Monthly Archives: April 2017

Spooned & Spotted (Canada): Limited Edition Maple Cheerios Cereal

Ever wonder what would happen if a French Toast Crunch bread slice decided it wanted to be a doughnut instead?

Well wonder no longer: assuming you have a passport or Canadian citizenship. Because Maple Cheerios—baffling stylized as Cheerios Maple—has quietly dripped onto Canadian shelves as smoothly as syrup through a spigot. It’s a Special Edition flavor released to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday, so stuff the waffle iron back in the pantry and enjoy a cake pan’s worth of this pancake-flavored stuff while you can. I know I’m going to do whatever it takes to get my sticky, Waffle Crisp-stained mitts on a box, whether that means negotiating, migrating, or mutating into a man-moose hybrid.

And speaking of Waffle Crisp, I have high hopes that these Cheerios will taste more authentically maple-y, since they are flavored with real maple syrup. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be stuffing flapjacks with these crunchy syrup circles in no time.

Massive thanks to our friends at Junk Food Canada for sharing the photo above. Maple Cheerios may not be as interesting as Birthday Cake Froot Loops, which are also hitting Canadian breakfast aisles as we speak, but hey: most of my birthday cakes involve maple syrup anyway.

(Most of my birthday cakes are pancakes.)

Got a cool cereal photo of your own to share? Spoon it over to cerealously.net@gmail.com for a chance to see it on the site.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: canada, cheerios, maple, spooned & spotted. 1 Comment

Apr. ’17

Review: Quaker Banana & Maple Oatmeal

Ever had a Canadian Elvis?

It’s a traditional and totally not-made-up sandwich native to North North America that remixes Mr. Presley’s favorite peanut butter and banana sandwich by swapping George Washington Carver’s creamy (or chunky, choosy moms don’t discriminate) legume spread with the sticky sweet life blood of Canada’s flag-starring national tree.

Quaker must be a fan of the Canadian Elvis, because it’s the only logic I can see behind their new(ish) Banana & Maple Oatmeal flavor. Outside of banana pancakes (which are usually paired with compote instead of syrup anyway) and a certain tragic incident in my childhood involving a rogue monkey with a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth, I’ve never heard of banana and maple going together.

Chocolate and bananas? Delicious.
Ice cream and bananas? You couldn’t split us apart.
Peanut butter and bananas? I hunka hunka burnin’ love it.

But maple syrup and bananas is largely unexplored territory—a final frontier worthy of a new Star Trek series. Maple is one of my favorite all-time flavors—I want my funeral procession to end at an IHOP—so Quaker’s got a lot to prove by pairing it with a fruit that barely makes my top 10.

(Though “Maple & Strawberry” probably wouldn’t sound any more palatable) Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, maple, oatmeal, quaker. 8 Comments

Apr. ’17

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Lip Balm

What can I say: sometimes I just love cereal so much, I want to kiss it.

I know, I know: a bad one-liner to introduce a bad review. But since this Cinnamon Toast Crunch Lip Balm is the first ever non-edible product I’ve reviewed here, I didn’t know how else to start.

If the antiquated art didn’t give it away, this lip balm totally isn’t new, but I found it in a local grocery bargain bin—along with 10(!) other cereal “flavors”—and I couldn’t resist. I was tempted to drop a crisp green Alexander Hamilton, buy all of them, and coat my mouth ’til it became a living pair of those candy wax lips, but I found some self-restraint and chose the one that sounded like it’d be the most pleasant to have slathered near my taste buds all afternoon.

I’m not saying Cocoa Puff-smacked lips isn’t an appetizing idea, I’m just saying I’ve had enough public Mr. Goodbar mishaps to give me pause. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 3 rating, cinnamon, general mills, non cereal, toast crunch. 3 Comments

Apr. ’17

Classic Review: Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Cereal

If keeping up-to-date on new cereals is this website’s main mission, then its side quest is to review every kind of raisin bran available on shelves. To everyone out there who hates raisin bran: I’m sorry, but I have to do this for me. As a self-appointed man of the bran, I want my legacy to be “mild-mannered dude with a bizarre passion for pairing dried, wrinkly fruit with grains and milk.”

That phrase better be in my eulogy, or else I swear I’m haunting all of you.

