Tag Archives: strawberry

Review: Strawberry Milkshake Frosted Flakes & Cinnamon French Toast Frosted Flakes

New Frosted Flakes Cereal Boxes

Note: though Chocolate is included in this lineup of new boxes, I won’t be reviewing it here, since it’s unchanged. You can find my original review here.

Tony, my man. Can I call you Tony Baloney?

No?

How about Riga-Tony? Tonyboy? Tony Island Mile-High Chili Dogs?

Alright, fine, let’s just get down to business…Anthony. Fact of the matter is, I’m impressed. You’re really embracing your right brain lately. I know it can be tempting to trust your business sense and realize that you could probably finance the entire Frosted Flakes brand interminably just by cheaply chucking in new marbits and mixing together existing cereals. But as much of a smart tiger as you are, I can tell you’re truly an artist at heart. And an athlete, too—geez, no wonder the Twitter furries thirsted you off the platform: you’ve got it all!

You’re so creatively inclined that you decided to bless us with not one, but two twinkling new cereal flavors—and neither have chintzy, redundant marshmallows! Sure, my bar for being impressed by new cereals has limboed lower and lower over the past purgatorial half year of lazy cereal-smithing, but hey, I’m going to stay positive and tackle the Strawberry Milkshaked and Cinnamon French Toasted fruits of your labor with gusto. Continue reading

Review: Strawberry Banana Cheerios

New Strawberry Banana Cheerios Review Box

Cheeri-Oats are the Cheery G.O.A.T.s!

There ya go, General Mills: I just wrote you a free catchphrase that uses trendy lingo all today’s kids can relate to.

What’s that you say? I’m not a youth any more, let alone a hip nor happenin’ one? Well listen, I came here to review twice-fruited Cheerios, not walk right into a self-inflicted existential crisis like Sideshow Bob into a rake.

The point of my haplessly out-of-touch sloganeering was to simply point out how, as a brand, Cheerios does not miss. Those dense ‘n’ hearty toasted oat rings are the perfect vehicles for any flavor imaginable, to the point where I can’t think of a Cheerios variety I didn’t like. At worst, you’ll get something that’s just plain solid like Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios, but more often than not, Cheerios is cranking, churning, extruding, and glazing out hit after hit—to the point where it starts to make little sense why less impeccably consistent cereal lines like Lucky Charms and the Toast Crunch family seem to get all the public praise.

I get it, though. Cheerios doesn’t have the same bombastic, kid-focused and mascot-fronted brand appeal, but darn it, Cheerios should. As one of the last breakfast aisle bastion’s of purely oat-powered acumen, Cheerios deserves first dibs when it comes to creative new flavor infusions.

And if, somehow, you needed even more convincing proof of Cheerios’ wholesome bowlsome of O-some awesomeness, look no further than these new Strawberry Banana Cheerios. Continue reading

News: JoJo Siwa Strawberry Bop Cereal

Jojo Siwa Strawberry Bop Cereal

ゴゴゴゴ Nani?? ゴゴゴゴ

Wait, wait: wrong JoJo. I tend to do that a lot, especially since I’ve always wanted a JoJo’s Bizarre Cereal with crunchy cherry arrowheads. But no, a different fruit is at play in this cereal collab with youngsters’ favorite singer/dancer/internet personality/marketing force to be reckoned with. I’ll admit I know precious little about JoJo Siwa—you think there’s room between the cereal factoids in my pantry-sized brain for such knowledge?—so I’m not all that excited for her Strawberry Bop cereal.

After all, the last licensed General Mills cereal to feature strawberry, Shopkins Cutie O’s, was so aromatically potent it could down passing aircraft. If this were Kellogg’s, on the other hand, I’d have a little more hope, since their strawberry Disney Princess Cereal was above average and made use of a better-than-corn multigrain base.

Oh well: if nothing else, the fact that this is a Nickelodeon branded box may mean we could finally get a new Garfield Cereal someday. It just better be made with spherical lasagna noodles.

 

 

Review (x2): Chocolate Strawberry Cheeros & Multigrain Cheerios with Strawberries!

New Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios and Multigrain Cheerios with Strawberries Cereal Review - Boxes

Are strawberries anyone else’s favorite fruit? Don’t get me wrong, I love just about every fruit—pears can rot in the dry, mealy ground for all I care. But there’s something about the perfect pop-ability, late spring–early summer vibes, and shortcake satisfaction of strawberries. It doesn’t hurt that artificial strawberry is the best fake fruit flavor, too.

Seriously, if y’all got any pink Laffy Taffy laying around, chuck ’em in the general direction of Michigan.

Because I like strawberries so much, I will never turn down a new strawberry cereal. So when Cheerios introduced both Chocolate Strawberry and Multigrain with Strawberries varieties, I knew I had to tackle both in one straw-some ode of a review to my favorite, rosily plump fruit. After all, plain ol’ Strawberry Cheerios were amazing, so what could go wrong, right? Continue reading

News: Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios

Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios Box

General Mills’ upcoming Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios, releasing next month, has big, choco-nutty-buttery shoes to fill.

