Tag Archives: s’mores

Review: General Mills Filled Bites (Prototypes?)

Allow me to preface this review with the disclaimer that I honestly have no idea if these Filled Bites will ever hit mainstream shelves. I first heard about these two cereals via the insider tip of a Hy-Vee worker at a Minneapolis location often used as a General Mills new product test store. Then I got these two boxes (with different artwork) from reader Ryan (thank you kindly!), but they also seem like samples. The artwork feels more finalized, but it’s just art on both sides, plus the box is a thinner cardboard than regular cereal boxes.

Plus plus, there’s a landing page out there for a possible Cinnamon Toast Crunch Filled Bites—which, while still apparently in its prototype stage would likely replace Pillsbury Cinnamon Roll here—as CTC no doubt has bigger brand clout with the kids today than portly/chortly ol’ Poppin’ Fresh. That guy lost the youth the minute the similarly glossy Hamburger Helper rhymed him outta relevancy.

Which is all to say that, ultimate widespread legitimacy of these Filled Bites aside, I feel a need to review them, if only to uphold the ephemeral legacy of Fillows—a decidedly dank and decadently dense cereal line that deserved way better. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cinnamon, general mills, golden grahams, s'mores. 2 Comments

Mar. ’22

News: General Mills Filled Bites Cereals

General Mills has a commitment problem.

It seems whenever the cereal behemoth finally gets around to releasing a totally new cereal IP, they end up backtracking and lumping it in with an existing, already well-known cereal family. The highest profile case of this occurred with Tiny Toast, which, at the time, got a lot of publicity for being GM’s first truly new cereal brand in over a decade. However, a year later, Tiny Toast was, well, toast—and its two flavors became Strawberry and Blueberry Toast Crunch, both of which were discontinued not long after.

And now, this seems to be happening again, at least in some sense. Remember Fillows? The extremely dense and decadent filled pillow duo from 2019 which also got axed before releasing new flavors? Well, it appears they may be back, albeit with much more prominent cross-branding with existing General Mills properties.

The above photo of two Crispy & Creamy Filled Bites cereals comes courtesy of Michael B., from a Hy-Vee in Minneapolis that is apparently a test store for General Mills—which makes sense, given that’s where the corporation is headquartered. As a test item, it’s therefore unclear when these Filled Bites might hit stores nationwide, nor is it guaranteed that they’ll even get a conventional release at all.

Either way, I sure hope they do. I thought Fillows were criminally underrated as an uber-indulgent dessert cereal, and any cereal that gives Golden Grahams the spinoff respect it deserves is a must-try in my book. What do you think? Which would you try first?

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cinnamon, general mills, golden grahams, s'mores. 4 Comments

Mar. ’21

Bite-Sized Reviews: Kellogg’s Smorz & Cinnabon Jumbo Snax

I’ve got a lot of stuff in my pantry, and with the whirlwind that is my life lately, I can’t get around to giving everything 600 words’ worth of reviewing. So for these two new Jumbo Snax varieties, I figured I’d just tweet out my fast & furious thoughts. After all, the amount of time it takes to read a tweet is about how long it takes to finish a Jumbo Snax pouch.

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Kellogg's Smorz Jumbo Snax are good! Spot-on for the cereal and I like combining the graham & chocolate components in one piece. With how sweet cereal is, I prefer this consistent taste to having filler marshmallows. pic.twitter.com/KVTRdMKg3z

— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) March 28, 2021

BITE-SIZED REVIEW: Boy, I don't know how they messed up Cinnabon Jumbo Snax this bad. First of all, I only got this many pieces.

But worse, these taste….botched? Too sickly sweet, weirdly over caramelized, oily and almost burnt? Talk about a vicious spiral pic.twitter.com/L0QLWUtzJg

— Cerealously 🥛🥣 (@cerealouslynet) March 29, 2021

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: cinnamon, kellogg's, s'mores. 1 Comment

Mar. ’21

News: Two New Kellogg’s JUMBO SNAX!

Jumbold. Jumboo-yah. Jumbombastic!

With news of two more cereals getting the oversized snack pouch treatment, it seems Kellogg’s is going all in with their JUMBO SNAX (yes, the all-caps is mandatory) line. I’ll admit, I wasn’t overly impressed with the first quartet of big honkin’ Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Frosted Flakes Tiger Paws and Caramel Corn Pops, but these latest announcements have me jumbouncing with anticipation.

Compared to those four cereals, Smorz and Cinnabon are B-Team Kellogg’s cereals. They rarely get the same attention when it comes to limited edition variants—in fact, neither Smorz nor Cinnabon has ever had a spinoff flavor. This isn’t because they taste bad. Far from it! Cinnabon brings a solid, balanced cinnamon–sugar sweetness, while Smorz’ graham puffs are top notch in pillowy texture and dense taste that distinguishes itself from s’mores cereals’ Golden Graham’d genre standard.

Hence why I think these JUMBO SNAX will be good, too, even if both cereals benefit more from milk than dry munching—meaning you shouldn’t let their on-the-go premise stop your from dumping JUMBO SNAX into a bowl. If there’s anything that leaves me hesitant about this duo it’s, a) Smorz’ decision to remove marshmallows, and b) the fact that so few JUMBO SNAX come in a pouch. But since these exist in the first place, JUMBO SNAX must be pretty popular, so I salute Kellogg’s for bringing Smorz and Cinnabon up from the minor leagues.