I’ve made good progress on my raisin bran review journey: from the world’s first raisin to undoubtedly the world’s best (so far), I’ve populated Cerealously with enough synonyms for “juicy raisins” to make a thesaurus go extinct. Of course, there are some notable absences—Raisin Nut Bran’s life-changing nut-covered raisins come to mind—and some that slipped into discontinuation before I could photograph them—rest in lame, flavorless pieces, Total Raisin Bran—but the biggest name missing from my raisin bran library has always been Kellogg’s plain ol’, original Raisin Bran.

I think it’s time we put this case to rest—and put the 98% of my readers who don’t care about raisin bran to sleep. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 5 rating, kelloggs, raisin bran. 7 Comments

Apr. ’17

Review: Burger King Froot Loops Shake

“I love this thing. I actually just had Froot Loops at 3a.m. last night—cereal really is great at any time of the day.”

You know a milkshake is gonna be good when you order it and the Burger King cashier feels inspired to gush over cereal. It was this serendipitous cereal fanboyism that made me certain BK’s new Froot Loops Shake would be true to its namesake breakfast classic before I even tried it.

When I first heard about this cereal milkshake, I was instantly excited. It sounded like the ol’ creepily masked monarch who gave humanity the Whopper had really outdone himself this time by mixing vanilla soft serve, Froot Loops cereal bits, a tantalizingly ambiguous “sweet sauce,” and whipped topping. But would the actual thing live up? I emerged from my tent outside a local Burger King bleary-eyed and thirsty for gooey, iridescently sugar-chunked dairy.

(Okay, I didn’t actually camp out waiting, but my brain hasn’t thought about anything else for this past week except Froot Loops Shakes and the occasional Reese’s Egg.) Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, froot loops, kelloggs, non cereal. 5 Comments

Apr. ’17

Why Is Honey Nut Cheerios America’s Best-Selling Cereal? | Infographic

For an impressive 8 (picture two Cheerios stacked on top of each other) years now, Honey Nut Cheerios has been named the best-selling cereal in America.

I would call this unbelievable, but after growing up with a father who exported enough empty Honey Nut Cheerios boxes from our household to build a cardboard replica of the entire Bee Movie set, I’ve experienced first-hand the zealous loyalty this hive-minded cereal can inspire.

But just why does this cereal keep breakfast lovers buzzing nearly 40 years after its introduction? After all, there are other cereals that are sweeter, healthier, or more chocolate chip cookie-shaped. I’ve always wanted to mix some investigative journalism into this blog’s normal stew of reviews and news, so I did some research, flexed my puny graphical muscles, and made an infographic. Click to see it in its full glory:

Are you a true Honey Nut Cheerios bee-liever too? Let me know below just what attracts you to these irresistibly golden-glazed rings. Maybe you and my dad can start a fan club.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: cheerios, general mills, honey. 5 Comments

Apr. ’17

Chex Quest HD: New Gameplay Teaser and an Interview with Art Director Charles Jacobi

If you’re a regular reader—or if you’ve ever just encountered me at a party after one too many Yoo-hoos or Crystal Pepsis—you know I love Chex Quest. I’ve written a tribute to it before, an original CD copy is among my prized possessions, and I’ve often half-jokingly considered getting Lord Snotfolus tattooed across my shoulder blades.

And now the game is being given new life with Chex Quest HD—an Unreal Engine 4 remake currently in development—and I’m giddier than an 8-year old with 50 free hours of America Online and a whole Saturday afternoon to spend them on. Pour yourself a bowl of Chex (or just some Muddy Buddies and milk: we won’t tell) and check out the world premiere of the game in motion above. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: chex. 2 Comments

Apr. ’17

Review: Honey Nut Cheerios Granola Snack

Have you ever been eating Honey Nut Cheerios in one hand and Pop Rocks in the other and thought, “Gee, I really wish someone would combine the best of these two completely different foods. That way I could have a free hand for high-fiving strangers, wrangling rattlesnakes, and writing obtusely obscure hypotheticals into online cereal reviews?”

Well think no more and start mindlessly munching, because General Mills’s new Honey Nut Cheerios Granola Snack is about to make your obtuse problem feel a lot more right.

And yes: that was a geometry joke. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 7 rating, cheerios, general mills, granola, honey. 6 Comments