Author Archives: dan g.

Spooned & Spotted: Mrs. Butterworth Fruity Pebbles Syrup

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This is her body…

*hands you a small waffled wafer*

…and this is her blood.

*pours Fruity Pebbles syrup directly into your mouth*

Yes, dear parishioners at this holy maple mass, you can now top your breakfast with Mrs. Butterworth’s own crimson lifeblood! Or perhaps it’s Fred Flintstone’s—the scripture isn’t clear on this matter. And this viscous red syrup sure ain’t clear either. All we can be sure about is that Mrs. Butterworth’s Fruity Pebbles-flavored syrup is now available at Walmart.

Personally, I can’t imagine loving the taste of liquefied Pebbles enough to finish an entire bottle of it, so I feel like you’d have to get creative with how you use this stuff. Pour it in your coffee, maybe? Or perhaps pour it all over your body and build the world’s stickiest slip-n-slide? I have no idea, but at least Cap’n Crunch’s Ocean Blue Syrup now has a competitor for the “most eerily food-colored cereal sauce in history” title belt.

What cereal do you think should get syrup-ified next? I feel like Waffle Crisp is too redundant of an answer, so maybe Golden Grahams?

News: Post Pebbles Shake Ups!

New Fruity Pebbles Shake Ups!

Ugh, typical: another job lost to automation.

Well at least, “AI-generated cereal mixology” is the only rational explanation I can think of for Post’s new Pebbles Shake Ups! cereal pouches and the nonsensical menagerie of cereal pieces contained therein. First off, you’ve got Birthday Cake Pebbles Boulders, which is an edible enigma in its own right. Not only did I never expect Pebbles to dust off the spherical, ten-year-old Pebbles Boulders sub-brand, but they decided to create a new Boulders flavor just to use in these Shake Ups! Pebbles Boulders proper were only ever released in Caramel Apple and Chocolate Peanut Butter varieties, so Birthday Cake Pebbles Boulders are a new cereal released within a new cereal mix—that is, unless you assume these Boulders are just rebranded Birthday Cake Timbits Cereal pieces (which they totally are).

Rounding out this odd ensemble are Waffle Crisp squares and “Salted Pretzel Bits.” Don’t get me wrong, I love Waffle Crisp, and actual salty pretzel sound interesting, but a taste trilogy of birthday cake, maple, and salted pretzel seems just a little too random to rev my engine. Continue reading

Bite-Sized Reviews: Swiss Miss Cocoa Puffs & Cap’n Crunch’s Merry Berries Popcorn

The latest in my light/bite-speed review series of cereals that aren’t novel enough to justify full Tolstoyan treatises: two holiday season quasi-re-releases that, though they are both outstandingly simple, feel very cozy if you can enjoy them while watching flurries fall outside your window (earmuffs and electric blanket optional, but highly recommended).

News: Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles

New Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles Cereal

*Throws hands up in the air with enough gusto to alter the flight patterns of passing geese*

Fine, I guess.

Innovation in the cereal sphere is often a weirdly all-or-nothing affair. Sure, we get intelligent strokes of sweet strategic genius like Apple Pie Toast Crunch, but a lot of the time it seems like if we’re not getting bludgeoned over the buzz-fed head with wacky headline-grabbers like Green Onion Chex or…meaty cereals, big cereal companies will instead play it super safe by simply making a sugary cereal more sugary—whether that means frosting an already frosted cereal or just chucking in a mittful of marbits and calling it a day.

Case in point: new Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles. Pebbles are no stranger to marbits: from Dino Pebbles to Marshmallow Mania Pebbles, it’s well-trodden territory for the shaved rice crisps brand. Which is why I can’t find myself getting too excited about another (admittedly kinda lazy) marshmallow addition—even if they are using cocoa-infused marbits this time. If nothing else, as a purple-loving people cereal eater, I adore this vibrant box, but, uh, I’m drawing a big, white and fluffy blank when it comes to saying anything else interesting about Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles.

The cereal has already been spotted out in the wild, so if Marshmallow Cocoa Pebbles sounds like your bag, run—do not walk—your stone-age car to the store ASAP.

News: A Pantry’s Worth of New General Mills Cereals

New CinnaGraham Toast Crunch Cereal

Y’know, they say imitation is the sublimest form of flattery.

Yes, General Mills unleashed a mouthwatering downpour of new cereal news this week, and the twinkling, golden, Luciferianly tempting lightbringer leading the firestorm is CinnaGraham Toast Crunch: a game-changing union of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Golden Grahams that pairs the former’s sweet cinnamon sugar swirls with the latter’s hearty honey base grain.

