Author Archives: dan g.

Review: belVita Gingerbread Breakfast Biscuits

Gingerbread can do things to a man. Powerful things.

Its pillowy cookie coziness can make him devour a whole plates worth of gingerbread men with all the empathy of a bloodthirsty Xenomorph.
Its darkling molasses sweetness can make him suckle a used cookie cutter like a hungry baby’s favorite pacifier.
Its intricate blend of holiday spices can make him seriously grill a Home Depot employee for a price quote on building an actual gingerbread villa in the countryside—or at least a gingerbread armoire to hold all his Shrek DVDs.

Worst of all, gingerbread can make that cereal blogger scour the aisles of his local supermarket for any kind of gingery breakfast product—be it a cereal, oatmeal, or granola bar—he can write about. Even a breakfast biscuit—the kind that he, after triumphantly trafficking it like a footballer through the store’s pre-Thanksgiving, stuffing-clutching crowd, now munches on—would suffice.

So here he sits a-munching, transfixed by gingerfever. Is this him speaking to you, or the gingerbread? He thinks you should bow to your new gingerbread ov—

Oh hey guys, didn’t see you come in. That was weird—I just had a quick power nap, and now there’s an open package of belVita Gingerbread Breakfast Biscuits in front of me. Oh well, might as well give ’em a try, right? Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 5 rating, gingerbread, holiday, non cereal. 1 Comment

Nov. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Trader Joe’s Hot Cocoa O’s Cereal

Fight. Fight. Snowball fight!

I know I shouldn’t incite polar breakfast violence, but it just seems a little too convenient that, right after Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs broke the ice as the first-ever hot chocolate-flavored cereal, Trader Joe’s hops into the (powdered) mix with a Hot Cocoa O’s Cereal of his own.

So now there’s bound to be a munchy melee between these two well-known cereal champions:

In this corner, we have Sonny and his marshmallow puck-studded Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs! Though they may just taste like more sugary Cocoa Puffs, these cozy–crunchy orbs contain great power—and decades of cuckoo cereal clout!

Aaaaand in this corner, we have Trader Joseph and his (hopefully dark) chocolate dark horses! Though Smokin’ Joe the Trader isn’t renowned for his cereal—his Raisin Bran Clusters are perhaps his only belt-bursting championship belt-winner to date—Hot Cocoa O’s look like holiday Oreo O’s, and that alone is enough to sell more tickets than a Bob Dylan–Katy Perry tag team at Summer Slam!

Yes, I look forward to reviewing this hot chocolate cereal as soon as I find it—hopefully right next to the almond ‘nog so I can drown my early-sunset-imposed sorrows right along with my marshmallowy chocolate hoops.

Thanks to @OUATreviewed on Twitter for coming through with the find. If you have a merry cereal snapshot of your own to share, ship it via email or Polar Express on our Submissions page!

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: chocolate, holiday, spooned & spotted, trader joe's. 1 Comment

Nov. ’17

Review: Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs Cereal

Some things just make sense together. Like peanut butter and chocolate. Or peanut butter and jelly. Or peanut butter and bananas. Or peanut butter and analogies about things that go well together.

Oh, and chocolate and marshmallows, I guess.

That’s why it makes no sense that it took ’til 2017 for General Mills to realize just how many cents they’d make by putting mini marshmallows in Cocoa Puffs. From the humble Mallo Cup to being 2/3 of the iconic s’more, chocolate and marshmallows have a long history of delightfully gumming up people’s teeth.

But hot cocoa/hot chocolate (I refuse to take a stance on which name is better. As I’ve said before, I’m staying as neutral as a packet of Swiss Miss) is perhaps the most memorably cozy pairing of the two. Therefore, the only explanation for why this took so long is that Sonny always flies south for the winter. I’m willing to forgive him for going AWOL for Cocoa Puffs, so long as his redundantly named Hot Cocoa Cocoa Puffs are good. Since my childhood self used to think hot cocoa was made by microwaving chocolate milk, the bar is pretty low.

I still have nightmares about tepid, radiated and pasteurized dairy products.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 8 rating, chocolate, cocoa puffs, general mills, holiday. 2 Comments

Nov. ’17

2018 Cereal Preview: Peach Cheerios, Lucky Charms Frosted Flakes, & Shreds (x2!)

The future is now!

Scientists have apparently perfected time travel…but only a couple months into the future…and, uh, they apparently can only bring back cereal: not any lottery numbers, sports almanacs, or whatever cryptocurrency is most valuable at the time (CrunchCoin?).

Okay maybe not, but breakfast wormholes are the only logical explanation for how the wonderful fellas at MyCountyMarket got ahold of not I, not II, and not III, but IV (allegedly: none are confirmed) upcoming cereals from General Mills—cereals so exciting and new that I’m cancelling the New Year’s Resolutions I haven’t even made yet.*

Let’s take a gander at our soon-to-be-spooned pantry-stuffers, shall we?

*UPDATE: MyCountryMarket’s video has been removed for reasons unknown.

