Now that there’s an episode for each letter of the alphabet, the only things we’re missing above are TEB, U and some sweet Zs. If you’re in the market for a crunchy podcast with cozy vibes, look no further: my and Justin‘s (roughly) biweekly soaks in heaven’s hottest cereal jacuzzi are meant to chill you out (and possibly knock you out!) by detuning the world in favor of casual, breakfast-centric discussion.
This time around, we’re sharing some tragic news about one of our favorite cereals, choking down chunkfuls of Sippable Toast Crunch, and considering the possibility of too much cereal.
If you’re tired of looping your ABCs to fall asleep, you can find more episodes at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, but they’re much more pleasing to our eyes than cinnamon slurry.
What’s that old Froot Loops slogan again? “Follow your ears…to transcend earthly spheres!” Or something like that.
The point is that, through some unexpected matchmaking between Kellogg’s and candymaker Frankford, our world has birthed a warren of White Chocolate Froot Loops Easter Bunnies, each capable of supplementing their big-beaked father’s apparent lack of audio-capturing organs. With his sense of smell and these rabbits’ lengthy lobes, Toucan Sam’s many enemies will no longer be able to sneak up on him.
Samuel’s senses have become too powerful for this plane, and the only way for us to prevent rainbow-looped Ragnarok is to eat as many of these rascally reconnaissance rabbits as possible.
Though February has hardly even begun to let loose her polar powdered wrath, these edible heralds of Punxsutawney Phil’s prophesied early spring have already been spotted by Cerealously pal Sammy Hain at Big Lots. Naturally, the best move when you get your hands on a Froot Loops Easter Bunny will be to slice it up with a cheese cutter and serve it atop Froot Loops Pop-Tarts like a cardiac-arresting charcuterie board.
(Conversely, the worst move would be to try toasting these hares like said Pop-Tarts, but that’s between you and your kitchen appliances.)
Milk? Never heard of her. Is that some fermented barnyard beverage, like a cow-bucha?
I mean, it’s 2020: we’ve got more viscous things to pour over our cereal. While many make a New Year’s resolution to get thinner, there’s a skim-to-none chance that I don’t spend the year progressively thickening my breakfast additives.
Case in point: new Yoplait Trix & Cinnamon Toast Crunch Smoothies, two chuggable recontextualizations of popular cereals that are likely not meant to join their namesake noshes in bowl-y matrimony—though I am hellbent on doing so anyway. These bottles come four to a clumsily constructed cardboard pack (seriously, put these in a separate bag or you’ll end up bungling a liter of chilled Trix sauce down your front steps), and conveniently contain exactly enough smoothie to douse a bowl of cereal.
But of course, I must slug ’em back raw before any experimentation. So forgive me as I make whatever wretched noises accompany the process of “opening up one’s throat.” Continue reading →
Or at least I do. I love all bits, whether it’s exponentially sugar-fortified cereal dust, forgotten salt-stewed French fry-lets, or the last messy bite of a restaurant meal that you saved as a parting gift for yourself after boxing up the rest of the leftovers—the very same last bite you had to awkwardly tell the waiter you were saving as he’s midway through lifting the plate from your desperate mitts. Or maybe that’s just me.
No matter how you spin it, I’ll always love bits more than pieces. Well, unless it’s those honey mustard and onion pretzel pieces. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my strange bit-diction stems from a long childhood relationship with Timbits: those lovable lil totally-not-doughnut-holes from Tim Hortons that just about any teacher who had a hope of winning their class’ trust would bring in by the party pack-ful on syllabus day.
Though Tim Hortons and his namesake ‘bits were a source of warm nostalgia for my fellow Michiganders, the coffee chain is a more deeply in-granulated cultural epicenter in its country of origin, Canada. So it makes sense that the first ever Timbits Cereal would be released exclusively north of the states—even if I firmly believe my mitten of origin should be considered an annexed state of the Hortonian Empire. Thanks to Cereal Time’s Gabe Fonseca, I was able to secure boxes of both Timbits Cereal flavors, Birthday Cake and Chocolate Glazed.
So let’s all grab a coffee, PBR coffee, or perhaps some strange soup of poutine and Labatt Blue and see if these itty bitty Timbits are a slam dunk. Continue reading →
You’ve been getting in the Grape-Nuts again, haven’t you?
Sorry if that doesn’t make any sense, but it will after you remedy my accusatory intro with The Empty Bowl’s latest half-hourish audio antidote. Hint: we’re asking about your secret cereal.
Welcome back into the sky’s balming bowl for a twenty-fifth time. My and Justin‘s meditative cereal podcast, The Empty Bowl, is back to discuss everything from Cheerios Oat Crunch (again) to Toops, and every idea from Raisin Bran 2 to the best Cookie Crisp never made.
If you need a longer soundtrack to your secret cereal scarfing, you can find more episodes at our Anchor hub, follow along on Twitter, or send in a listener question. We can’t discuss or respond to every email, I treasure each one like it’s a Cap’n Crunch chest.