To be honest, I’d’ve preferred if GM made this a variant of Golden Grahams instead of a Toast Crunch. I totally understand how CTC has more cult appeal, but poor Golden Grahams never gets limited edition variants, whereas there are enough members of the Toast Crunch family to start a mafia, inspire an Ancestry.com commercial, and clean out an Olive Garden. Continue reading

News (UK): Cereal Killer Treat Cereals

Killer Cereal Collection

Oh boy am I glad this is just a blog, and I don’t have to say the names of any of these cereals out loud.

Wait a minute, I have a podcast. A family friendly podcast.

Aw, [dolphin noises].


Anyway, it seems like I’ve been sleeping on the Cereal Killer Cafe for a long time—not surprising, considering how they’re like, 5 timezones ahead of me. But I also knew them as the Brits with the most famous cereal cafe of all time. Cereal cafes aren’t all that rare in America, but since you can just buy all the same cereals at your local grocery store, the concept is much more of a novelty overseas, where American cereals are comparatively exotic and exuberantly sweet. Add in Cereal Killer Cafe’s immersive branding, and you had a hit on your spoon-gripping hands. Continue reading

The Empty Bowl Episode Sixty + Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats

Happy Ho-Ho-Hovember! Not to be confused with Yo-Ho-Hovember (only celebrated in international waters), H-H-H-vember is my go-to name for the late-autumn parts of November that are cannibalized by the coming Christmas season (i.e., every day in November except for like, three).

I highly recommend you celebrate with either a) strict defiance and rigid adherence to Thanksgiving tradition with a “come and take ’em” on your mashed potatoes, b) the kind of dastardly combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities that results in cranberry sauce leaking out of a stocking, or c) a new episode of The Empty Bowl, a meditative cereal podcast from myself and Justin McElroy.

I won’t lie: I do a very bad job about remembering to tell y’all when we have a new episode. In fact, it’s been an embarrassing 5 months since I’ve done so. But nevertheless, Episode Sixty is a darn good one, even if it gets a bit off topic into the rich realms of s’mores and doughnuts…and shoddy Halloween costumes.

New Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats Box

We also discuss these new Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treats, which thankfully aren’t exclusive to the Sam’s Club 53-count box after all—and instead can also be found in this 35-pack at Walmart stores, even though that’s still enough sweet little rectangular prisms to leave Santa too stuffed to slide out of your house the way he came in. Forgive him for tucking and rolling out the living room window…and taking the head clean off your front yard reindeer sculpture.

Anyway, if you want to hear all the Empty Bowl episodes I forgot to tell you about, you can find them 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 each one is like a Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch Mini Treat injected directly into our veins.

News: Smartfood Merry Berries Cap’n Crunch Popcorn

New Smartfood Merry Berries Cap'n Crunch Popcorn

Well there ya have it, folks: Halloween is is barely dead and buried, and Christmas is already doing a perverse little gumdrop dance on its grave.

Though to be honest, I doubt Halloween minds chilling six feet under with all the skeletons, worms, and cursed alien artifacts.

Regardless, I’m not ready to dive into the holiday spirit yet. Partly because I’m a wuss when it comes to snow and winter cold, and partly because I still need to stuff my face with a metric ton of, well, stuffing. Which is why it’s a bit sad we’re not getting any new Thanksgiving cereal products this year—no Pecan Pie Toast Crunch? C’mon!—and instead diving right into the sugar cookies and….”Merry Berries?”

You’d think that’s a euphemism for mistletoe, but no: it’s the name of a limited-edition Smartfood popcorn flavor starring Cap’n Crunch and his Crunch Berries. And if the idea of Crunch Berry popcorn rankles your stockings with recognition, you’d be right. Last summer, Smartfood and the Cap’n dropped a more straightforward-branded version of the same snack.

The disappointing news is that Merry Berries Cap’n Crunch popcorn seems to be the exact same product, just with red and green Crunch Berries only. The alright news is that this pretty much describes what Christmas Crunch already is. And finally, the good news is that Smartfood’s Crunch Berries popcorn was already extremely tasty, so I’m gonna recommend you seek out Merry Berries if you haven’t tried the mix yet. I’m not even a fan of sweet popcorn, usually, but the combo of saltiness, berry-dusted popcorn, and the Crunch Berries themselves is uniquely magical.

Not as magical as a Cranberry Sauce Crunch Berries popcorn might be, mind you, but I’ll take what I can get.