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: News. Tags: cheerios, chocolate, general mills, lucky charms, peanut butter, shredded wheat, toast crunch. 13 Comments

Nov. ’17

Spooned & Spotted: Kellogg’s Donut Shop Cereal (Chocolate & Pink)

Okay fine, Kellogg’s, I’ll forgive you for egregiously misspelling “Doughnut” as “Donut.” Sure, it’s grammatically correct, but removing the “UGH” removes the rounded pastry’s inherent charm, making me vocally say…you guessed it: “Grrr! Arghh! Zounds!”

Even a pedant like me can’t stay mad when there are two new doughnutty cereals hitting the market. We’ve known that this Chocolate Donut Cereal was coming for a while now, but the surprise debut of Pink Donut Cereal, seen in this photo from a Marc’s store that was sent in by reader GM, has left me tickled pink.

So what does “pink” taste like? Well if it’s anything like “blue,” then I’m ready for it. It could mean strawberry, plain frosting, Chicken McNugget Pink Slime, or even Canadian Birthday Cake (a reader noticed the visual similarity between Pink Donut Cereal and a certain Froot Loops flavor). Whatever it is, I’ll still happily crunch away, because cereal renditions of my favorite breakfast baked good are hard to crumb by these days.

Thanks again to GM for the photo. If you have a cool cereal photo of your own to share, or if you just want to fax me a fresh doughnut, roll over to our Submissions page.

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Specials. Tags: chocolate, kelloggs, spooned & spotted. 3 Comments

Nov. ’17

Review: Mystery Oreo Cookies

I’m gonna cut right to the chase, because I don’t have a lot of time and the Oreo I’m dunking in milk with my left-hand while typing this with my right-hand like a clambering hen is quickly growing soggy:

The real mystery behind Mystery Oreo cookies is how Nabisco couldn’t come up with something more creative.

Yes, when it comes to the near-constant stream of new Oreo news—which flickers across my social media timeline reliably enough to warrant it its own stock exchange style ticker—I usually remain an enthusiastic spectator, rather than a loyal hunter and gatherer: after all, how am I supposed to afford 16 Hot-Choco-Doughnut-Bun-Shortcake Oreos with Crackling Candy Filling when I have 17 more boxes of Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheerios to buy, just to get me through the week?

The only time I take Oreo news seriously is when it involves a cereal flavor or the potential revival of Oreo Cakesters. And soon after Nabisco launched its Mystery Oreos, a nebulous flavor whose taste palate can be hypothesized for a chance to win $50,000, I heard from several little birdies that this flavor would “pique my personal interest,” *wink wink* *nudge nudge* *it’s a cereal flavor it’s a cereal flavor.*

So after donning a Holmes-ian hat, boning up on some Encylcopedia Brown, and assuring myself there’s no way Nabisco would release Oreo Cakester-flavored Oreo Cookies, I bought a package. Now, let’s solve a mystery the rest of the Internet solved three weeks ago!

Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 4 rating, fruit loops, non cereal, pebbles. 1 Comment

Nov. ’17

Holiday Review: Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms Cereal

Halloween: over.
Jack-O-Lanterns: Decomp-O-sed.
Skeletons: stuffed back inside their human shells, where they belong.

Yes, now that October’s climactic ‘ween has waned, I’m slowly waxing into full Christmas mode (it’s easy to wax when you have so much 50% off candy corn left over). I know what you all you turkeys are thinking: but what about Thanksgiving? And I say to you two things. One, since Thanksgiving is objectively the chillest holiday, I don’t think it would give a rat’s mashed potato if we used it as a one-day, turkey-steeped nap in the middle of two months’ worth of Christmas mania.

And two: you show me a Thanksgiving cereal I can write about instead, and I’ll gladly dive headfirst into that bowl of Green Bean Casserole Toast Crunch.

So yes, I’m starting the holidays early with my review of Cinnamon Vanilla Lucky Charms, one of two new wintery treats from General Mills. As for Thanksgiving, I’ll just leave out some stuffing and a glass of cranberry sauce for Tryptophanta Claus. Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 6 rating, general mills, holiday, lucky charms. 2 Comments

Nov. ’17

Review: Limited Edition Banana Nut Cheerios Cereal (2017)

The only thing I love more than bread is bread that lets me pretend I’m eating healthy.

That’s why banana bread and zucchini bread were the butten-laden cornerstones of my developmental years’ food pyramid. That’s why I’ve preserved my grandma’s mathematically perfected zucchini bread recipe into adulthood. And that’s probably why my gut is steadily taking the shape of a banana bread loaf, protruding through my shirt like T-1000 through a wall.

Even though a zucchini bread cereal is as likely as North Korea letting pigs into their no-fly zone, I’m ecstatic that we’ve seen a recent resurgence of banana bread cereals. First we got Canada’s Banana Bread Shreddies, and now fan-favorite Banana Nut Cheerios are back from whatever Davy Jones’ Pantry General Mills condemned them to for the past year or two.

And yes, I know it’s called Banana Nut Cheerios and not Banana Bread, but we all know that’s “banana nut” is a term invented by Big Bread to keep even the carb-conscious in the palm of their crust-caressing hands. But enough conspiracy: let’s slice, peel, and crack open a box! Continue reading →

Posted by dan g.. Categories: Reviews. Tags: 9 rating, banana, cheerios, general mills. 9 Comments