Tag Archives: ralston

24

Nov. ’16

A Cornucopia of Cereal Time Episodes to be Thankful for!

Happy Thanksgiving, cereal lovers!

I know it’ll be hard to work a bowl of your favorite breakfast cereal into this day of turkey, green bean casserole, and yams glazed with some magic syrup your grandma must’ve bartered with Zeus to obtain, so I won’t blame you if you go breakfast-lite today.

But I’ll also give you six words: Cap’n Crunch in the mashed potatoes.

Regardless of how many Crunchberries find their way into today’s turducken, those of us gestating through day-long food comas can still celebrate cereal’s spirit by gobbling down the latest 5 episodes of cereal pilgrim Gabe Fonseca’s Cereal Time YouTube series. Every episode is a feast for the senses, as Gabe nostalgically waxes on the past and future of a different cereal each week.

I apologize for stuffing so many episode recaps into a single post, but hey—it is the season of stuffing.

Continue reading →

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15

Aug. ’16

Four More from “Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca!”

Need something to Brite-n your day? Okay, do you need four things to brighten your day after that terrible pun?

Well you’re in luck, because there are four new episodes in cereal archivist Gabe Fonseca’s Cereal Time YouTube series. Longtime Cereal Time binge watchers know the drill, but I’ll catch everyone else up to speed on this series in one sentence:

One man spotlights one cereal every one week to produce three-to-four fun-filled minutes of breakfast nostalgia.

Intrigued? Let’s start somewhere over the rainbow with Gabe’s episode on Rainbow Brite Cereal. As he states in the video, this 1985 cereal was a tie-in with Rainbow Brite’s animated feature film, and it features a literal rainbow of fruity and crunchy…shapes?

The more logical would see them as Rainbow Brite’s hair curls or shirt sleeves, but I prefer to call them “Macaroni & cheese mixed with the colorful grubs Timon and Pumbaa eat in The Lion King.” Continue reading →

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12

Jun. ’16

Cerealously Visits the 2016 Battle Creek Cereal City Festival!

Cereal City Header

It was like wandering through a desert, with only oases of milk and sugar to keep me alive.

Hold on, let me catch you up on the narrative. Each year in their home city of Battle Creek, Michigan, Kellogg’s and Post temporally set their cereal aisle rivalry aside to put on an annual Cereal City Festival, complete with entertainment, vendors, and most importantly, unlimited free cereal and Pop-Tarts!

As a Michigan native and cereal zealot, I make the pilgrimage every year. While most just come for a free breakfast, I bop and bounce around the streets like an excited anthropomorphized pinball, annoying all passerby with my unexpected enthusiasm for cereal.

But back to the desert of thinly disguised desserts. While last year’s Cereal City Festival was overcast, drizzly, and cold, Cereal City Festival 2016 promised nothing but blue skies and temperatures so sweltering that I nearly melted into my leather seats and became a horrifying half-man, half-seat monster.

They would have called me “Helter Swelter” on the news. Continue reading →

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08

May. ’16

Catching Up on Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca!

Put Netflix on pause, because w’ve got something better for you to binge watch than all 10 seasons of Friends for the third time this year.

See, it’s been a while since we visited cereal generalissimo Gabe Fonseca’s informative and nostalgic Cereal Time YouTube series. The show covers a different cereal each week, and it totally deserves to be nominated for a Tony award—a Tony the Tiger award, that is.

Speaking of which, the first of four videos we’d like to share with you features Gabe awarding his top ten cereals of all time. Unsurprisingly, there’s absolutely no overlap between Gabe’s list and my own list of favorite cereals. This is probably because of our age difference, but by viewing our two rankings, you can get a taste (well, at least a look. Lickable computer screens aren’t real yet, right?) of twenty different iconic cereals covering decades, if not centuries of colorful cereal history.

If nothing else, I do agree that Cap’n Crunch wins most iconic cereal mascot of all time. If the good Cap’n can defy physics and wear his eyebrows on his hat, he deserves to be #1 of something. Continue reading →

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17

Apr. ’16

Cerealously Looks Back at Chex Quest!

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Oh boy, this one really does take me back.

When I talk about moments that really got me into cereal—not just cereal as a food, but cereal as a culture, hobby, and lifestyle—my discovery of Chex Quest is always one of them.

It was one of those summer days when it’s hot enough to make the sky warble and the hot dogs melt right into their buns. I had sought refuge in my cool basement and was digging through a drawer of old CD-ROMs and floppy disks. I happened upon this disk:

chex2

Since most of the other CD-ROMs contained word processing software and Encarta encyclopedias, the technicolor cartoon art on Chex Quest magnetically held my eyes and imagination alike. I couldn’t wait to boot it up, and as soon as I did, I happily lost myself in a world of pixelated breakfast heroism. Continue reading →

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17

Feb. ’16

Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca: Ghostbusters and Cabbage Patch Kids Cereal

When there’s something cool, in your breakfast pantry…who you gonna call?

Gabe Fonseca!

That’s right, cereal specialist Gabe Fonseca is back with two new videos in his Cereal Time YouTube series that we’d like to share with you. For the unfortunately uninitiated, Cereal Time covers a different retro, obscure, or legendary cereal each week, and each video is chock-full of fun and flavor (you’ll have to imagine the flavor; please don’t pour milk on your keyboard). Continue reading →

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01

Feb. ’16

Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca: Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs and Ice Cream Cones Cereal

Do you need a smile or an ice cream cone to get you through today’s dreaded series of 24 grueling hours (a.k.a. Monday)? Well all of my fellow human Garfields out there need not despair, because thanks to the latest two videos in cereal MVP Gabe Fonseca’s YouTube series, you can see a whole bowl full of ’em!

Cereal Time is a video series dedicated to highlighting a different classic, new, or retro cereal each week. For a series that has given me countless chuckles and snickers, it seems appropriate that the first video we’d like to share with you is all about Grins & Smiles & Giggles & Laughs cereal. Continue reading →

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06

Nov. ’15

Cereal Time with Gabe Fonseca: Krave and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Cereal

Do you love to rave about Krave cereal?

Well if so, then you’ll have a heckuva time arguing with cereal chronologist Gabe Fonseca. In the first of the latest two videos we’d like to share with you from his Cereal Time series—which details the winding history of cereal that’s more colorful than a Candy Land board—Gabe begrudgingly covers the initially European, choco-stuffed biscuit sensation which has only recently blessed American shelves.

I’ve mentioned before how divisive Krave is between rabid haters and fans, and Gabe and I are proof of these two camps. When you randomly poll someone about their opinion on the cereal, it’s like playing a game of Krave roulette. And speaking of Krave Roulette…

So how about you, fellow cereal-vores? Do you crave it, or do you save it…for the garbagemen to pick up off your curbside?

Gabe’s second video covers Bill & Ted’s Excellent Cereal, a tie-in to the mondo radical movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. This cereal is a mix of holed cinnamon square pieces (kinda looks like a spiritual predecessor to Jif cereal, eh?) and marshmallowy bits.

It’s nice to have more evidence that the concept of tying in a movie with an oat and marshmallow cereal is such a long-lasting tradition. I bet even in the time of the dinosaurs, they were mixing crunchy Brontosaurus femurs with dino egg shaped marbits. Maybe Bill & Ted can go back and confirm this.

If you think Gabe’s videos are most excellent!, be sure to check ’em all out. Every Cereal Time video can be found here, and you can check out Gabe’s Twitter, as well.

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