Tag Archives: post

Review: Magic Fruity Pebbles (Turns Milk Blue!)

Blue.

Like it or not, it’s already clear that blue may very well be the defining color of 2020. I mean, we’re *only* 1/6th of the way through the year, and we’ve already seen:

a) Pantone [bafflingly] name “Classic Blue” as their color of the year,

b) Cap’n Crunch drip liquefied Na’vi slime onto our pancakes,

c) Cereal blogger Dan G. succumb and be reborn by the Midwest winter blues, and

d) I’ve tried to scream the idea of La Croix kegs into existence until I’m blue in the face. La Craigs, people!!

Now, Fred and Barney are bringing a touch of Brontosaurian blue to modern breakfasts, too, with Magic Fruity Pebbles—a cereal that sells itself on the concept of turning milk blue, which is admittedly so not-innovative by this point that it feels anachronistically appropriate for this prehistoric pair.

But are these pinkened Pebbles’ gimmick still worth gulping down? I’m willing to die my intestines a peculiar shade of azure in order to answer that. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: pebbles, post. Leave a comment

Feb. ’20

Review: Timbits Cereal (Birthday Cake & Chocolate Glazed)

Bits.

We all love ’em.

Or at least I do. I love all bits, whether it’s exponentially sugar-fortified cereal dust, forgotten salt-stewed French fry-lets, or the last messy bite of a restaurant meal that you saved as a parting gift for yourself after boxing up the rest of the leftovers—the very same last bite you had to awkwardly tell the waiter you were saving as he’s midway through lifting the plate from your desperate mitts. Or maybe that’s just me.

No matter how you spin it, I’ll always love bits more than pieces. Well, unless it’s those honey mustard and onion pretzel pieces. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my strange bit-diction stems from a long childhood relationship with Timbits: those lovable lil totally-not-doughnut-holes from Tim Hortons that just about any teacher who had a hope of winning their class’ trust would bring in by the party pack-ful on syllabus day.

Though Tim Hortons and his namesake ‘bits were a source of warm nostalgia for my fellow Michiganders, the coffee chain is a more deeply in-granulated cultural epicenter in its country of origin, Canada. So it makes sense that the first ever Timbits Cereal would be released exclusively north of the states—even if I firmly believe my mitten of origin should be considered an annexed state of the Hortonian Empire. Thanks to Cereal Time’s Gabe Fonseca, I was able to secure boxes of both Timbits Cereal flavors, Birthday Cake and Chocolate Glazed.

So let’s all grab a coffee, PBR coffee, or perhaps some strange soup of poutine and Labatt Blue and see if these itty bitty Timbits are a slam dunk. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: birthday cake, canada, chocolate, post. Leave a comment

Jan. ’20

Review: Frosted Honey Bunches of Oats

In 2020 we’re staying honest with those we love, so I’m gonna come right out and say it:

Honey Bunches of Oats, how in your infinite wisdom have you made the most tearable cereal bags in the breakfast aisle?

There are already enough things in this world that I have trouble pulling apart without blunder nor bother: perforated notebook paper, most pieces of mail, command strips off a wall. My delicious cereal shouldn’t fissure and fizzle out cereal spillage at a moment’s notice.

This is difficult to cope with, especially since Honey Bunches of Oats is a) built on a near spiritual trinity of corn flakes, frosted corn flakes and granola bunches, but this triple blessing is also b) very consistent at producing flavorful varietals.

(We don’t talk about the less savory ‘Zilla ’98s of the franchise.)

Yet HBoO’s latest release—whose bag was torn asunder by inescapable fate—seems, to me, to be its ostensibly least original idea in recent memory (with one notably irrelevant example). Simply culling one third of the cereal, coating it with sticky sauce, and shoving it back in the mix? As someone who values a good novelty cereal, from the start I’m skeptical. Will this be the equivalent of a bubbly Disney remake that’s so saccharine it crashes lifelessly?

At least give us some crudely handsome CGI bunches at that point! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: honey bunches, post. 5 Comments

Dec. ’19

News: Upcoming Cereal Round-Up! (Special K, Reese’s Puffs, Honey Bunches & Cinnamon Toast Crunch)

♫ January, January: brings Dan no sanctuary. ♫

What? If no one else is going to start writing New Year’s carols, I might as well start drafting one to commemorate the first month of the year’s traditionally tumultuous tidal wave of new cereals. Don’t get me wrong, I’m geeked to see 2020’s freshest resolution-busters, but I will say that it’s a difficult time to both keep up and keep my fingers from burning down to the nubs from both friction and fructose.

Oh well: no strain, no whole grain. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, honey bunches, kellogg's, post, reese's puffs, special k, toast crunch. 2 Comments

Nov. ’19

Review: Hostess Twinkies Cereal

There is a new cereal dichotomy blooming before our very tongues. If it comes to civil war, whose side will you be on?

The monolithic masses of the Kellogg’s Krusaders, their defenses made impenetrable and especially unpalatable by pounds of cushiony, bland corn ‘n’ sugar rings?