By the stylization of the box and typography, Chocolate Strawberry is ostensibly the next in line to the throne of Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios. Since Choco-PB Cheerios is one of my favorite ever Cheerio varieties—it’s like a Reese’s Puffs HD remaster—I have high expectations for Choco-Strawb. Will it be potently powdered? Will the strawberry hoops taste just like Strawberry Cheerios, or will they up the puréed ante? And if they succeed, will General Mills complete the holy trilogy by dropping Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jelly Cheerios?

Fondue or Fon-dud, I’m looking forward to trying Chocolate Strawberry Cheerios later this year.

News: Multi-Grain Strawberry Cheerios + Canadian Frosted Vanilla Cheerios

Let us all send prayers and psychic Gatorade to Cereal Life, who, as the online cereal correspondent with the closest connection to General Mills insiders, must be exhausted lately. For whatever reason, while Kellogg’s, Post, and Quaker have merely trickled out new cereal news, General Mills tips are spilling out in torrents. The most likely explanation for this is that, since January is the biggest time of the year for new cereal, and since most of Cereal Life’s finds are still in the sales sample stage, he’s simply getting a sneak peek at a huge wave of news to come in a couple months.

Among these bountiful chronicles of cereals foretold are two new types of Cheerios. First, the above Multigrain Cheerios with Strawberry Pieces. As Cereal Life mentions in the caption, a Cheerios variety with strawberries (rather than flavored with) hasn’t been seen since the Berry Burst line in the early 2000s—which, on an interesting tangent, contained the scarcely documented Cherry Vanilla Cheerios, first documented as a Cereal Myth in The Empty Bowl’s first-ever episode.

Granted, 2003’s version of this formula didn’t use Multigrain Cheerios, so at least this (presumed) 2021 version can be considered less of a bland reboot and more of a remaster. Continue reading

Review: Shopkins Cutie O’s Cereal

Kellogg's New Shopkins Cutie O's Cereal Review - Box

♪ ♪ “Buy all our play sets and tooooyyys!” ♫ 

For those without this very specific genetic disposition to oddly specific early Internet web cartoon references, Cheat Commandos…O’s are a cheap cash-in on an already merchandized-by-design franchise. And to this day, I can’t figure out which cereal they used to model it—perhaps it’s actually dried macaroni and cheese, or perhaps the petrified remains of a shredded Bronco Trolley.

Much like Cheat Commandos, Shopkins is a line of toys, apparel, and by this point (probably) orthodox faiths. In short: it consists largely of blind bag toys shaped like sentient grocery items. In long: yo dog we heard you like shopping so we put consumer goods in your consumer good so you can spend food money on fake food that implicitly costs fake money, too.

Granted, I’m not judging the ouroboric commercialism that Shopkins embodies—heck, I think the adjacently themed ’80s Food Fighters are some of the best-looking action figures in history. Though it is a shame they never made a grizzled bowl of cereal armed with a tactical bootspork.

Shopkins is just something I’m far too old for, admittedly, but I’m nevertheless hesitant any time a beloved brand of non-cereal ends up emblazoned on the front of a dubiously flavored hot pink rectangular prism. Licensed cereals are usually hit or miss or impermissibly lame. Even those remembered fondly, like Pokémon Cereal, are almost always retrospectively delicious because they’re acceptably executed bootleg Lucky Charms—with prettier marbits than the heretical excuses for freeze-dried sugar they put in such licensed cereals nowadays.

At least Shopkins’ new Cutie O’s Cereal has a relatively original flavor. Outside of one juicy box of Raisin Bran, apple and strawberry make for a rare pairing—though we are starting off on the wrong plastic footlong, as my lifelong penchant for strawberry kiwi has me Pavlovianly drooling venomous vitriol at the sight of a green-fruited competitor to my mental “Best Capri-Sun” throne. But alright, Kawaii Granny Smith: I’ll sheathe my ceremonial paring knife while you state your case. Continue reading

Review: Millville Peanut Butter and Jelly Puffs Cereal

Millville Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs Cereal Review Box

You know who I blame for this? Harry Burnett Reese.

If ol’ H.B., or “Poppy Reese,” as Wikipedia likes to allege he was called, hadn’t been tinkering in his basement with homebrewed confections whilst moonlighting at the Hershey factory, he wouldn’t’ve seized the opportunity to make a revolutionary peanut butter cup.

Maybe he would’ve been more of a candy-making hobbyist later in life. Maybe his big idea would be the Reese’s Jelly-Wrapped Peanut Butter Cup. And maybe that idea fails in spectacular and gelatinous fashion. But somehow, maybe the idea prompts cereal makers to give that flavor combo a go in a more easily preserved viscosity.

In that particular timeline, we have no shortage of options when it comes to PB&J Cereals. There’s even PB&J milk, and PB&J vodka! It’s a happy world, presumably far happier than this one, wherein Millville has manufactured the first reputable (doesn’t count!) PB&J Cereal in four yearsbreaking a drought that started with the sort-of-but-really-nonexistence of PB & J Cereal in the ’80s.

It’s called Peanut Butter & Jelly Puffs. It’s certainly the most transparent about its devotion to the flavor, boasting a pair of chuckle-heads who look straight out of a strangely spliced Peanut Butter x Strawberry Laffy Taffy.

Which, incidentally, they have in the other world. Continue reading