It’s a slow time for cereal. Now that the start-of-2018 blitzkrieg of new products has gone as stagnant as a soggy bowl of week old Corn Flakes, I don’t have as much to write about—so my apologies for the lack of updates.
Thankfully, Cap’n Crunch has heard our cries, and he’s brought back last year’s fan-favorite Blueberry Pancake Crunch. Coming from the same Limited Crunch-dition lineage as Sprinkled Donut Crunch and Orange CreamPop Crunch, it could be possible that BPC is here to stay.
Or should I say, it’s really…sticking around.
If you want to learn more about this cereal (while I wait for the Cap’n’s next edible adventure), you can read last year’s review here.
Goodnight, sweet curvaceous and fluorescent prince.
Though the above tweet from Lucky Charms is needlessly cryptic, major news sources have confirmed the rumors: before long, the hourglass marshmallow will be disappearing from boxes of the much-loved oat and marbit cereal.
The good really do die young: introduced in 2008, the hourglass is actually the newest mainstay Lucky Charms marshmallow. And despite being very questionably recognizable as an hourglass, the marshmallow was redeemed by an awesome commercial campaign, in which it became a powerful talisman capable of controlling time itself.
Like a ten-year Snapchat streak about to expire, the hourglass’ early retirement raises many questions: is this part of General Mills’ war on artificial colors? Will we see popped balloons, waning moons, and an end of the rainbow in the near future? And most of all, what marshmallow will replace the hourglass?
Feel free to leave your marshmallow guesses below. I’m banking on a naturally colored magic sugar beet.
For the first 99.9% of my life, I was a non-believer at best and a heretic at worst. I turned my precociously large nose up at jumbo bagged cereals like those from Malt-O-Meal, seeing them as bootlegs. Cheap imitations. The cereal equivalents of tofurkey. And to be fair, they often tasted like it, too, with the thick bag imparting a (possibly imagined) plasticly stale aftertaste.
But then I saw the light, through a messiah known as Double Chocolate Brownie Crunch. Recent readers will remember me singing hymns of praise for it just last month, and it’s because of DCBC that I’ve joined the cult of Malt-O-Meal: the Church of the M-O-M, Spoon, and Holy-Crap-That’s-Good, if you will.
So now that I hear Malt-O-Meal (and parent company Post) are releasing Cinnamon Dyno-Bites Cereal and Golden Honey O’s Cereal, I’m more confident that the 2-pound cereal bricks bags will be more than just repackaged Cinnamon Pebbles and Honey Oh’s (which have recently been reformulated to remove graham, much to the chagrin of fans everywhere and reviewers like me who can’t even find the darn stuff).
No, I’m near-certain that some M-O-Mtherly love will be sprinkled in these bags to make them unique, and I can’t wait to try them. For those unfamiliar with their antecedent cereals, Cinnamon Dyno-Bites is cinnamon-flavored micro-rice flakes (meaning they’re a great texturizing mix-in for Cinnamon Toast Crunch), while Golden Honey O’s are oat and corn rings stuffed with rice and honey (meaning they’re delightfully sticky-sweet but can shred your mouth like Cap’n Crunch piloting a 360-degree lawn mower.
If you’re looking for these cereals, they should be at Walmarts already. But if you can’t find them, brush up on the best of M-O-M in the mean time, I recommend mixing Double Chocolate Brownie Crunch with Cookies & Cream and passing out from a sugar crash. These new ones should be out by the time you wake up!
Though it feels like only yesterday that I was straining eggnog through a stocking to craft an ultra-filtered holiday cocktail I call “St. Nick’s Knickers,” Lucky Charms is reminding me that St. Patrick’s Day is practically a Shamrock Shake away.
Because instead of releasing a strawberry-flavored, all heart marshmallow Lucky Charms variety for Valentine’s Day (that’s okay, General Mills. I’ll jsut eat a bowl of Conversation Hearts with milk, I guess), the cereal brand, still coming down from its Frosted Flakes sugar rush, has re-released its annual classic: All Shamrock Lucky Charms (which also comes in chocolate).