Or the silent-but-growing cabal of crunchily dusted Powdered Paladins, whose cereals are equally sweet, but, you know, actually good?

Yeah, the choice is pretty obvious: with the Economically Chintzy Empire, we get Baby Sharks and celebratory man-birds. Neither is fit for battle—unless Kellogg’s brings in a Caticorn that’s actually equine in stature—against the trustiest, dustiest and most delectable division led by Powdered Donettes Cereal, with Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios as its right- and left-hand confidants. Honestly: if you did a cross-comparison between Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch and Kellogg’s Elf on the Shelf Sugar Cookie Cereal, you’d find a certain starry sugar-corn Rehash in the Trash, where it so boldly and brashly deserves to be.

I also know that overly flavor-powdered cereals can be divisive, as revealed by the internet’s violently split opinion on Frosted G.O.A.T.nettes—err, I mean Donettes, of course. So will this camp be pleased or feel sucker-punched by Twinkies Cereal, the latest dusted cake-crop in Hostess’ Cereal line? The answer is only a bowlful of crème larvae away: Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, Hostess, post. 1 Comment

Oct. ’19

Spooned & Spotted: Hostess Twinkies Cereal

Somebody call Cap’n Crunch, because there are some new golden doubloons hitting the breakfast table.

For the past three months, “Twinkies Cereal” has been phantasmically dancing atop the tongues of cereal lovers like Twinkie the Kid at whatever spectral square-dance they send brand mascots to to purgatorily pass time in between discontinuations. Sure, we’ve seen the theoretical box for a while, but Post has a (recent) history of leaking cereal ideas that never end up amounting to anything.

Stay gold, Teddy Grahams Cereal. Stay golder than a Golden Graham.

But any doubt about these crunchy golden sponge-cakelets can finally be put to rest (in the family plot, between Fruit Pie the Magician and Happy Ho Ho). Thanks to continued correspondent Devin, we now have clear optics on the fully produced cereal itself, meaning it’s rapidly approaching release. And while it certainly looks just about how you’d expect—tragically, without the tiny, cream-stuffed exhaust holes on the bottom—Devin also provided his synopsis of the flavor:

“Tastes a lot like the Donettes cereal. The cereal itself seems familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it…”

With a forecast that titillating, I now feel I must steel my taste buds to try and recognize any arcane analogues. Here’s hoping it’s closer to “bowl full of mini Golden Oreos” than “bowl full of Golden Oreo O’s.”

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: Hostess, post, spooned & spotted. 2 Comments

Jul. ’19

News: Hostess Twinkies Cereal is Coming Soon!

Nope, I’m not Kid-ding: the mild, mild spongecake west’s fastest creamslinger is having a litter of amoebic children!

Thanks to /r/YukiHase on Reddit, we now know that Twinkies will be the next titan of the gas station snack aisle to become a Post-produced Hostess Cereal. Twinkies would arguably have been the more obvious choice for the first wave—not to discredit the fine, fine work of our nation’s honorably Honeyed Buns and elite corps of Powderiest Donettes. But better late than never, I suppose—though the pressure is now squarely on this cylindrical Twinkies Cereal to live up to the high standards set by its caked contemporaries.

All we know about Twinkies Cereal thus far is a) they look like undusted Cheetos Puffs and b) they probably aren’t creme-filled, as they should be, and c) Twinkie the Kid is worryingly absent from the whole affair. I get that many Hostess mascots have crossed the Rainbow Funfetti Bridge, but T the K has been Hostess’ ride or die frontman, even through the bakery’s brief sabbatical in bankrupt purgatory.

(I hear, in limbo, they suck the soulcream straight outta the three holes in your back!)

As Twinkies do, they’ve taken me deliriously off track. Unfortunately there’s not much else to say about Twinkies Cereal just yet—unless we’re guessing which cake comes next.

Cupcake? Too obvious. Snowballs? Too controversial. No, I hope it’s Peanut Butter Ho Hos or White Fudge Ding Dongs….or both, monstrously spliced together.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: Hostess, post. 3 Comments

Jun. ’19

Spooned & Spotted: South Korean RED Oreo O’s!

If you read yesterday’s review of Mega Stuf Oreo O’s and were equally miffed by its tepid take on the Oreo cookie’s fantastically vast sea of cereal possibilities, then I’ve got some good news for you—from across the widest ocean.

Perhaps sensing a disturbance in the cosmic balance of Oreo O goodness, the South Korean makers of the world’s finest sandwich cookie cereal have emerged from their hermetic caves of creativity with a new flavor worthy of the Seal of Oreo Imagination.

Channeling Taylor Swift, these new Oreo O’s dub themselves only as RED, leaving the breakfaster to interpret whether they are flavored with strawberries or the ichor of the Oreo O’s mascot’s vanquished enemies—whom he has presumably leveled with a milk tidal wave caused by a seismic body slam.

Not only are the omnipresent marshmallows tinted a charming rose-quartz, but the thick Oreo O rings—which you’ll notice are far different than America’s Oreo O’s—also bear clusters of red blood cells instead of white.

But wait, that’s not all! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: international, oreo o's, post, strawberry. 3 Comments