cereals are, in fact, General Mills’ third attempt at a post-Hidden Treasures filled cereal revival. First we had the ill-fated Fillows, whose dense, dessert-like decadence didn’t land with those seeking morning meals that wouldn’t leave them anchored, bloated and drooling, to their breakfast tables. Then there were General Mills Filled Bites, which were basically just Fillows all over again, and, as such, they never made it out of test markets.

Which is a huge bummer, since I, as a shamelessly indulgent density devotee, loved both Fillows and the Filled Bites. But perhaps there’s room in my heart to try again. So give me your best shot, Loaded Cereals…before you end up disappearing and breaking that very same heart again. Continue reading

Bite-Sized Reviews: Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs & Cap’n Crunch’s Merry Berries Popcorn

The latest in my light/bite-speed review series of cereals that aren’t novel enough to justify full Tolstoyan treatises: two holiday season quasi-re-releases that, though they are both outstandingly simple, feel very cozy if you can enjoy them while watching flurries fall outside your window (earmuffs and electric blanket optional, but highly recommended).

News: Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs

Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs

Bullying works!

See, when Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs debuted way back in 2017, I made fun of the name for being redundant and clumsy to say. Now, the concept of wintery marshmallow’d Cocoa Puffs is back from its four-year embarrassment-induced hibernation, and with a less tongue-twisting name. Sure, “Hot Cocoa” is still the flavor descriptor—despite no one in their right mind actually eating hot Cocoa Puffs—but “Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs” sounds a lot neater.

Sadly, the cereal itself will probably be more tongue-tiring than tempting. Looking back at my Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs review, it’s clear I need to get at least halfway through a box before giving it a full review, for while the charm of marbits and cocoa-powdered puffs was cozy at first, I remember getting really bored of the cereal’s one-note adequacy long before I finished it. Cocoa Puffs as a corn-based cereal has simply lost its luster in the face of other, better-base-grained chocolate cereals, plus the marbits are boring and Cocoa Puffs’ recent reformulation has left me distrustful of Sonny the Cuckoo and his bowl-gripping feathers…

…even if I happen to love his sweater, which makes the bird look like a Fat Albert side character.

Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs have already been spotted at Sam’s Club.

News: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn & Cocoa Puffs Popcorn

New Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn

Corn this, corn that: we get it, Big Cereal, you love corn. We might as well call you stalkers (get it?), what with the putting corn in our beloved, formerly oat-based cereals and now cereals in our popped corn. General Mills? More like…Colonel Mills (get it??)!

Sorry, I’m just a jealous, oat-loving son of a gun who can’t quit bellyaching. In reality, there are plenty of fine corn-based cereals—Corn Flakes, for example, or Corn Pops, or Corn Crunch. Really any corn cereal that’s transparent about how corny it’ll be. Oh, and popcorn is good, too. There are even other cereal-flavored popcorns that have been good—darn good, I might even say. So this new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn, which is already out at Sam’s Club, is probably going to be pretty darn/dang/dunk(?) good, too.

As shared by Cereal Life, Cocoa Puffs Popcorn is also coming to Sam’s Club this fall, if it isn’t at your local SC already. I’m particularly tickled by the idea of Cocoa Puffs Popcorn, since Cocoa Puffs (unlike CTC) is already a corn-based cereal. That makes Cocoa Puffs Popcorn a strange recontextualization of the classic cuckoo-fronted cereal, from puffed corn to popped corn. Honestly, if there’s a salty element to this popcorn, it’ll probably taste better than its namesake cereal, which I’ve recently criticized for its “More Chocolatey” reformulation, which is in reality, less chocolatey.

Have your tried either of these popcorns yet? Let me know, because without a membership, I might be forced to attempt the most weirdly specific panhandling routine the Sam’s Club parking lot has ever seen.

Review: Cocoa Puffs Oatmeal

New Cocoa Puffs Oatmeal Review Box

Extra, extra, cold cereal-flavored hot cereal! Get your cold cereal-flavored hot cereal here! Hot off the cold milk-inspired presses!

Sorry, I just think it’s really funny that oatmeal, despite being a hot cereal by definition, rarely gets treated like one. Sure, I’m partially to blame, since I rarely review oatmeal despite considering it part of my blog’s oeuvre. Why is that? Well, partly because new oatmeals don’t often generate enough buzz or PR for me to notice them, partly because oatmeal is miserably hard to photograph in an attractive light, and partly, honestly, because I tend to be really bad at making it without the whole bowl getting runnier than an Oregon Trail marathon.

