Yearly Archives: 2021

News: Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal

New Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal Box

Hallo-who?

Oh, sorry, that silly old October 31st holiday is so last August. Get with the times—it’s the holiday season already! Which, for some ungodly reason, means we’re getting another Elf on the Shelf Cereal.

First came Elf on the Shelf Sugar Cookie Cereal in 2019. It was an over-simplistically sugary cereal, far more forgettable than the accursed eldritch Elf-scourge whose name it bears.

Then last year we got Elf on the Shelf Vanilla Candy Cane Cookie Crunch Cereal. In addition to its criminal abuse of consonance, this stuff tasted terrible. Like a mint Lifesaver scraped off the bottom of someone’s snow boot.

Now to complete this tepid trilogy (at least, dear most holy Saint Nick, I pray this is the end) comes Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal. From the looks of its cocoa stars and marshmallows, this stuff is unlikely to surpass General Mills’ similar Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs, which was, in itself, exceptionally mediocre. In fact, EotS Hot Cocoa will probably be worse, since this cereal family historically has the worst marbits ever. Seriously: these chewy, pill-sized marsh-molars could sink a cereal brand ten times mightier than Elf on the Shelf.

Sorry if I sound hopelessly pessimistic, but I am. That devilish shelf-sitting sprite has every right to try proving me wrong, but given his putrid precedent, he’s guilty until proven innocent.

Review: Krispy Kreme Cereal (Mexico Exclusive)

New Mexico Exclusive Krispy Kreme Cereal Review - Box

Kellogg’s new Krispy Kreme Cereal is weird. And I don’t say that because it’s a Mexico-exclusive cereal—though zany flavors that aren’t available stateside are certainly breakfast-aisle oddballs.

And I don’t call it weird because it comes in such a small box—weighing in at 190g vs your standard issue 280g Froot Loops—though there’s a strange, empty feeling that comes with knocking out a whole box of cereal within like, four or five regular-sized bowls of it. A.K.A., a typical weekend’s worth.

No, no, I call Krispy Kreme Cereal weird because it tastes weird! And I mean ‘weird’ not in the sense that it’s bad in any way, but in the way that’s like goodness gracious, me and mine, implacable flavor’s a-ticklin’ my mind. That’s right, the taste of Krispy Kreme Cereal is poetically elusive. I racked my brain buds and taste cells trying to identify the buttery(?), fried(?!), and perhaps, greasy(‽) note that prevails over each thick ‘n’ chunky cereal ring.

And those are some of the best adjectives I could come up with. Continue reading

Quick Review: Froot Loops Gummies

New Froot Loops Gummies Review

Sorry for the abbreviated review, but any morsel’d candy that doesn’t give me more than four pieces per container doesn’t deserve more than four paragraphs. Granted, you can find these new Froot Loops Gummies in 7oz packages (which would be like, upwards of 40 gummies), but all I could find were these trick-or-treat pouches, which comes 16 to a bag, and which take longer to open their wasteful packaging than they do to eat. They’re so small they can’t even be called fun-sized—to quote the venerable Strong Bad, “The only fun I’m going to have with this thing is smearing it all over your door when I leave.”

These portions are especially frustrating because Froot Loops Gummies are actually good. They really do taste like sweeter, tarter and juicier Froot Loops—though just like real Froot Loops, each color tastes the same.

However. this synthetic tropical smoothie of goodness also leaves behind a pretty iffy, throat-coating chemical aftertaste. It’s nothing too bad, but normally I would just start chain-chewing more gummies to mask the aftertaste. Can’t do that super speedily when I need to rip open my fifth-in-a-row pouch of the things.

Overall, Froot Loops Gummies are a fun and smartly flavored candy adaptation of a beloved cereal, but unless you can find ’em value sized, these toothsome toucan rings aren’t work the effort nor the plastic refuse.

Review: Dunkin’ Cinnamon Cereal & Milk Latte

Dunkin' Cereal & Milk Latte - Cinnamon Review

Anybody else see this?

No?

Well, while we were all out funkin’ and drunken slam dunkin’, Dunkin’ Donuts was slunkin’. Smooth as cold brew, they slunk two whole Cereal & Milk Lattes onto their menu without any fervor or fanfare. Even I wouldn’t’ve heard about ’em if not for Stewart M. tweeting at me.

Turns out the reason these drinks are so hard to find out about, is because they’re hard to find in general. These lattes are test market items only available in Detroit, MI; Wheeling, WV; Pittsburgh, PA; Oklahoma City, OK; as well as Houston, Dallas, & San Antonio, Texas. So while I apologize to all who won’t be able to try Dunkin’s Cereal & Milk Lattes without great geographic difficulty, hot diggity darn: for like the first time in test market history, I’m near one of them! I can’t help but notice that West Virginia is also on the list, leading me to believe Dunkin’ was deliberately targeting cereal’s two foremost meditative cereal podcasters.

