I have to say, that of all the ring-shaped foods out there, I’m pretty glad doughnuts are the only ones that have been into not just one cereal, but several.
It’s not that I wouldn’t love to try a bagel, ditalini pasta, bundt cake, or onion ring: it’s just that I think the world at large, in its current state, is not ready to handle such concentric, near-Olympian power in their breakfast bowl. It’d be like if the Chaos Emeralds married the Dragon Balls.
Whew, hope you’re still reading after that horrible intro. My doughnut-based creativity has run drier than a stale cruller after talking so highly about Kellogg’s other Donut Shop cereal: Pink Donut. That stuff tasted like delightful animal crackers, so like Lard Lad, I’m already holding this Donut Shop Chocolate Donut Cereal to high standards.
The people have spoken, and what they have said is, “we want Arctic dairy beverages distilled into rectangular toaster pastry form.”
Yes, after much clamoring from a cult of cow-juice junkies (in other words, fans), both Strawberry Milkshake Pop-Tarts and Vanilla Milkshake Pop-Tarts are coming back from whatever breakfast Hades Pop-Tarts shuffle off to when they’re discontinued from this mortal coil.
Both were originallky introduced in 2006 as part of Kellogg’s Ice Cream Shoppe line-up, which also included Ice Cream Sandwich Pop-Tarts—the fact that Kellogg’s morning necromancers skipped over that one will forever earn them my soft-served ire. And while Strawberry Milkshake got rave reviews and has since been the subject of countless Facebook petitions and annoying BuzzFeed nostalgia-holic listicles, I recall Vanilla Milkshake’s reception being more tepid—so I’m surprised to see it riding the coattails of its fruitier, more successful sibling.
Oh well, regardless, I’m triple-deckering both with a Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tart to make a Neapolitan pastry sandwich sharply sweet enough to carve a portal in space-time straight between Michigan and Renaissance-era Naples.
Every so often, a cereal appears that you didn’t know you needed in your life. That is, until you taste it and realize that a part of you—a small, quiet part chilling out near the gall bladder—has had its secret cravings fulfilled. Kellogg’s Pink Donut Cereal is one of those cereals.
Like Superman Cereal‘s Nilla Wafer-esque goodness or Chocolate Mini-Wheats‘ pangs of ice cream sandwich goodness, Pink Donut Cereal—one of two entries in Kellogg’s new Donut Shop cereal line (the other is chocolate)—fulfills a very specific and very nostalgic flavor niche. So before you go all hipster-vegan-doughnut-shop on me, turning your maple-bacon-ganache-primed nostrils up and saying, “Pshh, Kellogg’s just reused their Froot Loops shaped and called them doughnuts,” or, “Pink is not a flavor. She’s a wildly successful pop music artist whom I only enjoy ironically,” hear me out:
Kellogg’s Pink Donut Cereal is good, and it tastes like a very specific pink thing you already know and love. Continue reading →
Goodness knows that it’s been long enough since we’ve seen a Mario-themed breakfast cereal—28 years, in fact, since the Nintendo Cereal System, which packaged two bags of Mario and Zelda cereal in the same box. A man works 60 grueling hours a week fixing leaky sewer pipes, battling demented turtle kings, and cleaning graffiti just to be told his princess is in another castle? He deserves a cereal. Or at least a dedicated pasta brand more esteemed than SpaghettiOs.
And it looks like that might* will** finally happen. After the kind of digital sleuthing that would put Mario is Missing! to shame, I stumbled upon multiple references, including one with the above box art, to an upcoming Super Mario Cereal from Kellogg’s. In true Kelloggian fashion, it pairs oat pieces with colored marshmallow shapes—in this case, crunchy stars are flanked by Super Mushrooms, 1-Up Mushrooms, and ? Boxes. But most importantly, some boxes of this “Mixed Berry” cereal are Amiibos in and of themselves, allegedly able to be used with Super Mario Odyssey for the Nintendo Switch.
I can only assume that it gives Mario a Dig’em the Frog hat, and Snap, Crackle, Pop hats for all the Toads. Either way, I hope an Animal Crossing Cereal is next: Tom Nook’s Crunchy Bells with Real Fruit Bits, anyone? Just shake it up!
*Update: Though the box art may not be finalized, reader Chris has allegedly received confirmation from Kellogg’s that this cereal should be hitting shelves soon! Mamma mia:
“We cerealously appreciate your continued interest in seeing a Nintendo cereal, Chris! We hope you’ll keep an eye out for the new Super Mario Cereal that is hitting store shelves now. This star-shaped cereal features Super Mario-inspired marshmallows, and a limited number of packages will have an Amiibo powerup sticker that can be used on the Super Mario Odyssey game with the Nintendo Switch gaming console. We also appreciate your additional feedback regarding classic cereal favorites, and thanks for taking the time to write!” —@KelloggsUS
**Update 2: While originally a rumor, Super Mario Cereal has now been confirmed through Target, Walmart, and product photographs!
Congratulations: you survived Thanksgiving and Black Friday, hopefully with minimal turkeys thrown through microwaves and tracheas trampled to get a discount microwave.
As your reward for getting through this gauntlet of fierce family feasts, you get to feast your eyes on these two upcoming Rice Krispies Treats flavors.