Spotted by reader Chris on Twitter, this year’s box reminds us that the good old Lucky design is back to stay, replacing the Fairly Odd Parents x Adventure Time mascot who graced boxes all last year. And this design may be back to stay on a plaque above your mantelpiece, because, continuing General Mills’ recent theme of turning cereal boxes into playsets (which any action figure-savvy kid has been doing since the ’70s), this Lucky Charms box doubles as a build your own Leprechaun Trap.
It’s like Ghostbusters, if Slimer studied abroad in Ireland and wouldn’t shut up about it.
Thanks again to Chris for sharing the photo. If you have a cereal find of your own to share, new or just plain awesome, feel free to pass it along to our Submissions page for a chance to see it featured on the site!
Sure, it’s healthy, wholesome, warm, nourishing, and all that jazz, but it’s also ugly. Those moist, lumpy, and occasional drippy beige chunks? Second only to canned tuna on my list of “tasty foods I’d swipe left on if Betty Crocker made a dating app.”
That’s why I’m giving props to Ideal Oats for trying to glamorize, or at least revolutionize, the classic breakfast with a face for radio. Billed as “Oatmeal, Reinvented,” Ideal Oats not only aims to help the fitness-conscious with 20g of protein per, but it also aims to overthrow the oatmeal aisle oligopoly of Apple Cinnamon and Maple Brown Sugar by bringing in never-before-seen flavors.
Needless to say, as someone whose recent exercise log primarily consists of long walks to the back of the grocery store to buy more Reese’s Cup coffee creamer, it’s the flavors that make most excited for this review.
All three cups featured below were sent to me by Ideal Oats, but I promise the freeness of the oats won’t influence my review. When it comes to peanut butter and bananas, I don’t lie: not after the infamous “Mario Kart PB&J Incident of 2008.”
I’m not gonna lie to you: I don’t hit a lot of trails.
The Oregon Trail for PC? Sure. Trailer Park Boys reruns? Definitely? But any sort of wooded or, dare I say, forested path that requires physical exertion and appreciation for non-pixelated nature? Count me out.
That’s how dysentery starts.
But I’m still more familiar with fictional trails than being fit, which is why I won’t penalize Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Crunch for its box’s blatant lie. See, this stuff isn’t new: it’s just a rebrand of 5-year old cereal Grape-Nuts Fit—a fact Grape-Nuts itself confirmed on my Instagram.
Luckily, I never reviewed Grape-Nuts Fit before, so it won’t be redundant if I do so now. Plus this potent little brick of a cereal box weighs in at over 1 pound, which, given its size, makes it count as powerlifting every time I pour from it.
A sphere of tropical water protected by a hairy rind so thick you could clock a cartoon character ‘cross the noggin without cracking it, the coconut as an edible fruit takes a backseat to the thing’s most iconic purposes: flavoring piña coladas, serving as a hula girl brassiere, and signaling the entrance of an invisible horse.
Yet the coconut’s incomparable flavor has still developed a cult following—most people either hate coconut, are indifferent about it, or go absolutely cuckoo and nuts about it, rubbing its various oils and butters over their face, arms, and…uh…upside-down cakes.
That’s why every time a coconut cereal comes out, I applaud it. It must be a risk for the company involved, yet it’s still a rare treat that lets me have a breakfast luau without busting out the maple-glazed pig roast.
Case in point: I’m excited to review Great Grains Coconut Almond Crunch, because two nuts are better than one.
Peanuts and almonds have an oligopoly over the nut butter market.
There, I said it. If Vladimir Nutin and his secret legume agents take me down, you’ll find my full manifesto buried 50 paces east of the old Siberian walnut factory.
All I’m saying is that, while peanut and almond butter is good and all, I think other nut butters deserve their moment in the sunflower oil-emulsified sun.
Cashew butter is delightful. Pecan butter is an underrated gem. And wingnut butter contains so much iron!
Yet General Mills and Nature Valley chose to use peanut butter and almond butter to flavor their newest pouches of granola. I’ll forgive them for now because they used honey in their almond butter granola, but if I’m martyred for this expository review, I’ll be leaving a scathing eulogy.
Oh well, might as well munch while I wait for my door to be punched down. Continue reading →