Long story short, I bought the Cinnamon Cereal & Milk Latte. Even though the Marshmallow one is more visually appealing, I feel like marshmallow flavoring in addition to the “sweet cold foam” would just be redundant. But how was it? Well, that’s more of a medium story…medium. Continue reading

News: Pebbles Bites

New Fruity and Cocoa Pebbles Bites

Call it a gravel pit, a rockslide, or an earthfall, but there’ve been so many new Pebbles products this year to celebrate the cereal line’s 50th anniversary. Candy bars, bunnies, Crisps and cake mix are only the tip of this kaleidoscopically colorful iceberg.

Well, now we can add coated bites of pure decadence to the list, too, as Frankford—the appropriately Dr. Frankenstein-ish confectioners behind many of these other Pebbles sweets—are also dropping both Cocoa and Fruity Pebbles Bites.

These little grape-sized rounds of real cereal are coated with milk chocolate and creamy candied white goo, respectively. The Bites debut this month and are exclusive to Five Below stores—who previously have had a lock on the Pop-Tarts pool float market.

Despite looking a bit too small to justify the laborious waste of individually unwrapping each one, I bet these Bites will probably taste pretty good—and even if they don’t, you could totally use a slingshot to wreak prehistoric havoc all across the neighborhood.

Spooned & Spotted: Apple Pie Toast Crunch Cereal

New Apple Pie Toast Crunch Cereal

Welp, so much for a slow news week.

Having bemoaned just yesterday how no show-stopping new cereals in some time, the breakfast gods must’ve heard my cries. Appearing entirely without warning, fanfare, nor heralding angels, Apple Pie Toast Crunch is apparently hitting shelves.

This stuff was found at Albertson’s by Chris’s Cereal Crusade, and its wintery branding seems to suggest Apple Pie Toast Crunch is either a companion or replacement for long-time seasonal specialty Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch—here’s hoping it’s the former, so I can mix the two.

Toast Crunch devotees will no-doubt notice how similar Apple Pie Toast Crunch sounds to now-discontinued Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch, the key difference being the older of the two used French Toast Crunch’s bread-shaped pieces instead of these crazy squares. To be honest, I dearly miss the dense ‘n’ crunchy era of adorably sliced Toast Crunches—especially the sugar-dusted ones—but it’s hard to get mad about something that sounds as good as, well, Apple Pie Toast Crunch.

I’ll certainly be on the lookout for this stuff as it hopefully pops up in more stores soon. If you’ve tried it, let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

News: Three Cereal Tidbits!

All Marshmallow Lucky Charms 2021

It’s been a dry few weeks for dry cereal news—an odd occasion, since breakfast happenings are usually bustling enough to have me posting a couple times a week without fail. Cereal news is metaphorically true to its namesake, after all: it gets you hungry for a new bowl before you’ve even finished the one you just poured. In comparison, this has been the overnight oats of slow news months.

Nevertheless, there have been a couple news bites worth bringing up: the first of which is the rainbow-spanning return of Lucky Charms “Just Magical Marshmallows.” After years of making All Marshmallow LC boxes extremely rare artifacts you could only win from contests (though I acquired one anyway), General Mills has since stripped the stuff of its mythic stature. Last year, they introduced small pouches of marbits, and now they’re back—even though I never noticed they were gone. Truth be told, I see no practical reason to buy these, given how the oat bits are actually the cereal’s best part, unless you want to melt a big glob of them for the world’s most unicorn puke-tastic s’more.

Oh well, at least the neat new packaging makes it feel like you’re collecting Infinity Stones. Continue reading

Review: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn Review Bag

In the near future, non-cereal cereal-flavored foodstuffs will outlive cereals themselves. Our children’s children’s children will ask us, “wait, Cinnamon Toast Crunch wasn’t always a popcorn brand? Fruity Pebbles wasn’t always aquarium gravel? And Count Chocula used to make more than just edible abacuses?” And we will sit them on our laps and tell them tales of a time when you could pour crunchy little things in a bowl and eat them with milk—back before the Froot Loops-scented ICBMs fell and changed everything.

Yes, cereal–snack tie-ins are a never-ending trend, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch Popcorn—currently still a Sam’s Club exclusive—is only the latest incarnation of innovation and temptation. But is it worthy of the Toast Crunch title? Well let me tell ya… Continue reading