Some cereal mix-’em-ups make sense: after all, the likes of Muddy Buddies and Rice Krispies Treats have largely superseded the reputation of their constituent cereals and become dessert icons in their own right. Though I’d still eat literal puppy chow if it meant getting a Muddy Buddies Cereal.
Then there are others that feel fresh off the boat from some Procedurally Generated Ideas Summit, held annually in international waters where all laws of common sense don’t apply—and Cap’n Crunch has had his fare share of nauticallynonsensical tie-ins.
Now I’m not saying that a Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries Popcorn Mix doesn’t sound downright delectable—after all, it wouldn’t be the Cap’n’s first foray out of the cereal bowl and into an oddly shaped crystal dinner party bowl. But where those earlier mixes presented unique flavors unseen in cereal-form Cap’n Crunch—and with greater depth of candied add-ons—Smartfood’s new Crunch Berries Popcorn Mix feels comparatively uninspired.
I mean, Crunch Berries already have a corn ‘n’ oat base, while Cap’n’s golden chest pieces are known for their buttery goodness. Therefore I have to imagine that we won’t gain much beyond a little salt and some textural contrast by subbing kernels for chests. From what little we can see of this popcorn mix—this first photo was generously provided by Dijana J. on Instagram—the Crunch Berries stand alone in the realm of mix-ins. As if getting hulls stuck in your teeth wasn’t bad enough, what’s a little salt for your roof-of-mouth wounds too?
Here’s hoping the nether region of this bag reveals some sweet surprises, otherwise we have no choice but to wait for Smartfood to roll out DLC M&M’s.
And now, the real thing? I demand to know the astrological significance of experiencing so many cinnamon-spiced chilly bois in constellation. Will someone I’m close to become hot and cold toward me? Will I be dead by June after a defrosted Crazy Square eats me from the inside like an Antarctic alien?
Whether I’m able to shape-shift into a fleshy spoon in time to eat Edy’s & Dreyer’s new Cinnamon Toast Crunch (Light) Ice Cream, I’m confident it will be a product whose quality is best measured in increments of time: 10 minutes to snarf it down out of 10 hours of lactose-induced remorse.
Thanks to Candy Hunting and The Junk Food Aisle who broke this story (it has since been spotted in stores), we also know there is a Lucky Charms Light Ice Cream debuting in tandem with CTC’s. Though there isn’t a photo yet, I have to imagine it will be an oatmeal ice cream swirled with (hopefully rainbow) marshmallow fluff. The kind of thing that sounds better as a trendy latte.
Because while marshmallow in ice cream is like adding whipped cream to a glass of oat milk, I can at least get excited about melting a Cinnamon Toast Crunch pint over a sieve and refining the cinnamon sugar dust into a handsome necklace.
Look, I know I’ve always said it’s my dream to one day be credited on Wikipedia for a distinguished contribution to cereal-kind—I’m picturing a front-page New York Times piece on my exhumation of the Lost Tomb of Yummy Mummy. But now I’m starting to think finding a place in Pop-Tarts’ extended mythos might be easier. I can see it now:
“Noted breakfast influencer and Fillows fill-anthropist Bran Goubert [of course I’d change my name for the clout] was the 21st century’s strongest advocate for the freezing of Pop-Tarts, a technique now so commonplace that Kellogg’s has relocated their entire retail pastry inventory between the shredded hash browns and single-serving pot pies.”
Now I know, I know: freezing Pop-Tarts has been a thing for a long time, but I certainly got a lot more flak from toaster troubadours in my early blogging years for explicitly condoning the practice. Maybe I just need to be bolder about my advocacy. Choreograph a Gurdjieffian dance around a giant cooling coil or something.
While I wait for my sluggish notoriety to thaw, I can nevertheless celebrate Pop-Tarts’ latest validation of frozen Pop-Tarts as a concept, ideal and life philosophy. Kellogg’s pastry-smiths have teamed up with the agreeable folks at Good Humor to launch Brown Sugar Cinnamon Ice Cream Technically ‘Dairy Dessert’ Bars. To say I’m excited for this is an understatement, and to say my lactose intolerance disagrees with this excitement would certainly be an easy-to-ignore statement. Given how famous Good Humor’s Strawberry Shortcake Bars already are, it makes sense for them to tackle the brand’s other biggest spokes-Tart. We’re treated here to two layers of (presumably vanilla) and brown sugar cinnamon-infused cow product, but what’s really got me ready to put sole to pavement for these bars is that beautiful gravelly coating.
Looking like the inside of my bag after a brief sojourn to the beach, these crispety-crunchities are almost sure to be what makes these Good Humor Pop-Tarts Bars so good you can taste them in your humerus. As they’re already on Good Humor’s website, these bars should be popping up in stores any time now. Guess it’s time to start parceling out my Lactaid pills until the next ice age—if I tragically can’t go down in Pop-Tartian history, I at least want my tear-diluted dairy delicacies to go down easy.