That said, General Mills’ new line of oatmeals inspired by some of their most iconic cereals is far too exciting to ignore. Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, and Cocoa Puffs are all getting the hot mush treatment, but so far I’ve only been able to try the last of these. So for now, sit back as I go spoon deep in Sonny’s finest bowl of sweetly swollen oats. Continue reading

News: Barnes & Noble Cafe Trix & Cocoa Puffs Cookies

New Cereal Cookies at Barnes and Noble Cafe - Trix and Cocoa Puffs

They say hunger is the best spice, but I love a mustardy pop of obscurity on whatever I’m eating, too. Whether it’s a ultra-limited box art variant, a colorway rarer than a shiny Pokémon, or a very specific natural habitat, weird food only gets more weirdly interesting when you have to scavenge and/or hunt for it.

Case in point: the newest General Mills cereal cookies, debuting this month, that are exclusive to Starbucks locations within Barnes & Noble bookstores. This odd breed of a breakfast–dessert hybrid first surfaced last year, with a Cinnamon Toast Crunch cookie, and now Trix and Cocoa Puffs are joining the (probably not actually) fresh-baked fray. These really look like what-you-see-is-what-you-get cookies: Trix or Cocoa Puffs pieces melded with a sugar or chocolate cookie. So they’ll probably taste good, especially when paired with an iced black tea lemonade or mocha Frapp, respectively.

Oh, and I suppose you’ll need to buy a good book to pair with your little sip-n-sweet treat, huh? How about Grapity Grapes of Wrath and One Flew Over Sonny’s Nest?

Review: General Mills Ultimate Taste Comeback (Cookie Crisp & Cocoa Puffs)

General Mills Ultimate Taste Comeback Review Cocoa Puffs Cookie Crisp Boxes

Chocolatey & Fruity: the Adam & Eve of cereal flavors. Or to be more secular, the Dialga & Palkia. As two admittedly broad classifiers. Chocolatey & Fruity nevertheless encapsulate the vast majority of non-Honey Nut cereals—we’ll call that one Giratina.

But while “Fruity” is a very malleable term, representing every cornucopious blend from Trix to Froot Loops, “Chocolaty” deals primarily in shades of subtlety. Sure, texture aside, you could probably tell the tastes of Cocoa Puffs & Pebbles apart, yet daring revolutions in chocolate cereal technology are rare. Usually things just get fudgier, or tweaked with a supplementary flavor enhancement. I want to know what it tastes like when a cereal brand focuses on refining chocolate and chocolatey flavor alone, which is why General Mills’ Ultimate Taste Comeback—particularly the cocoa’d duo of the four—have high expectations to live up to.

Well that, and we’ve already been slightly disappointed by Retro Recipe Golden Grahams, as well as unimpressed that Ultimate Taste Comeback Trix didn’t actually change anything (further evidenced by the fact that when General Mills sent me all four cereals to sample, they included old Trix box art rather than the fresh, big rabbit-headed version seen in Ultimate Taste Comeback graphics).

Enough exposition! Let’s expose these Puffs and Cookies for what they really are… Continue reading

News: Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch is Returning for 2020!

2020 Return of Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch

Yes, Cocoa Puffs: think outside the sphere!

It may be a 9-year old idea, but Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch is a cereal I’ve wanted to see back on shelves for a while now—partly because I’ve never tried it, but mostly because it appears to be a blessed four-sided union between Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp, Chocolate Cheerios, and…Double Chocolate Krave?

Coming this August, 2020’s Cocoa Puffs Brownie Crunch mimics 2011’s box design right down to the oven mitts—the only thing missing this time is the unsettling chocolate schmear on Sonny’s face.

With this spring’s return of Fudge Brownie M&M’s, here’s hoping I won’t need to dunk a Duncan Hines-worth of those plunkers in a bowl of Brownie Crunch Cocoa Puffs to get the rich, eggy fudge goodness promised by a bold word like Brownie. But hey, if nothing else, there’s always a quart of Dutch chocolate milk to do the dirty work for me.

Our thanks again to Cereal Life, who appears to have a very valuable GM inside scoop, for the tip.