With French toast and waffles soaking up the most syrupy cereal attention, the O.G. (Original Griddler) of the breakfast’s holy maple trinity has been inexplicably left out. Yeah, there’s been that one pancake cereal, but since the likes of French Toast Crunch and Waffle Crisp have already done their namesake foodstuff proper geometric justice, Cap’n Crunch’s pan-puffs feel borderline disrespectful—not to mention overeager; who makes a blueberry pancake cereal before classic maple?
Thankfully, IHOP is teasing a new breakfast product that appears to risk it for the disc-shaped syrup biscuit. Continue reading →
It is a time of indoor inertia and slow-digesting creativity. General Grievous’ great-grand-droid-child Mills has assumed his ancestral rank and inherited a diabolical plot: to pump the galaxy full of cloned cash-grab cereals offering little flavor and even less timely appeal. His defenses only loosely fortified with intergalactic vitamins and minerals, it’s up to White Squadron to douse Mills’ plans before it’s too late. But the General has come prepared, for he’s surrounded himself with a belt of razor-sharp corn asteroids, which even sogginess can’t make much worse….
Let’s be honest: Star Wars cereals haven’t been good for a while. Not since the days of C3POs, a double-hooped cereal that was later charmingly reborn as Winnie the Pooh’s Hunny B’s, have we seen the omnipresent series done crunchy justice beyond the tried-and-truly boring formula of corn pieces and marshmallows. While I love marbit cereals as much as the next Rodian, to take the graces of Lucky Charms and neuter the oat component is a tragedy most unwise.
Baby Yoda Cereal is the latest example. While I’ll throttle my own personal opinion on the itty-bitty alien muppet itself—I’ve kind of fallen off the Star Wars train since around the time in the early ’00s that my parents wouldn’t upgrade our dial-up internet solely so I could play Star Wars Galaxies—I can’t say I’m excited about Baby Yoda’s cereal. Since The Mandalorian Season 2 doesn’t drop until October, it feels strangely timed. Plus, it doesn’t even appear to have the fruity flavor of its General Mills predecessors. But since that fruit flavor was also chemically cringeworthy, maybe comparative corny blandness isn’t such a bad thing.
Whether this is the cereal you’re looking for or not, expect it in stores this summer.
Yes, yes, time is an illusion, and despite me promising last time I forgot to post an episode The Empty Bowl that I wouldn’t do it again, somehow it’s been four weeks since then and I’m grizzled as a snooze-button-happy hibernating bear. While I’d like to say this is because our meditative cereal podcast has brought me a literal amount of tranquility, it’s really because I’ve been measuring the passing weeks by how many times I make up song parody lyrics using my cats, Beignet & Jupiter’s names.
Benny & the Jupes! It writes itself!
But I both digress and hope you’re handling your time indoors well. If the space-time continuum’s sucked you in and rattled you around like a child’s toy vacuum, at least there are two new episodes of The Empty Bowl to unplug and unwind to. As you may notice, we’ve got a new show look & feel that aptly maps the feelings we try to project. So put on the rose-colored glasses of a Saturday morning cereal-eating child and join me + Justin on a beach made of Franken Berry dust, as we listen to crashing waves of milk (vanilla almond, for my sake) and explore breakfast’s latest and greatest news.
In these episodes, we try to tell Sea Berries from Spider Berries, check out cereal history’s least remembered video game, and once more sing the praises of those oh-so-underrated Golden Grahams.
Still working on your tan? Our beach never closes, with more episodes at our Anchor hub. You can also follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but they’re all eligible for consideration in our seaside book club.
For one spice, cinnamon sure wears a lot of hats. Just like Sailor Moon with her disguise pen, cinnamon can be just about anything: the faint infusion grounding Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s hyper sweetness. The sinful spear wielded by a Hot Tamale. Or the soon-to-be-regretted cornerstone ingredient in the tempting elixir known as Rumchata (or the more nefarious, Fireball).