Expect to see both of these JUMBO SNAX in stores this April.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cinnamon, kellogg's, s'mores. Leave a comment

Aug. ’20

Review: Pillsbury S’Mores Golden Grahams Toaster Strudel

P. is for pouches, they’re foiled & grand!
O. is for OH YES!, my response to the brand.
P. is for pouches, c’mon can’t you read?
– is the hyphenated joy of a fast feed.
T. is for toasted, as all Tarts should be.
A. is for awesome, this crust fills me with glee!
R. is for Raspberry, the worst compared to Strawberry.
T. is for the filling: is it good? My answer: very.
S. is for sweet icing, a true sort of edible art.

And those, my friends, are the reasons I love Pop-Tarts.

Okay phew, I’ve put the Kellogg’s execs reading this to sleep: now let’s talk about how good these Toaster Strudels are.

Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little Toaster Strudel experience. I grew up on P-T (which is, in a sense, the opposite of P.T. the game), and with that kind of lifelong conditioning, anything more than tearing open a crumb-spewing pouch with the elegance of a resident campsite raccoon feels like too much work to get a toaster pastry in my stomach.

But if there’s one flavor I’d move mountains for—assuming there’s a rich vein of graham’d ore to suckle beneath them—it’s Golden Grahams. Though I have no proof of this, Golden Grahams seems to be the most popular cereal that never gets flavor variants, despite how obvious the possibilities are. Perhaps this is just a testament to Golden Graham’s chaste and pure breakfast beauty, but with a bunch of other s’mores cereals out there using Golden Grahams-esque pieces, it’s kind of strange that the General Mills brand has only given Golden Grahams the S’Mores treatment in cereal bars and now flaky strudels—maybe when GM’s legendary S’Mores Crunch was discontinued way back, the S’Morecerer casted an unbreakable “do nut resuscitate” spell in retaliation.

Unblazed cereal frontiers aside, I’m excited to get my large rectangular graham on, a little thicker than usual. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: general mills, golden grahams, s'mores. 3 Comments

Apr. ’20

News: Golden Grahams S’Mores Toaster Strudel

Look at that supple off-brown coloring.
The choco-mallow paste-full thickness of it.
Oh my god, it even has an icing mark.

Truly, the above product’s visage is enough to make any appetite go psycho: I mean, my favorite mainstream cereal (and also the most underrated), Golden Grahams? Paired with its natural complementary flavors and baked into a flaky brick of striated goo? Not even the grim deadlights of the Pillsbury Doughboy—who appears to be filled with more botox than biscuit dough by this point–could stop me from inserting these puppies into my mouth like buttery 8-track tapes.

First shared by Candy Hunting, S’Mores Golden Grahams Toaster Strudel is the latest freezer aisle-exclusive spinoff for a cereal that rarely gets any. Granted, S’Mores Toaster Strudel isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, as we’ve seen them in both 2013 and 2016. But hey, you could slap a Golden Grahams logo on a box of plain ol’ Teddy Grahams and I’d blissfully hibernate in a cave built purely of compact crumbs.

Despite the complete box art, there’s no set release date for this cereal Toaster Strudel variety, but don’t let that stop you from whittling a S’Mores Pop-Tart into a haphazard cereal spoon.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: general mills, golden grahams, non cereal, s'mores. Leave a comment

Jun. ’17

Review: Honey Maid S’mores Cereal

Okay, I love all things s’more, and I support the junk food craze of s’morifying just about everything. But if society’s going to continue its wonderful quest to inject graham-chocolate-marshmallow flavor into every cake, cookie, and cake-stuffed cookie crumble Frappuccino, we have to amke one thing clear: are we supposed to capitalize the “M” or not?

For so long, I treated the term “S’More” as an inflexible proper noun. Like any number of deities, to misprint its name as “s’more” was blasphemy worthy of campfires and brimstone. But now we do it all the time, as evidenced by Post’s new Honey Maid S’mores Cereal. Are we just supposed to accept this normalization of “s’more?” Is an artificially flavored s’more not subject to the same capitalized deification of the one true, fire-toasted S’More? Should I just stuff my mouth with this cereal so you don’t have to hear me babble about s’more theology?

I know at least one of those answers is a yes. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 5 rating, post, s'mores. 16 Comments

Jun. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Post Mixed Berry, Cinnamon Roll, & S’Mores Bites Shredded Wheat

Frosted Mini-Wheats, prepare to Frosted Mini-Meet your maker.

Post Shredded Wheat has been around for a while, but until now, Shredded Wheat hasn’t exactly been the more exciting brand of thatched wheat biscuits. Somehow, kids prefer Frosted Mini-Wheats’ caked-on frosting and oceans of saccharine detritus in their cereal boxes over sugar-free bran and glisteningly sticky roasted nut flavor.

But now all that is about to change. In the wake of what is perhaps Frosted Mini-Wheats’ greatest cereal sin, changing their classy biscuit mascot to some sort of SpongeBobian abomination, Post has debuted three new bite-sized Shredded Wheat varieties. Mixed Berry, Cinnamon Roll, and S’Mores Bites are already excitingly unique flavors on their own, but each new biscuity breed is also filled with flavored chips to (hopefully) make their dry wheat exteriors explode with bursts of berry, vanilla, and chocolate flavor, respectively.

Not since Hidden Treasures Cereal have I been so geeked to get backhanded in the taste buds.

Shoutout to reader Austin K. for sending me this photo from Walmart. I look forward to collecting all three boxes like they’re semisweet-stuffed Pokémon cards, mixing all three into a single bowl, and playing a dangerous game of berry bushel/bakery/bonfire roulette.

If you’ve got a cereal photo of your own to share, snap, crackle, and pop right on over to our submissions page!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: cinnamon, post, s'mores, shredded wheat. 4 Comments