No, your vision isn’t still blurry from Aunt Mary’s famous extra-bloody Bloody Mary (which everyone in the family agrees tastes more like a Sloppy Joe): these product photos are really that pixelated. I had to do some covert digital spelunking to discover them, risking attack by trolls, Morlocks, and whatever those things from The Descent are.
First up is Birthday Cake Rice Krispies Treats, which pair a gooey-looking white frosting with rainbow sprinkles. They debut alongside Cookies ‘n’ Creme Rice Krispies Treats, which pair another gooey-looking white cream with mini chocolate bits. Presumably, if you pair them together, you can re-create the divine Oreo Cheesecake my mother blessed my childhood with, birthday after birthday.
I don’t have a release date for these, but since the boxes feature Snap, Crackle, and Pop’s uncanny, claymation-esque redesigns, I’m confident they’re legit and not relics from some early 2008 art school undergraduate thesis. So keep a lookout in your local supermarket in the coming months.
Just remember one thing: no Oreo-flavored puffed rice marshmallow square is worth getting trampled for.
Okay fine, Kellogg’s, I’ll forgive you for egregiously misspelling “Doughnut” as “Donut.” Sure, it’s grammatically correct, but removing the “UGH” removes the rounded pastry’s inherent charm, making me vocally say…you guessed it: “Grrr! Arghh! Zounds!”
Even a pedant like me can’t stay mad when there are two new doughnutty cereals hitting the market. We’ve known that this Chocolate Donut Cereal was coming for a while now, but the surprise debut of Pink Donut Cereal, seen in this photo from a Marc’s store that was sent in by reader GM, has left me tickled pink.
So what does “pink” taste like? Well if it’s anything like “blue,” then I’m ready for it. It could mean strawberry, plain frosting, Chicken McNugget Pink Slime, or even Canadian Birthday Cake (a reader noticed the visual similarity between Pink Donut Cereal and a certain Froot Loops flavor). Whatever it is, I’ll still happily crunch away, because cereal renditions of my favorite breakfast baked good are hard to crumb by these days.
Thanks again to GM for the photo. If you have a cool cereal photo of your own to share, or if you just want to fax me a fresh doughnut, roll over to our Submissions page.
Like a coffee snob who thinks cream ruins roasted perfection or a hipster doughnut shop that only sells original and glazed, Tony the Tiger is an artisan.
While other cereal brands let their wacky flavor flags fly with any number of peanut buttery, gingerbready, or orange ice creamy variants, Anthony the Large Jungle Cat keeps it pretty minimalistic, preferring to perfect each flavor he introduces rather than rushing to meet some pumpkin spiced fad. After all, it took him 64 years to introduce a Cinnamon kind. And now, after the length of about 6–8 of Tony’s 9 feline lives, we finally get Chocolate Frosted Flakes.
What’s that you say, with your raised pitchfork pilfered from the clearance section of a Spirit Halloween? Chocolate Frosted Flakes already existed 20 years ago? Well those were Cocoa Frosted Flakes, not true-blue (or brown?) chocolate.
Oh, but you also say, holding a rudimentary torch made from back issues of the National Enquirer, “There are already two different kinds of Chocolate Frosted Flakes in my grocery store right now”? Well there are Frosted Flakes Choco Zucaritas made for Latin American markets, and Chocolate Frosted Flakes with Skeleton Marshmallows, made for Halloween, which are…uh…from a seasonal spin-off and therefore aren’t canon.
Phew. Through arbitrary technicalities, I’ve confirmed that 2017 Chocolate Frosted Flakes are the first of their kind. After all, Kellogg’s has made a big fuss about these ones are made differently. Like their much-hyped cinnamon-infusing process from 2016, the chocolatey frosting on these flakes is proprietarily designed to meet American tastes for milk chocolate, as opposed to Choco Zucaritas, which are supposed to be more dark chocolatey.
Maybe this is all choco hokum, but that’s not going to stop this American from indulging his sweet tooth. After Tony himself sent me this elaborate care package to try the stuff, I’d be remiss not to use his big metallic head to scoop shards of well-browned gold into my mouth like an emperor of the Nile. Continue reading →
As I patiently wait for my local Burger King to stock their new Cinnamon Toast Crunch Shake—hurry up, Mr. Beef Royalty: it’s cold waiting out in this tent made of Whopper wrappers—I figured I’d finish my review series of Steak ‘n Shake’s menagerie of breakfast cereal-infused arctic beverages.
When we last left our humble, shake-sucking heroes, they had polished off Cinnamon Crunch and Honey Smacks Shakes at an ungodly hour under the gaze of Sauron-tinted neon lights and nearby angst-tinged teenagers. I recommend you read Part 1, if you haven’t already, because I don’t want to re-tread too much old ground in this post—after all, my stomach still hurts from the whole “mildly lactose intolerant” thing.
The things I do for breakfast journalism.
In short, though, the shakes were good, but BK’sshakes were superior in every way, on account of them actually mixing in syrupy cereal magic syrup instead of just plopping cereal pieces on top. This could’ve put the kibosh on my pasteurized odyssey, but the Steak ‘n Shake waiter said Cocoa Krispies and Frosted Flakes were by far the most popular flavors. Tempted by this forbidden fruit (“Frosted” is a fruit, right?), I set off with my shake-craving sidekick once more to put that waiter’s money where my dairy-sensitive gastrointestinal system is.