The point is that, though it’s simple to write off the likes of Cinnamon Cheerios as ‘just another cinnamon cereal,’ the rich historical matrix of cinnamon cereals proves that very few of them—from Cinnabon Cereal to Cinnamon Crunch Krave—present the exact same shade of auburn delight. So while your first reaction—as mine was—to Cinnamon Cheerios may be “oh, it’s just Diet Oat Crunch,” I’m happy to report that not only are Cinnamon Cheerios a wonderful gluten-free option for cinnamon cereal fans, but their approach to cinnamon is different enough to make both worthy of a place in your pantry.
But I’ve said too much: let’s start from the top of the bowl. Continue reading →
I’ve written about a lot of battered & baked cereals in my time, but this one takes the confetti cake.
Coming soon from Pillsbury, Funfetti Cereal promises to be ‘the fun and only’ birthday/vanilla/angel food cake cereal you’ll ever need. Just how it will be “bursting with fun” remains unclear, but as Funfetti Cereal’s release trails a full Chuck E. Cheese itinerary’s worth of birthdaycakeflavoredbreakfastproducts, these sprinkled spheres are going to have to work really, flavorfully hard to avoid being just another boring, exponentially sugared cereal.
I’ll admit, I’m a bit over vanilla and birthday cake in the breakfast aisle, because its typical one-note sweetness feels like a cheap cop-out to avoid paying for richer, more imaginative flavors, but hey: at least Funfetti looks pretty (pretti?).
What’s especially strange here is that General Mills is not producing this cereal, despite Pillsbury being their subsidiary brand. This tip comes from longtime friend Gabe Fonseca, who suspects Post might be producing the product, as they were the ghost writers behind the similar-looking Canada exclusive Birthday Cake Timbits Cereal.
Though it already appears on Walmart’s site, Funfetti Cereal’s release date is as of yet unknown. Hopefully Pillsbury & their mysterious co. take their time with this one, because unlike a real gooey cake, a half-baked cake cereal is like a trick candle: it blows, and never grants our wishes.
What is hotdog water, but the cereal endmilk of boiled meat byproduct?
I’ll be frank, I’ve never been to a Wienerschnitzel restaurant before, and after a cursory perusal of their website and its liberal use of phrases like “World’s Most Wanted Wiener” and “#WienerFam,” I’m confident I haven’t missed much. But since the nearest one is a whole state over, I am a bit bummed I won’t be able to try the franchise’s new cereal-infused confections—unless an Illinois-based reader can chuck a perfect-spiral Froot Loops Dipped Cone across the border.
“For a limited time, enjoy a sweet Wienerschnitzel Dipped Cone or Shake bursting with the fruity flavor of Froot Loops cereal,” the release for this partnership reads. While Burger King has already set a strong precedent for fast food Froot Loops shakes, the cone in question captures my interest thanks to its supple swirls and near gravity-defying chunklets of studded Froot Loop. In the midst of dine-in closures everywhere, Wienerschnitzel is vocally proud to offer both these treats through their drive-thru—we can only hope that no window worker is subjected to cabin fever-induced regressions to middle-school ‘pranks’ like cone-ing.
Since I won’t be able to, if you try either of these items, let me know what you think in the comments below or on Twitter. I’ll just be up here, wiener-less in the Mitten, wondering if this means we’ll get savory Froot Links cereal next.
I’m putting on my waffle cone chainmail and wielding a shield forged from molten maraschino cherries, because what I’m about to say will no-doubt spark a meltdown in the frozen brains of whole-blooded ice cream diehards everywhere:
I like light ice cream.
Yes, I know it has a lot less authentic milk fat, and I know there’s a certain broad threshold between light ice cream and ‘frozen desserts’ that further muddles the clarity of creamishness involved. But I’m also a grown baby with sensitive teeth and a mild lactose problem, so something soft and tolerably intolerable is a lot more appealing than a brick of pasteurized pain in my gut.
I like to think that Edy’s/Dreyer’s made this pair of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms ice creams light solely so I, their favorite cereal reviewer, could safely discuss them. I know, in reality, that it was a matter of cost, but hey: let me have this fantasy as I go scoop deep into churned versions of General Mills’ two most spun-off cereals. Continue reading →
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.
