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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

Review: Gingerbread Toast Crunch

New Gingerbread Toast Crunch Review - Box

Just when I think I’m out…they pull me back in…like when a bad vaudeville actor gets pulled off stage with a cane…but in this case it’s like…a candy…cane…

Sorry, since I’ve been on a posting hiatus, I’ve forgotten how to smoothly start these things. Much-needed time off aside, I couldn’t just not break my break in order to review the cereal I’ve begged for the most over the course of this blog’s 8+ year existence. Seriously.

Simply put, I’ve been a gingerbread-loving lad since the day I first bit a man’s arm off (he was trying to steal my gingerbread cookies). That warm, molasses-soaked medley of spices…the fun of decorating and building elaborate edible architecture…the mythos of an uncatchable cookie cryptid…I just love it all to the point where you might as well call me The Gingerbread Dan.

And since I love cereal, too—especially the cookie-adjacent snickerdoodliciousness of the Toast Crunch family—combining gingerbread with Cinnamon Toast Crunch has always seemed like a no brainer. So while I’m surprised it took General Mills this long to pick the low-hanging gumdrop button, I’m just glad a box of Gingerbread Toast Crunch is finally nestled in my loving arms—just in time for Halloween to shamble back into its sarcophagus and the Thanks-mas-Year’s-Eve juggernaut to protect me from old man winter’s seasonally depressive ilk with festive cheer.

You are my talisman of power, Gingerbread Toast Crunch: now let’s find out if your taste is worth the wait. Continue reading

Review: Carmella Creeper + Monster Mash Remix Cereals

New Carmella Creeper Cereal Review - Box

Is Carmella Creeper good?

Yes!! Not only is it my undying delight to see a new Monster grace shelves—the first since 1987’s Fruity Yummy Mummy—but to see an actual female cereal mascot for once is refreshing, especially in the sausage fest that is the breakfast aisle.

(No, mentally unstable bovines and anthropomorphized marshmallows don’t really count as representation.)

Furthermore, Carmella is just cool. Billed as the long-lost cousin of Franken Berry (however the murky genealogy of lab-created lifeforms works), she’s a hip ‘n’ happenin’ DJ who would never be caught un-undead with the likes of someone lame enough to still use the phrase “hip ‘n’ happenin'”. Though that wouldn’t stop me from uncool-ly inviting her to get gas station sushi and play Kirby Air Ride (she’d decline, but politely).

Wait, you were asking whether Carmella Creeper the cereal is good?

Oh, heavens, no. Not at all. No no no no. Continue reading

Review: Maple Brown Sugar Chex

New Maple Brown Sugar Chex Review – Box

Dearest Corn,

Look, I know I’m probably the last person you want to receive a letter from. In fact, you probably called me a “mother-shucker” and popped a movie-theater-buttered blood vessel just seeing my name on the envelope. But I owe you an apology. Several, actually.

I’m sorry for blaming the death of the already undead Monster Cereals on you. I’m sorry for calling you “a starchy scourge that’s turned the cereal industry into a (literal) husk of what it once was.” And I’m sorry I double-dipped that tortilla chip in the guac when no one was looking.

Because the truth is, while, yes, 99% of modern cereals that use your milled flour as a base turn out to be terrible—as the flavors basted on top struggle to contend with your maize-y twang—there’s also another kernel of truth that says there are good corn cereals. In fact, there are corn cereals as outstanding in their field as the scarecrows that guard them. These mostly include those cereals that wear their corniness on their weathered flannel sleeves: the Corn Flakes, Corn Pops, and dearly departed Corn Bran Crunches of this world.

And yes, Corn Chex, too.

You see, I’ve noticed something: amongst all the endlessly reproducing Chex varieties, whose choices of base grain always seem arbitrary, the corn ones always trump the rice ones. Honey Nut Chex? Peanut Butter Chex? The likes of Blueberry and Apple Cinnamon are glass cannons of flavor-blasted blandness in comparison to you, corn, and your comparative golden-toasted heartland heartiness.

Now, Maple Brown Sugar Chex belongs amongst that elite Chexian Corps., too.

So here’s to you, corn. You’re a hull of a guy, after all. 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?

News: General Mills’ 2023 New Cereal Lineup

General Mills New 2023 Cereals

Ugh, every year they just keep moving it up, huh? I mean, the squirrel-munched remnants of Halloween are only just starting to mushify on our nation’s porches, yet their noble decomposition is already being overshadowed by all this jolly merriment. It’s really the ultimate disrespect to Thanksgiving, if you ask me, to see its stuffing of legends snubbed in favor of the feasting to come.

The break-feasting, that is.

Oh, sorry, did you think I was talking about the Christmas creep? Oh (ho ho), no: I’m referring to a different phenomenon I’m dubbing the Cereal…uh, squirm? See, January is the hottest month of the year for new cereal news, and usually the industry’s big-name breakfasters at least wait until late November to tease their New Year’s Resolution busters. But it seems General Mills just couldn’t wait to spill the beans, oats, and marbits, because their January lineup was announced just today. In fact, you might even be able to find them in the nebulously unnamed “select stores” this very month.

And folks, this munchable menagerie’s a good’n. Let’s take a look (long before we can take a bite). Continue reading

Review: Franken Berry and Boo Berry Yoplait Yogurts

Franken Berry and Boo Berry Yogurts Review.- Packaging

Oh, Trix Yogurt, how I’ve missed you.

Not in a “physical scarcity” sense, mind you. Trix Yogurt took a 5 year hiatus from shelves around 2016, so yes, for a while, that nostalgic itch was impossible to scratch (unless you were a lunchlady, because you could still order the stuff from General Mills’ foodservice catalogue). But even since Trix Yogurt made its triumphant return in the spring of 2021, I still haven’t bought any. I guess I just unconsciously consigned it to the museum of memory: a glimmering pastel relic of a treasured past whose shine I dare not spoil by revisiting it with an adult’s jaded taste buds. Much like Oreo Cakesters, which I also haven’t eaten since their re-continuation, I simply doubted I could go on living if my favorite childhood yogurt wasn’t as good as I remembered.

But with the launch of these new Franken Berry and Boo Berry Yogurts from Yoplait, I finally have an impossible-to-ignore reason to try these two-toned treats again. See, when Trix Yogurt returned last year, they came back in “Strawberry” and “Berry” flavors, making it pretty clear that “Screamin’ Strawberry” and “Boo Blueberry” are just the Trix Rabbit’s cultured progeny wearing Monster Cereal masks.

That may be a little lazy, but I’ll never blame General Mills for expanding the Monsters’ reach beyond the cereal aisle, whether that’s in the form of cookies, Fruit Roll-Ups, or otherwise. Long live the Count & Co.! Continue reading

Review: Pillsbury Monster Cereal Shape Cookies – Count Chocula & Franken Berry!

New Pillsbury Monster Cereal Shape Cookies Review - Box

I’ll just say it: Count Chocula and Franken Berry don’t understand Halloween. Fun-sized Snickers and whimsical apple-Roberting aside, the holiday is supposed to be scary: slashers, head bashers, teeth gnashers and all that heebie-jeebie jazz.

Yet this toothsome twosome is hawking us Pillsbury shaped sugar cookie dough that’s safe to eat raw? Where’s the danger? The thrill? Risking salmonella is half the fun—I mean, at least throw a couple loose jagged metal shavings into the mix, keep it interesting. Some eccentric bug larvae, or mutagenic research chemicals, maybe.

Oh well, I guess I’ll have to manufacture my own danger by eating these aw shucks sugar pucks fresh out of the oven, while they’re still monstrously molten. Continue reading